Biography

He was awarded the O.C. (Officer of the Order of Canada) on June 23, 1986 and the C.C. (Companion of the Order of Canada) on October 21, 1998 for his services to communications in Canada.

Grumpy? Well yeah, sometimes. I get frustrated by hypocrisy and bureaucracy, and the load of stuff I have to do. I get tired, physically drained. And I have a limited capacity for social affairs. I spend all day talking to people. It's what I do for a living. I don't want to go out after work and talk to people. I don't like all that milling about at parties. I want to go home.

[on the death of Andrew Allan] For me, sitting across the table, there was the literacy of his essays, all the tradition he brought, his great sense of storytelling and great sense of delivery. His essays were filigrees of the lightest sort. I felt such awe and respect for him. One awful morning in the winter of 1974 he did not show up at the studio. We sent a messenger to his apartment. He had had a stroke.