Surviving three years in the trenches, Clark returned to Canada in 1918 a major with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, having been awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry at Vimy Ridge.

Clark urged Hemingway to give up fiction and concentrate his efforts on journalism "where his true talent -- and his brilliant future -- lay".

[4] Among the stories Clark covered were the Great Haileybury Fire of 1922, the Lindbergh Kidnap Trial in 1935, the coronation of King George VI and the royal couple's 1939 tour of Canada.

After arriving in Nova Scotia to cover the story, Clark continued to stay with the rescue crew after many other reporters had left, as they had given up hope the trapped miners were still alive.

Usually lightly humorous in tone, his columns were closely observed real-life vignettes that told stories of everyday trials, tribulations, and minor triumphs.

Returning to the Star at the war's conclusion, both Frise and Clark became unhappy with the paper's treatment of its staff, and agreed with each other in 1946 to leave at the first opportunity.

Clark contacted John McConnell, publisher of the Montreal Standard, a newspaper with a smaller circulation than the Star that had earlier offered him a position.

McConnell offered the pair salaries similar to what they received at the Star, as well as the opportunity for Frise to have his comic strip syndicated in the United States, which would supplement his income.

The Packsack columns were a miscellany of observations, musings, anecdotes and remembrances, and ran for 17 years until Clark's health forced him to curtail his writing activities.

One of his more famous columns, "One Block of Howland Avenue", describes how Clark's elderly father asked his two sons, both decorated veterans, never to walk up the street past the neighbours again.

In 1981, Doubleday published The Life and Times of Gregory Clark, Canada's Favorite Storyteller, written by fellow journalist Jock Carroll.