Lawrence O'Toole is a Canadian former journalist, best known as a film, dance and theatre critic for The Globe and Mail and Maclean's in the 1970s and 1980s. After moving to New York City in 1988, he was a contributor to Time, Entertainment Weekly, GQ and The New York Times, and volunteered for an AIDS service organization. In 1994, he published Heart's Longing: Newfoundland, New York and the Distance Home, a memoir of his experience growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador, coming out as gay as an adult, and later returning to his hometown of Renews for a visit. The book was an expansion of an article he had previously written for Saturday Night.