Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. (July 12, 1920 – November 30, 2004) was a Canadian historian, writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture. He also wrote critiques of mainstream religion, anthologies, children's books and historical works for youth. He was a reporter and war correspondent, an editor at Maclean's Magazine and The Toronto Star and, for 39 years, a panelist on Front Page Challenge. He was a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, and won many honours and awards.

Berton was born on July 12, 1920, in Whitehorse, Yukon, where his father had moved for the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. His family moved to Dawson City, Yukon in 1921. His mother, Laura Beatrice Berton (maiden name Laura Beatrice Thompson), was a schoolteacher in Toronto until she was offered a job as a teacher in Dawson City at the age of 29 in 1907. She met Frank Berton in the nearby mining town of Granville shortly after settling in Dawson and teaching kindergarten. Laura Beatrice Berton's autobiography of life in the Yukon entitled I Married the Klondike was published in her later years and gave her what her son Pierre describes as "a modicum of fame, which she thoroughly enjoyed." At the time, Dawson City was a highly remote place. After visiting Dawson City in the summer of 1939 to see some old friends, it took Berton a week to go from Dawson City to Whitehorse as the only means of transport was an old paddle-wheeler named the Casca that moved slowly up the Yukon River. Growing up in Dawson City, which had briefly during the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s been one of Canada's largest cities, left Berton with an eye for the colourful. During his childhood he encountered numerous eccentric people who had gone north during the gold rush and ended up staying in Dawson City after the gold rush ended.

Berton's family moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1932. At age 12, he joined the Scout Movement. Berton later wrote that "The Scout Movement was the making of me". He credited Scouting with keeping him from becoming a juvenile delinquent. He started his journalism career in scouting and later wrote that "the first newspaper I was ever associated with was a weekly typewritten publication issued by the Seagull Patrol of St. Mary’s Troop." He remained in scouting for seven years and wrote about his experiences in an article titled "My Love Affair with the Scout Movement". Like his father, Pierre Berton worked in Klondike mining camps during his years as a history major at the University of British Columbia, where he also worked on the student paper The Ubyssey.

He spent his early newspaper career in Vancouver, where at 21 he was the youngest city editor on any Canadian daily, at the Vancouver News-Herald, replacing editorial staff that had been called up to serve in the Second World War. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor while on the same day, the Japanese Army invaded the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya. The extent and rapidity of the Japanese victories in the winter of 1941-1942 came as a considerable surprise, and Berton stated that from his vantage in Vancouver that the war felt much closer than it had done before. In February 1942, he noted Japanese-Canadians being held in Vancouver's Hastings Park prior to being sent to internment camps in the interior of the province. Meanwhile all over Greater Vancouver the businesses and homes of Japanese-Canadians were seized by the federal government, which proceeded to promptly auction off most of the assets it seized.

Berton himself was conscripted into the Canadian Army under the National Resources Mobilization Act in 1942 and attended basic training in British Columbia, nominally as a reinforcement soldier intended for The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. Under the National Resources Mobilization Act, the government had the power to impose conscription for the defence of Canada and only volunteers were sent to fight overseas until late 1944. The men who were conscripted and chose to remain in Canada were popularly known as "the Zombies", a term that was highly disparaging. Because the "Zombies" refused to fight overseas, in many quarters they were viewed as cowards. He elected to "go Active" (the euphemism for volunteering for overseas service). By 1942, the Axis powers were winning the war, and Berton came to feel that the two very different visions of the world offered up by the respective sides were such that he had to take a stand by "going active", instead of remaining safely in Canada as a "Zombie". His aptitude as a soldier was such that he was appointed Lance Corporal and attended NCO school, and became a basic training instructor in the rank of corporal. Due to a background in university Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC) and inspired by other citizen-soldiers who had been commissioned, he sought training as an officer.

Berton spent the next several years attending a variety of military courses, becoming, in his words, the most highly trained officer in the military. He was warned for overseas duty many times, and was granted embarkation leave many times, each time finding his overseas draft being cancelled. A coveted trainee slot with the Canadian Intelligence Corps saw Berton, now a Captain, trained to act as an Intelligence Officer (IO), and after a stint as an instructor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, he finally went overseas in March 1945. In the UK, he was told that he would have to requalify as an IO because the syllabus in the UK was different from that in the intelligence school in Canada. By the time Berton had requalified, the war in Europe had ended. During his time in Britain, he dated a woman named Frances who informed him on V Day that she was pregnant with his child and did not want him involved, as told by Berton in his autobiography and retold in his Biography. Berton never knew his British child. He volunteered for the Canadian Army Pacific Force (CAPF), granted a final "embarkation leave", and found himself no closer to combat employment by the time the Japanese surrendered in September 1945.

In 1947 he went on an expedition to the Nahanni River with pilot Russ Baker. Berton's account for the Vancouver Sun was picked up by International News Service, making him a noted adventure-travel writer. On 1 February 1948, an article by Berton appeared in Maclean's under the title "They're Only Japs", which was the first account of the internment of Japanese Canadians to appear in the Canadian media that provided interviews with some of the interned people. Most notably, Berton interviewed Marie Suzuki, a second-generation Japanese Canadian school-teacher whose career had been ruined by the internment. Berton was quite critical of the decision made by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to order the internment on 24 February 1942 that saw all Japanese Canadians interned, regardless if they were immigrants or Canadian-born, unlike the case-by-case policy with interning German Canadians and the partial internment of Italian Canadians that saw all Italian immigrants interned. Berton's article was also the first to note that greed was a major factor behind the demand for the internment as many of the people in British Columbia who agitated for total internment of all Japanese Canadians were very interested in seizing their assets for themselves.

In 1951, Berton covered the Korean War as the war correspondent of Maclean's. To make up for not seeing action in World War Two, Berton was highly keen to work as a war correspondent and lobbied Ralph Allen, the editor of Maclean's, to go to Korea as soon as the Korean War started in 1950. In late 1950 Berton wrote profiles in Maclean's of the two commanding officers of the all-volunteer Canadian Special Brigade, namely Brigadier John Meredith Rockingham and Colonel Jacques Dextraze, which were highly flattering to the subjects of his profiles and led the Canadian Army to expect that Berton would take a pro-war line in his reportage. In February 1951, Berton's profile of Rockingham was published in Maclean's under the title "Rocky" noted that Rockingham was a highly decorated Second World War veteran who had won the Distinguished Service Order at Dieppe in 1942 who was much liked and respected by the men who served under him. The arrival of Canadian Special Brigade at the front in February 1951 finally provided the occasion for him to work as a war correspondent. Berton arrived in South Korea in March 1951 at a critical moment as the Chinese had just taken Seoul and were preparing for a spring offensive that was launched in April 1951 that was aimed at winning the war by driving out United Nations forces of Korea. The Chinese Spring Offensive was launched, which saw the Anglo-Canadian-Australian-New Zealander 27th Infantry Commonwealth Brigade in the thick of the fighting. After the failure of the Chinese spring offensive, the United Nations launched a counter-offensive that saw Seoul retaken. By June 1951, the war had reached a stalemate and negotiations were opened for an armistice, which took two years to conclude with the armistice finally being signed on 27 July 1953.