John N. Cole was cranky, crusty and cantankerous, and his friends said Wednesday that Maine is a lot better place because of it.

The staunch advocate for Maine’s environment and co-founder of the groundbreaking newspaper Maine Times died Tuesday night. Cole had been suffering from cancer for months. He was 79.

The Brunswick writer was heralded for throwing a lifeline to the state’s forests, waters and creatures in an era when they were under threat following years of exploitation and neglect.

He was also a tenacious watchdog of state government. From the moment he and Peter Cox founded Maine Times in 1968, Cole grabbed hold of the environment and open government as causes and never let go.

Cox called Cole a “journalistic catalyst” who was committed to the issues he believed in.

“As John would say, we all die some time, and he had a hell of a good life,” Cox said Wednesday. “How many people make the kinds of contributions he did? I don’t think he has any great regrets.”

After leaving Maine Times in 1980, Cole continued to write books and newspaper and magazine columns about nature, politics and issues close to his heart. He had published more than a dozen books and wrote articles for national publications that included The Atlantic Monthly, Field and Stream and Esquire magazines. He also wrote regularly for a number of Maine publications, including the Bangor Daily News.

“John was a unique voice in Maine journalism and probably on a much larger stage,” former Maine Times reporter Phyllis Austin recalled Wednesday.

“He really was gifted with the ability to speak the truth and say it in a biting and humorous way, which most of us in journalism can’t do. He was never afraid to say what he thought and had the courage to speak his mind, whether to a governor, legislator, selectman or captain of industry.”

Austin said Cole’s drive and talent “made the Maine Times successful from the beginning. His was a singular voice for environmental protection. … He could be cranky, he had a twangy-whiny voice that penetrated every crack in the room. Things just stopped when John walked in. He was a character and a personality, unlike many of us in the journalistic business. He was just an irreplaceable person.”

Cole was a commercial fisherman from Long Island, N.Y., who came to Maine in the early 1950s to enjoy its woods and waters and soon became one of their biggest defenders. From the moment of its publication, Maine Times produced major stories on the consequences of clear-cutting, the loss of wildlife habitat and the pollution of Maine’s streams and rivers by industrial neglect and the haphazard disposal of chemical waste.

When the state was contemplating thinning its moose herd in the early 1980s through creation of a lottery for hunters, Cole stood up in defense of the ambling creature of the North Woods. Although public sentiment was in favor of the hunt, that did not stop Cole from crisscrossing the state as an advocate for the moose.

In Belfast, many still recall a moose-hunt debate between Cole and the late Bangor Daily News outdoor writer Bud Leavitt that packed the Crosby Junior High School auditorium. Though the two men sparred with often caustic comments, they laughed and joked together once the footlights were extinguished.

“John was just one of those guys who could see to the heart of things immediately. He could see into the issues, and if he thought you were a phony, you knew it,” recalled David Platt, Cole’s editor at the Island Institute’s newspaper Island Journal.

Platt said Cole loved nothing better than a day in a duck blind or working a stream with a fishing line. He said with a chuckle that Cole might have been a little loose with the facts when he embarked on one of his journalistic crusades, but his heart was in the right place and his passion was real.

“John was a wonderful guy, just an amazing character and a real original. Without question, what he and Peter Cox did with the Maine Times in its early years changed journalism forever in Maine. The rest of the world has caught up with them, but Maine newspapers were pretty tame until Peter and John came along,” Platt said.

“John had a finely honed sense of moral outrage,” Platt said. “That guy could really get on his high horse and really beat you to a pulp with his sense of outrage.”

Writer Edgar Allan Beem of Yarmouth, who had the office next to Cole’s when both were still at Maine Times, recalled that despite his “grumpy old guy” image, Cole was the neatest person he’d ever encountered. He said his desk was always orderly and that everything was labeled and filed perfectly.

“He covered Augusta in a way it hadn’t been covered in years. He sort of made a soap opera out of its characters,” Beem said.

Beem said he will never forget “John’s long, sad, soulful face and his crackling way of talking, the way he always was just interested in what was going on. … He lived pretty much in the moment, which I think is a good thing.”

He is survived by his wife, Jean, two children and four stepchildren.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.