Frank G. Swanson was born on April 11th, 1917 in Edmonton, Alberta. Frank Swanson was a correspondent for Southam News Service beginning 1955. He was also Associate Editor for the Ottawa Citizen in 1975. Frank Swanson passed away March 6th, 1990 at the age of 72.
Walter Douglas Stewart was born in Toronto. He studied history at the University of Toronto, but left before graduation to work for the Toronto Telegram where he served as general reporter, picture editor, and financial feature writer. He joined the Star Weekly magazine as assistant picture editor in 1962 and the following year became their Ottawa correspondent. In 1968 he assumed the same duties for Maclean’s magazine. At Maclean’s he moved on to become Toronto Associate Editor (1970-1972, 1973-1975), Washington correspondent (1975-1977), and Managing Editor (1977). He has worked as a feature writer for the Toronto Star (1972-1973), as Ottawa correspondent and national columnist for FP News Service (1979-1980), as editor of Today magazine (1981-1982), as editor of Policy Options magazine (1988-1992), and as columnist for The Toronto Sun (1983-1997). As a freelancer, his work has appeared extensively in daily newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States. Stewart is the author of fifteen non-fiction books, chiefly on Canadian political, historical, and economic subjects, and two detective novels. He has served as professor and Director of the School of Journalism at King’s College, Halifax (1984-1986) and as Max Bell Professor of Journalism at the University of Regina (1987-1988).
William H. Stevenson was born in London, England and raised in France and England. He completed his education at Russell College, Oxford University. During World War II he served as a fighter pilot with the Royal Navy, training at a base near Kingston, Ontario.
Following the war he worked as a reporter for several British newspapers including the London Sunday Express and the Sunday Times. He immigrated to Canada in 1947, working as a journalist for the Toronto Star and Star Weekly.
From 1950 to 1963 he worked as foreign bureau chief for the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Hong Kong, India, and Africa. Stevenson worked for many years as a war and foreign correspondent, and documentary filmmaker in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, and lived at various times in Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Peking. As a producer for CBC Television's 'Tuesday Night' he produced documentaries, and in 1954 he produced the first documentary on Red China for NBC and the BBC. Stevenson left the CBC in 1976 to devote more time to research and writing. He is the author of many articles and numerous books of fiction and non-fiction.
Stevenson delivered the James M. Minifie Memorial Lecture at the University of Regina in March 1983.
Maggie Siggins is a journalist, writer, and broadcaster of national stature. Born in Toronto in 1942, she received a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Journalism in 1965 from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and began her career as a reporter for the Toronto Telegram. During the 1970s she worked as a political reporter, commentator, interviewer, and producer for CBC and CITY-TV Toronto. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in such major national magazines as Chatelaine, Macleans, Reader’s Digest, Today Magazine, and Financial Post Magazine. She wrote a monthly political column in Toronto Life from 1981 to 1983. She has produced documentaries for CBC and CITY-TV and spent 1985-1986 in China, where she worked at the New China News Agency and taught at the Beijing Broadcast Institute.
Siggins is the author of numerous books. She has won a number of awards and honours. In 1985 her book on the JoAnn and Colin Thatcher murder case, A Canadian Tragedy, won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award. Revenge of the Land received the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 1992. The City of Regina Best Book Award was won by Siggins for Riel: A Life of Revolution; In Her Own Time: A class Reunion Inspires a Cultural History on Women and Bitter Embrace: White Society’s Assault on the Woodland Cree. Love and Hate, a 1989 CBC television miniseries was based on her book on the Thatcher case. It has aired in Canada, the United States, Britain and over forty other countries. A miniseries, based on Revenge of the Land was broadcast on CBC and CBS.
Siggins has lectured widely and taught journalism, holding the Southam Fellowship for Journalists, University of Toronto (1973-1974), and the Max Bell Chair in Journalism at the University of Regina (1983-1984).
Siggins is the Vice-President of 4 Square Productions and has written over 50 hours of television.
John Sawatsky was born in Winkler, Manitoba in 1948. A graduate of Simon Fraser University, he has taught and lectured on journalism at various universities. These include Carleton University and the University of Regina.
A former parliamentary correspondent with the Vancouver Sun, Sawatsky left daily journalism in 1979 to embark on a career as the author of several acclaimed books. His works include Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (1980), For Services Rendered: Leslie James Bennett and the RCMP Security Service (1982), Gouzenko: The Untold Story (1984), The Insiders: Government, Business, and the Lobbyists (1987), and Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition (1991).
In 1976 Sawatsky received the Michener Award for meritorious public service in the field of journalism. He has received various other professional honours and awards including the Ottawa Citizen Book of the Year for The Insiders and the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award for Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition.
John Sawatsky now lives in the United States.
Before moving to Canada Nick Russell was a cub reporter on a British weekly. Subsequently, he worked in radio, TV, magazines, and for the Canadian Press. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) English from McGill; Master of Arts (Medieval English) from the University of London; and a Ph.D. (Journalism Ethics) from the University of Cardiff.
In 1968 he took over the journalism program at Vancouver Community College, which he built into a thriving career program. In 1983, he moved to Regina where he taught journalism for 15 years at the School of Journalism at the University of Regina. He is well known for conducting ethics and editing workshops for working journalists and is the winner of numerous heritage awards.
Russell is interested in heritage development and the restoration of historic homes throughout the Canadian West. He is president of the Hallmark Society, speaking for heritage in Victoria's Capital Regional District where he currently lives.
Nick Russell has written Morals and the Media, Canada's first study of journalism ethics (1994; revised edition 2006); in 1999 he co-authored Page 1, an anthology of fine Canadian newspaper writing. He has also co-edited a unique collection of archeological essays with photographs, Victoria Underfoot: Excavating a City’s Secrets, and is co-editor of a four-volume study of Victoria heritage homes, This Old House.
Ronald C. Robbins was born in Wales in 1917. He attained an Honours degree in English as well as other certificates and diplomas from technical institutes and colleges in Britain and North America. Robbins served as a Royal Navy officer during the Second World War and as a reporter, desk editor, and news editor with British newspapers and the British Broadcasting Corporation in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Robbins spent 26 years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). He was responsible for overseas bureaus, federal and provincial election coverage, and for coordinating staff training programs. At the same time he worked as desk editor for the Canadian Press wire in Toronto.
Robbins was appointed Director of the University of Regina School of Journalism and Communications in 1979 for a three-year term. During that time Robbins and a committee of journalists and academics arranged the curriculum for Saskatchewan's new journalism school.
Ron Robbins died in Victoria in 2009.
Born in Stonehenge, Saskatchewan on December 6, 1929, David Oancia spent his early teens in the Yukon working in the fur trade. There he learned to speak Cree and devoted his spare time to reading.
Eventually moving back to Saskatchewan, Oancia began his journalistic career writing for the Moose Jaw Times Herald. His experience in Moose Jaw led to a position with the Leader-Post in Regina. When Oancia joined Canadian Press, a national news agency, he began working in most parts of Canada. Joining the Globe and Mail, Oancia established their Montreal bureau in 1963 before spending three years as the paper's correspondent in Beijing. From China Oancia wrote about the tumult of the cultural revolution and in 1967 received the National Newspaper Award for his work in the Far East.
Oancia went on to spend time with UN troops on the Sinai desert covering the conflict in the Middle East before a posting to London from which he travelled extensively throughout Europe and North Africa.
Returning to Montreal in 1974 as an editorialist for the Montreal Star, Oancia was awarded a Southam Fellowship for Journalists to study the social determinants of change -- a topic of importance to him since his days in China. In 1975 he was appointed director for the Journalism program at Concordia University in Montreal.
Eric Malling was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on September 4, 1946. He attended the University of Saskatchewan, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and went on to the School of Journalism at Carleton University. After graduation, he worked for the Swift Current Sun and the Regina Leader-Post. In 1968 he began work for the Toronto Star and in 1974, he started doing interviews on Canada AM for CTV. Malling joined CBCs The Fifth Estate in 1976, hosting it for 14 years. In 1990 he joined W5 at CTV. This program was renamed W5 With Eric Malling. Malling won one Gemini Award and six ACTRA awards. He is the only person to have won the Gordon Sinclair Award for excellence in broadcast journalism three times.
Eric Malling died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Toronto on September 28, 1998.
Ed Gould was born in Alberta in 1936 and educated at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria. Gould began writing as a reporter and editor for various newspapers, the Canadian Press, and the CBC, before establishing himself as a freelance writer. He also worked as a freelance broadcaster and publisher and co-founded his own publishing company, Cappis Press.
His writing has appeared in numerous periodicals and newspapers. In 1973 Gould was awarded the Media Club of Canada award. Between 1975 and 1988 Gould published twelve books, many of which focus specifically on Canadian subjects. In addition, Gould has written book reviews, pieces of fiction and humor, and articles that reflect his interest in travel, film, the arts and various Canadian personalities.
Ed Gould passed away in 2001.
