Charles Lazarus was born to Romanian immigrant parents David and Bella Lazarus in 1918 and raised in a culturally and religiously devout Jewish environment in the Plateau area of Montreal. His parents, strong proponents of Labor Zionism, helped found the Jewish People's School upon their arrival in Quebec.
Lazarus entered a long and prolific journalism career at the age of 22 when, while in undergraduate studies at McGill University, he began working as a copyboy for the Canadian Press as well as McGill's own publication, the McGill Daily. In 1942 he moved to Winnipeg in search of work and met his wife, Ruth; he landed a job for the Southam newspaper chain's Vancouver Province and Winnipeg Tribune. Charles and Ruth gave birth to their daughter Susan in 1949 (who would pass away from cancer in 1982). Along with his new family, Lazarus moved back to Montreal in 1956; Charles and Ruth soon gave birth to twin sons David Lazarus (a journalist) and Theodore (a musician).
Upon his return to Montreal in 1956, Lazarus joined the editorial team at the Montreal Star where he would remain until the publication's closure in 1979, while Ruth meanwhile embarked on an executive career with the Canadian Jewish Congress. Lazarus relocated to New York for several years where he worked with the Newhouse newspaper chain; over the course of his career, he bylined with the New York Times, was the chief Canadian correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and worked with Variety Magazine, the London Jewish Chronicle, the Canadian Jewish Eagle, and the Toronto Globe and Mail, among others. His journalistic work spanned a wide spectrum including editorials, magazine articles, travel writing, politics, Canadian-Israeli relations, Expo 67 (for which he wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry) as well as film, theatre, and night life reviews. He was honoured with the Bowater Award for journalism for his coverage in Italy in the formation of the European Economic Community, the Common Market. He passed away in the late 1980s.