Bio: Patrick Watson

Often described as "one of Canada's most celebrated broadcasters", Patrick Watson was schooled in Toronto and Ottawa. He holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto, was a teaching fellow at Queens University, and did doctoral studies at the University of Michigan.

His first broadcasting experience was as a radio actor in 1943, in a continuing daily CBC children's radio drama, The Kootenay Kid. While best known for his work in television journalism and documentary film, he has maintained an active interest in dramatic production and acting, including roles in Terry Fox The Movie, Countdown to Looking Glass, and in the 1975 CBC production of Bethune with Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan. His two dramatised television series of encounters with great figures from the past, Titans and Witness to Yesterday, comprised more than 50 episodes.

Since 1988 he has been Creative Director and principal writer of the CRB Foundation's Heritage Minutes project, a series of more than 50 "Micro-Movies", cinematic dramatizations of moments from Canada's past, which appear on virtually every television service in Canada and every day on more than 1,000 movie screens across the nation.

His television and documentary productions have ranged from writing, producing and directing for The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, to his best-know Canadian series This Hour Has Seven Days, which he jointly conceived and produced with Douglas Leiterman, and later co-hosted with Laurier Lapierre and Dinah Christie. He was co-producer of the CBC's landmark series Close-up from 1957 to 1960, and produced and directed the National Affairs series INQUIRY from 1960 to 1964. In that year he became the first North American producer ever to film in The Peoples Republic of China. That film, The 700 Million, is considered a documentary classic.

In 1989 the international co-production television series The Struggle for Democracy, which he created and hosted, was the first documentary series ever to appear simultaneously in French and English on the CBC's two main television networks with the same host. This series has been seen in more than 30 countries around the world, including the emerging free countries of Eastern Europe.

As host and interviewer his programs have included The Watson Report, The Canadian Establishment, Flight the Passionate Affair, Lawyers, Live from Lincoln Center, The Fifty First State (On PBS Channel 13, New York), and hosting of the entire CBS Cable Network in 1981 and 1982.

His business activities have included executive positions in several broadcasting and film undertakings in Ottawa and Toronto since 1968. In 1989 he was named the first independent Chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, from which post he stepped down in June 1994. He is currently commissioning editor for History Television.

He has received honorary doctorates in letters and laws, and a number of national and international television and documentary awards. He was named an Officer of The Order of Canada in 1981.