Bill Cameron

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Bill Cameron

William "Bill" Cameron (January 23, 1943 – March 11, 2005) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A Gemini Award winner, he was a news anchor, television producer, columnist and author. After attending the University of Toronto and spending time in New York City pursuing a career in acting, he got his start on CBC Radio as a freelance entertainment critic in the 1960s before moving on to Maclean's magazine where he was an associate editor and then to Global TV in 1978 as host of Newsweek.

In the 1980s, Cameron worked for Citytv as the late night anchor for CityPulse but is best known for his work on the CBC television in the 1980s and 1990s, where he co-hosted Midday, was a reporter on documentaries for and was an occasional anchor of The Journal, and later anchored the local evening news on CBLT in Toronto, the CBC Morning News, and the afternoon show Newsworld International on CBC Newsworld. He left the CBC in 1999 to become vice president of communications for an online gem marketing firm. He also took the ethics chair at the Ryerson School of Journalism and freelanced for the National Post and The Walrus.

In 2003, he released a novel Cat's Crossing, published by Random House of Canada. His second novel, Dent In America, was nearly finished by the time of his death and was never published. He also had a cameo role on the comedy series Puppets Who Kill as the newsreader reporting on the latest murders by the show's homicidal puppets.

Cameron was married to Cheryl Hawkes, a freelance journalist, with whom he had three children - Patrick, Rachel and Nicholas. He also had an elder son, Sean Patenaude. He died of esophageal cancer at around midnight (EST) on March 11, 2005.

In his last piece of journalism, Chasing the Crab, Cameron documented his battle with cancer. The essay appeared in the May 2005 issue of The Walrus. It won two gold medals at the 2006 Canadian National Magazine Awards.