Roger Ebert once sparred with Canadian media mogul Conrad Black

Canada’s film community mourned the death of Roger Ebert this week, with reviewers at major newspapers lining up to honour his memory and other, avid film buffs expounding on his graces — including the tale of when he went toe-to-toe with Canada’s infamous Conrad Black.

The Toronto International Film Festival’s artistic director, Cameron Bailey, called Ebert a friend of the festival, telling the Toronto Star, “He was there from the beginning, he always attended…. He was the most important film critic in the world.”

A statement from TIFF organizers went on to say:

[ Related: Movie critic Roger Ebert passes away after cancer battle ]

Ebert's dedication to TIFF did include one pseudo-scandal when, in 2002, the reviewer emphatically complained to festival staff after he was blocked from entering an overflowing film screening.

Matthew Hays, a Montreal writer who now-infamously told Ebert to "go back to America," recalls the incident in the Globe and Mail, saying, "The irony of Ebert seeming like a bully was a rich one."

The National Post’s Chris Knight expounds on the time he met Ebert, and gives this tribute:

The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell also has a stirring tribute on Ebert’s impact on his craft. He notes, similarly to Knight, that “Words just seemed to flow out of him, so much so that even when you disagreed with him, you admired how well he argued his case.”

And then there was my favourite anecdote, a story that may be of interest to Canadian readers. When Chicago Sun-Times workers threatened to strike in 2004, Ebert wrote a public letter to publisher John Cruickshank (currently the publisher of the Toronto Star), in which he supported the workers and alluded to allegations of money wasted by the paper’s owner, Hollinger International.

Hollinger chairman Conrad Black (the loquacious Canadian who was later imprisoned) wrote back in kind. He publicized Ebert’s salary of $500,000 and stated his "proletarian posturing on behalf of those threatening to strike the Sun-Times and your base ingratitude are very tiresome."

Not a shrinking violent, Ebert jousted back in a letter that took aim at Black’s leadership as well as those same allegations of mismanagement. He said he did not feel overpaid, considering he had learned Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, was paid $300,000 “"for duties described as reading the paper and discussing it with you."

[ More Brew: Conrad Black is television's next long-winded talk show host ]

He then recalled a dinner he had with the couple after they obtained the Sun-Times, during which Ebert suggested they could not give the paper a conservative bend. Ebert concedes that they did succeed in that mission, a decision he did not personally agree with.

"But I admire you for sticking to your ideological guns in the face of the common sense which cries out that the Sun-Times naturally, obviously, and by tradition belongs in the centre,” he wrote.

"If you had been as forthright about your finances as about your politics, we might not be having this correspondence."

The entire exchange was published by the Sun-Times, but it appears to be absent from their website (the letters are nearly a decade old, after all). But for those interested in reading more on the matter, The Guardian newspaper still has its retelling available.