The "year-end round-up" season is almost upon us, so I thought I'd beat the Canadian controlled media (Hello CBC!) by declaring Justin Trudeau the Canadian joke ["newsmaker", shurely! Ed.] of the year. The joke is on the stupid Canucks who voted this oleaginous, metrosexual, narcissistic fraud into office for the second time. Are you frostbacks masochists or what?
Dear Canadian readers, I wish you a wonderful winter solstice and a politically correct new year. And may your border remain open to the flood of refugees, asylum-seekers, and dispirited never-Trumpers who will be coming your way in 2020.
Footnote: What you're just read is something you won't read or hear or see anywhere on the CBC, the state-owned Canadian Broadcorping Castration. The CBC is publicly funded, which means that the taxpayers of Canuckistan are paying for the steady stream of politically correct, leftie drivel than emanates from studios high above the common people of downtown Toronto.
I refer in particular to The National, the CBC's nocturnal emission which passes off propaganda as a newcast. This is not just my opinion, but that of the Financial Post's William Watson. Check out "CBC's The National brings Canadians all the news that's woke", published today. Subhead: "There are four essential components to The National: something climate, something anti-Trump, something Lefty-heroic and something Indigenous".
The alternatives -- the national newscasts of CTV and Global -- are still part of the Canada's lamestream media, but better than the Canuck version of the Clinton News Network. Adjust your watching accordingly. You're welcome.
Note from Ed.: This is the continuation and end of our look at the personalities who have anchored CBC-TV's National News (later rebranded as The National) from the beginning until the retirement of the current host, Peter Mansbridge, whose last newscast will air tonight. If you missed Part 1, click here to read that first.
Following the departure of Lloyd Robertson, the CBC resumed its search for a "real journalist", and in 1978 decided on Knowlton Nash, who had decades of experience in print journalism as well as broadcasting. He spent much of the hippy-dippy 1960s in the USA, covering virtually every major story of that time and that place. He stepped down from reporting in 1969 to join CBC's management in Toronto as Director of News and Current Affairs.
In 1978 he auditioned for the role of anchor, and was subsequently chosen. As a nod to his journalistic background, Mr Nash was given the title "Chief Correspondant" rather than "News Anchor". He continued in the role until his retirement in 1988, and died in March of 2014 at the age of 86.
Now it's time to acknowledge the news anchor who had the longest tenure, until Peter Mansbridge came along. That would be the comparatively little known George McLean, who in 1965 took over Rex Loring's role (see Part 1) as backup and weekend anchor. If the "regular" anchor wasn't there, not to worry, because George would get the job done. Known for his reliability and ability to stay calm in high-stress situations, Mr McLean would become one of the most recognizable faces and voices at CBC News. One reason for his success, some say, was that he looked and sounded a lot like Walter Cronkite! Here's a video of his goodbye newscast.
That telecast aired in 1988. George McLean, little remembered now, was on the job for over 20 years! He died in March of 2016, aged 92.
Now we come to Peter Mansbridge, seen here with Knowlton Nash, whose career with the CBC has spanned half a century. Really. As a callow youth of 19, he was working as a dogsbody at the airport at the end of the earth (Churchill MB) when he was called on to make an announcement over the public address system. The station manager for the local CBC affiliate heard his mellifluous tones and hired him on the spot! The rest, as they say, is history.
Peter Mansbridge debuted as the sole anchor of The National on 1 May 1988. He also served as co-anchor for CBC Prime Time News from November 1992 to the fall of 1995. During his 29 years as anchor, he has covered Canadian news stories including federal elections, party leadership conventions, the Meech Lake Accord negotiations, the Charlottetown Accord and its referendum, the 1995 Quebec referendum, floods in Manitoba in 1997, ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in 1998, the six days in September 2000 that marked the death and state funeral of Pierre Trudeau, and the 2003 blackout across much of eastern North America.
He has also anchored coverage of many world events, both in the studio and on the scene. In the studio, he anchored coverage of the Gulf War, the War in Kosovo, the 9/11 attacks and the 2014 Parliament Hill shootings. He was on the air live when the 2003 invasion of Iraq began and anchored coverage of it. On the scene, he anchored coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the funerals of Princess Diana and Pope John Paul II, numerous royal, papal, and US presidential visits to Canada, numerous Olympic Games, and the inauguration of US President Barack Obama. He reported extensively from Normandy both 50 and then 60 years after D-Day and from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands for the 50th and 60th anniversaries.
With the retirement of Lloyd Robertson from CTV National News on 1 September, Mr Mansbridge became the longest-serving active anchor among the big three Canadian networks. Last night the CBC aired a well-deserved tribute to Peter. Here it is.
So farewell then, Peter Mansbridge. Today will be your last time anchoring The National and telling grateful Canucks "Thanks for watching. Now go to sleep." OK, just kidding about the last part, but Agent 3 assures us that watching Mr Mansbridge read the news is the last thing he does most nights, before turning out the light. So also it has been for millions of Canadians. Now, no more.
Peter Mansbridge first sat in the CBC National News anchor's chair just over 29 years ago. Since then he has become an institution -- a rare thing in the Not-so-great, Not-so-white North -- the Canadian counterpart to the late great Walter Cronkite. In spite of the fact that he spoke for the state broadcaster, Canucks trusted Peter not to lie to them, and he didn't... as far as anyone can tell. People trusted him. The news was what he said it was, no more and no less.
Peter Mansbridge was not the first CBC national news anchor, of course. The CBC's English television service debuted in the fall of 1952. Agent 3 is old enough to remember those early days, and with his help we've put together a photo montage of most of the people who sat at the Big Desk from them until now.
There at the creation (or almost) was Larry Henderson, the only CBC newscaster to sport a dapper pencil moustache, à la Errol Flynn. By all accounts, Mr Henderson was no Errol Flynn, but a serious but pleasant straight shooter, establishing the model for those who would follow. He was the first regular reader of the National News, serving from 1954 to 1959. A devout churchman, he went on to become the editor of the Catholic Register. He died in 2006 at the age of 89.
Special mention must be made here of Rex Loring, a long-time CBC newsie who passed away in April of this year, at the age of 91. (There must have been something in the water at CBC's old Jarvis Street studios in Toronto.)
Known mostly for his work on CBC Radio, Mr Loring filled in for Larry Henderson on weekends and when the latter was off. At one point he even grew a moustache -- no pic could be found -- so he'd be all set to take over when Mr Henderson left, but in vain, as the job went to the moustacheless but more avuncular Earl Cameron. A pic of Mr Cameron proved even harder to find than one of Mr Loring's moustache, but Ed. did manage to locate this very short clip of Earl doing his job.
Earl Cameron succeeded Larry Henderson as the anchor of the CBC National News in 1959. During the 1960s, managers at CBC News moved towards a philosophy of regarding news announcers as journalists rather than performers. As part of this shift, they put pressure on the announcers' union to accept an agreement prohibiting news readers from commercials or accepting outside contracts with ad agencies. In 1965, Mr Cameron gave up reading commercials for such products such as Crest toothpaste and Nash Rambler automobiles, but that didn't save him. He was dropped from the anchor position the following year, but continued as a staff announcer for another decade. He died in 2005 at the age of... wait for it... 89.
There was something of a revolving door (or a revolving chair) at the National News for the next four years, as the CBC kept up its search for a "real journalist" as opposed to an actor or "bingo caller" who just read what was put in front of him. (Rex Loring was the acknowledged master of the "cold read" -- reading convincingly a script which was handed to him while in the middle of a newscast.) Lloyd Robertson had moved to Toronto to host CBC Weekend in the late 1960s, and anchored The National from 1970 to 1976, before jumping to the independent CTV network.
One of the reasons he left the CBC was his frustration at union regulations which confined news anchors to the role of announcer, prohibiting them from writing their own scripts or participating in editorial decisions concerning the news broadcast. Mr Robertson is still alive and, at the age of 83, still appearing occasionally on CTV.
Some of our readers will have fond and funny memories of the SCTV News, a regular shtick on SCTV, the funniest sketch comedy show ever. Eugene Levy's Earl Camembert character on SCTV was named after Earl Cameron, but otherwise bore no resemblance, except maybe for the bow tie that Earl sometimes wore. The name was merely an offhand joke designed to get a laugh from Canadian viewers. The same is true of Camembert's co-anchor, Floyd Robertson, played by Joe Flaherty, who otherwise bore only a small resemblance to Lloyd Robertson.
Note from Ed.: We were originally going to do this tribute to the CBC newscasters as one long(ish) post, but as I did the research, I found so many photos and videos that I've decided to cut the piece into two parts. Scroll up to see Part 2, including a video of the late, unsung George McLean and, yes, more about Peter Mansbridge.
