Daughter of a prominent Canadian newspaperman, she went to work for The Globe of Toronto in 1928 where she was to make her name as a progressive journalist, a fighter for social justice, and a lifelong watchdog on the actions of governments.

[1][2] As a child, she suffered from rheumatic fever as well as typhus and gave up school at the end of grade eight, although she continued learning through wide reading, keen discussion and a practice of precise observation.

After her father's death in 1928, she cut her long hair into a business-like bob and applied for a reporter's job with The Globe, on the understanding that she would not work on the society or women's pages.

In response, Judith offered to take three weeks vacation to save The Globe from the need to refuse to print her bitter denunciation of Neville Chamberlain.

At the beginning of the Second World War, as the jobless were discovering a chance to find employment in the army, a couple of new recruits burst into her office one day to thank her for her past support and, rejoicing that they now had work, presented her with a bouquet of roses.

Her attitudes and priorities can perhaps be understood by a quotation from her column in The Globe of September 12, 1939, days after war was declared, where she wrote: "Men who have already volunteered to defend freedom with their lives against the Nazi aggressor are still free to sleep in the parks in Toronto.

Her understanding of the issues involved in the war, her passionate belief in principles, in freedom, in the rights of little people, made the goal of the paper clear.

By exposure, by criticism, by attack, News did far more than a great number of huge circulation publications to goad, to push, to frighten, to force our politicians into giving Canada a better war effort.

[editorialising] News had subscribers across Canada and in other parts of the world, but it was not well supported by advertisers and had to rely on donations from interested Canadians to keep going.

[4] She was the spur behind the women's committee which filled hundreds of petitions and shamed the Government into building Sunnybrook Hospital for the returning veterans.

(Opened 1948) Robinson had become a regular contributor to Chatelaine when in 1953 she joined The Telegram as the Ottawa columnist for the paper's new Op-Ed "page 7", a position she held till her death.

[1] Robinson's book Tom Cullen of Baltimore, a biography of the Canadian doctor who had made his name as a surgeon and gynecologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital was published in 1949.

After her death, George Grant dedicated his celebrated book Lament for a Nation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965) - "To Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson – Two Lovers of Their Country – One Living and One Dead".

Diploma of thanks and appreciation from General de Gaulle, then provisional president In 1954 she received the "Canadian Press Award for Spot Reporting" on breaking the story of the kiting of cheques which brought down a Liberal cabinet minister.