Knowlton Nash

Knowlton Nash
Born	(1927-11-18) November 18, 1927 Toronto, Ontario
Nationality	Canada
Known for	Anchorman for CBC Television news

Cyril Knowlton Nash, OC, OOnt (born November 18, 1927) is a Canadian journalist, author, and former long-serving senior anchorman of CBC Television's flagship news program, The National. He began his career in journalism by selling newspapers on the streets of Toronto during World War II. Before age 20, he was a professional journalist for British United Press. After some time as a freelance foreign correspondent, he became the CBC Washington correspondent during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, also covering stories in South and Central America and Vietnam. He moved back to Toronto in 1968 to join management as head of CBC's news and information programming, then stepped back in front of the camera in 1978 as anchor of CBC's late evening news program, The National. He stepped down from that position in 1988 to make way for Peter Mansbridge. Nash has written several books about Canadian journalism and television, including his own memoirs as a foreign correspondent.

Early life

Nash was born in Toronto in 1927, and named Cyril after his father, a racetrack betting manager. However, the young boy didn't like being called "Cyril Junior", and at age five, Nash asked his parents to instead call him by his middle name, Knowlton.^[1] From an early age, Nash was fascinated with the world of journalism: by age 8, he was writing his own news sheet, by age 9 he was writing letters to the editors of Toronto newspapers, and by age 10 he was operating a newsstand.^[1] In 1940, at age 12, Nash was a newspaper boy on the streets of Toronto selling the Toronto Star and Toronto Telegram for three cents a copy.^[2]

Career

Print journalism

In his early teens, Nash reported on weekly high school sports for The Globe and Mail. In 1944, he dropped out of high school to become editor of Canadian High News, a small weekly tabloid distributed to most high schools in southern Ontario. His fellow staff members included Keith Davey and Robert McMichael.^[3]

The following year, he spent some time editing a couple of crime magazines, then reported for a Toronto neighbourhood newspaper for a few months. Nash and some former staff members from Canadian High News then bought up a two neighbourhood newspapers, but with little advertising revenue, both papers quickly ran out of money and went out of business.^[4]

Wire service reporter

In 1947, at age 19, Nash was hired as night editor in the Toronto office of British United Press (BUP), a wire news service affiliated with United Press. This mainly involved "scalping" news stories from the Toronto newspapers—rewriting stories covered by the newspapers, then filing them via teletype. After a few months, Nash also started to write original feature articles, and was also sent to cover the Ontario provincial legislature as well as professional sports events in Toronto.^[5] The following year, Nash was assigned to BUP's Halifax office as bureau manager, responsible for news coverage in the Canadian Maritimes and Newfoundland. In 1949, he was promoted to manager of BUP's Vancouver office, where he covered the protests by the "Sons of Freedom" sect of Doukhobors, and interviewed various celebrities, including Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee.

In 1951, at age 23, Nash returned to BUP's Toronto office, this time as bureau manager. Among other stories, he covered the death of William “Red” Hill Jr., who was trying to emulate his daredevil father by going over Niagara Falls in a floating contraption; and the 1951 Canadian royal tour of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

IFAP editor and researcher

In 1951, Nash was hired by the Washington, D.C.-based International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) to gather information and edit their monthly newsletter. His office was right across the street from the White House—he would often see President Harry S Truman walking by with his Secret Service detail on noon-hour walks. Research for his work brought him in touch with many officials, and he quickly developed a network of contacts within Washington power circles.

His work with IFAP made Nash a world traveller, with a dozen trips to Europ via steamship, plus visits to Mexico and Central America as well as Africa. It also brought him in contact with many notables, including Pope Pius XII, Dag Hammerskjold, Lord Boyd Orr, Dwight D. Eisenhower and future Dutch prime minister Barend Biesheuvel.^[6]

It was on a trip to Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising in 1954 that Nash also became a freelance foreign correspondent, sending several radio reports on the unrest to the CBC and BBC while he attended an IFAP conference in Nairobi. He continued to file freelance stories for the CBC and the Financial Post while travelling abroad, and became a stringer for the Windsor Star. He also occasionally wrote for the Family Herald, Maclean's, Chatelaine and the Star Weekly.^[7]

Freelance journalist

Having developed a strong network of contacts in the Washington area, Nash left IFAP to become a freelance journalist in 1958. Politics had always been a passion, and in order to write and file stories for many media outlets, he now had the opportunity to meet many American politicians, including Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon B. Johnson, and the up-and-coming John F. Kennedy and his brothers Bob and Ted Kennedy. His first major political event was the 1960 Democratic National Convention, where he was an eyewitness to many of the backroom and convention floor deals that resulted in the nomination of John F. Kennedy.^[8]

Nash's first television news assignment was covering the funeral of John Foster Dulles for the CBC on May 27, 1959. Nash initially was not that interested in doing television reports, which only earned him the same fee as radio reports but took much longer to prepare; however, he soon realized that the future of news reportage lay in television, and did all he could to learn about the new medium.^[9]

In addition to covering political news in Washington, Nash also travelled around the United States and internationally. His many assignments included

• the race riots in Oxford, Mississippi that resulted when federal soldiers were deployed to allow James Meredith to become the first black to be admitted to the University of Mississippi.
• the launch of the Project Mercury rocket Friendship 7 from Cape Canaveral, making John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth.
• the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Nash waited in the White House for news during the perceived height of the crisis on the evening of Saturday, October 27, 1962, despite the apparent risk of a Russian atomic attack on the American capital.)
• a three-week trip to Cuba to see the effect of Fidel Castro's takeover and the subsequent American trade embargo. While there, he found Che Guevara helping to harvest sugar cane and interviewed him about the Cuban revolution.
• the civil rights march to the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, where Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
• the aftermath in Washington of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
• the trial of Jack Ruby in February 1964
• the 1964 Republican National Convention that chose Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Democratic National Convention that chose Lyndon B. Johnson.
• the Selma to Montgomery marches in May 1965
• the many riots during the summer of 1967, including Newark and Detroit.
• the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At one point, Nash was caught up in the street rioting and received a minor head injury.^[10]

Nash also travelled back to Canada to cover Canadian political events for CBC, including television coverage of election night for the federal elections of 1962, 1963 and 1965; the 1965 Saskatchewan Doctors' Strike; and the Gerda Munsinger sex scandal of 1966.^[11]

Freelance correspondents were not well paid by CBC, and in 1965, Nash helped to form the CBC Foreign Correspondents Association in order to negotiate a better wage for members, and became its first vice-president.^[12]

Nash also made extended trips abroad, including a half-dozen visits to Central and South America, and two trips to Southeast Asia to provide a Canadian perspective to the Vietnam War.^[13]

He also interviewed many prominent newsmakers of the time, including Pierre Salinger, George Lincoln Rockwell, Allen Dulles, Dick Gregory, Ronald Reagan, Columbian president Guillermo León Valencia, Venezuelan president Romulo Betancourt and Dean Rusk.^[14]

CBC management and chief correspondent

Nash joined the CBC's management as head of news and information programming in 1968, moving back to Toronto, and became anchor of The National following the departure of Peter Kent in 1978. During his tenure, the program expanded from 15 minutes to the first segment of an hour long news package with The National being followed by The Journal, which featured interviews and documentaries.

Retirement

In 1988, Nash offered to retire from his duties at The National in order to keep Peter Mansbridge from accepting an offer to host the morning news at the American network CBS. Nash left his position as CBC News' senior anchor and chief correspondent in 1988, but still anchored the broadcast on Saturday evenings and filled-in for Mansbridge until he officially retired from CBC News on November 28, 1992. He also hosted various programs on CBC Newsworld in the 1990s, and from 1990 to 2004 was host of the CBC's educational series "News in Review".

Personal

(Nash was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2002.^[15]) He lives in Toronto with his wife, former CBC personality Lorraine Thomson, and his family.

Honours

• Officer of the Order of Canada (1989)
• Member of the Order of Ontario (1998)
• President's Award of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (1990)
• John Drainie Award "for distinguished contributions to broadcasting" (1995)
• Inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame (1996)
• Honorary Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Toronto (1993), Brock University (1995), the University of Regina, (1996), and Loyalist College (1997).
• Max Bell Professor at the University of Regina School of Journalism in 1992
• Lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation (2006)^[16]
• Mentioned in Stan Rogers' 1981 song Working Joe ("Running from the crack of dawn 'til Knowlton reads the news...")

Bibliography

• History on the Run: The Trenchcoat Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent (McClelland and Stewart, 1984), ISBN 0-7710-6700-3
• Times to Remember: A Canadian Photo Album (Key Porter Books, 1986), ISBN 1-55013-005-6
• Prime Time at Ten: Behind-the-Camera Battles of Canadian TV Journalism (McClelland and Stewart, 1987), ISBN 0-7710-6703-8
• Kennedy and Diefenbaker: Fear and Loathing across the Undefended Border (McClelland and Stewart, 1990), ISBN 0-7710-6705-4
• Visions of Canada: Searching for Our Future (McClelland and Stewart, 1991), ISBN 0-7710-6708-9
• The Microphone Wars: A History of Triumph and Betrayal at the CBC (McClelland and Stewart, 1994), ISBN 0-7710-6712-7
• Cue the Elephant!: Backstage Tales at the CBC (McClelland and Stewart, 1996), ISBN 0-7710-6734-8
• Trivia Pursuit: How Showbiz Values are Corrupting the News (McClelland and Stewart, 1998), ISBN 0-7710-6752-6
• Swashbucklers: The Story of Canada's Battling Broadcasters (McClelland and Stewart, 2001), ISBN 0-7710-6774-7

References

External links

• Order of Canada Citation
• CBC Newsworld - Petrie in Prime interview with Knowlton Nash (3 parts)