Canadian journalist Stanley Burke dead at 93

[DanNospamSay]

Canadian journalist Stanley Burke dead at 93
Burke anchored CBC national TV newscast from 1966-69, wrote children's books satirizing Canadian politics
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/stanley-burke-dead-1.3605730

By Zulekha Nathoo, CBC News Posted: May 29, 2016 2:15 PM ET Last Updated: May 29, 2016 3:48 PM ET
[ PHOTO Veteran Canadian journalist Stanley Burke died at age 93. (CBC)

Canadian journalist Stanley Burke dead at 93 5:32
Media placeholder
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-journalist-stanley-burke-dead-at-93-1.3605835

Related Stories

'One of journalism's greatest treasures': 60 Minutes journalist Morley Safer dead at 84
George McLean, longtime host of The National, dies in Toronto
Knowlton Nash, longtime anchor of CBC's The National, dead at 86
Peter Mansbridge...

Canadian television journalist and author Stanley Burke died Saturday at Kingston General Hospital. He was 93.

CBC DIGITAL ARCHIVES: CBC reporter Stanley Burke reports from Berlin just after barricades go up between East and West [ August 20 1961, 14 min.
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2585418753

The veteran newscaster anchored CBC's The National News from 1966-1969 before it was re-branded as The National.
Stanley Burke

Burke anchored CBC's The National News from 1966-69.

Burke, who also worked as a foreign correspondent in many places including France, became particularly passionate covering stories about the Biafran civil war in the late 1960s, a battle in Nigeria to fight the secession of Biafra as an independent state.

His outspokenness and criticism over the issue led to his resignation from CBC. He went on to launch a public campaign to bring a peaceful resolution to the fighting which had also provoked widespread death from famine and disease.

"He was so personally involved and wanted Canadians to understand that it's a whole other world out there that we should care about," said Peter Mansbridge, CBC's chief correspondent and host of The National.

"That's why you see Canadians so involved when there's an emergency and a natural disaster in the world. Some people would date it back to those days."

Mansbridge was a young reporter when he met Burke and kept in touch with him over the years, describing Burke as "very sharp and very caring about journalism."

"I used to hear from him quite often over the last 10, 15 years," said Mansbridge. "He'd drop a line from his home in the Thousand Islands region of Ontario, with his comments on what we were doing on the newscast and more importantly, what we weren't doing."

After retiring, Burke wrote several children's books that satirized Canadian politics of the 1970s, including Frog Fables & Beaver Tales, a mythical tale about a northern swamp, and The Day of the Glorious Revolution, its sequel. The illustrations by editorial cartoonist Roy Peterson feature animal caricatures of figures such as Lester B. Pearson, Richard Nixon, René Lévesque and Pierre Trudeau.

A 2015 Father's Day blog post written by his daughter Holly Burke, a Vancouver-based musician, celebrated Burke while he was alive as a source of inspiration for their family.
[ Stanley Burke photo posted by daughter Holly in May 2015 for Father's Day. (stanleyburke.blogspot.ca) ]

"Many people join with me here to thank you for your many valuable contributions to this world of ours; your light, your love and your prevailing good humour through many trials not the least. We love you. We cherish you and everything 'Stanley Burke.'"

The funeral and memorial service will take place on Amherst Island near Kingston later this week.

[DanNospamSay]

[ PHOTO After a career in newspapers, Stanley Burke, seen around 1967, moved to television reporting and later landed the job as news anchor on CBC's The National News. He had a natural broadcast voice and distinct delivery. (The Globe and Mail) ]

CBC newscaster Stanley Burke took up cause of peace
FRED LANGAN
KINGSTON, Ont. -- Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Sunday, May 29, 2016 3:48PM EDT
Last updated Monday, May 30, 2016 7:13PM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/former-anchor-of-cbcs-the-national-dies/article30198666/

Stanley Burke, who died on Saturday of a heart attack at the age of 93, was the first non-announcer to read the CBC's nightly television newscast. On the night he started, Dec. 11, 1966, the name of the broadcast was changed to The National News. He was a newscaster who had been a reporter and a fearless war correspondent who had been to war.

But Mr. Burke left his post as newscaster in 1969 to take up the cause of peace, in his case the vicious civil war in the Biafran region of Nigeria, and remained a crusader for peace for the rest of his long life.

Mr. Burke was brought home from Paris, where he was a foreign correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., to take over the job as main reader of the CBC's nightly news from Earl Cameron, an announcer. The man who fought to put him in the job was Bill Cunningham, another foreign correspondent who at the time was executive producer of CBC TV news.

"There was a huge fight over who could read the television news. The announcers were not allowed to write copy and the reporters were not allowed to read it. Stan's importance is that he was the first reporter to read the news," Mr. Cunningham recalled.

TV news was in its adolescence at the time, but still relied on reporting what the newspapers and wire services said. The idea was to have reporters initiate stories, and to make the news more immediate by having reporters read it.

"My point was that the person who delivers the news is in effect the final editor. He can change the meaning of the words by the inflection of his voice or a facial expression. Stanley was a journalist with experience in the field and he was perfect for the job," Mr. Cunningham recalled.

There were other newsmen who were shortlisted for the job, including NORMAN DEPOE, MICHAEL MACLEAR AND KNOWLTON NASH (who eventually landed the post in 1978). Mr. Burke was named to read the news from Sunday to Thursday; LLOYD ROBERTSON was appointed as the reader for Friday and Saturday.

Critics liked the new reader. "Burke's image, while sufficiently dignified, is that of a newsman, not some stern, omniscient postmaster," wrote The Globe's television critic Dennis Braithwaite. "Burke's National News (with Lloyd Robertson providing a casual change of pace on Friday and Saturday nights) ranks as the most effective CBC telecast on the air today. Authoritative without being rigid ... it has given the corporation a bright new image it sorely needed."

Stanley Burke was born in Vancouver on Feb. 8, 1923. His father, also Stanley, was a stockbroker with Pemberton Securities. After high school in Vancouver, young Stanley attended the University of British Columbia, then joined the navy in 1943, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Cornelius, into the Second World War. Both brothers commanded motor gun boats, high-speed patrol boats used to attack submarines and enemy shipping. Mr. Burke was stationed in Bermuda, Newfoundland and the English Channel.

After the war, he led an unconventional life and took a variety of jobs. He studied agriculture at UBC with the ambition of becoming a farmer-writer. As part of his agriculture experience he worked as a deck hand on a ship carrying 800 head of cattle to China as part of a United Nations program to feed war refugees. He was in Shanghai in 1947 and, as a tease to his future as a foreign correspondent, wrote about seeing Communist demonstrators there, and noting with surprise that Western businessmen did not seem worried. The Communists took over in 1949.

Back in Canada he worked for the Edmonton Bulletin. His biggest scoop was applying for and receiving driver's licences for a dog, a goat and a duck (the province reformed its licensing law after that embarrassment).

When the Bulletin folded, he decided to try his luck in the nearby Leduc oil field. He landed a well-paying job as pipe racker, but he didn't last long.

"This man had to heave 90-foot lengths of pipe around and I found the pipe racker was getting racked more often than the pipe. To put it mildly I tired of the oil business," Mr. Burke told an interviewer in the 1960s.

He also tried operating a turkey farm in the Fraser Valley with 2,200 birds, but his classes at UBC did not prepare him to deal with the delicate health of turkeys, and many of them died.

He soon found his true métier: working in newspapers. "He was above the usual hack you sat beside at the Vancouver Sun. You could see that he was destined for better things," journalist Allan Fotheringham recalled.

Mr. Burke was soon the parliamentary correspondent for the Vancouver Sun. Based in Ottawa, he travelled to the Arctic six times in that role, and won a UN journalism competition that led to a month-long stay at the United Nations.

He also began to do some freelance broadcast work. "He had to stand outside the House of Commons and, in a minute and a half, describe what had happened that day. Blair Fraser was brilliant at it, Stanley less so," said Peter Trueman, his friend of 50 years.

In 1958, the CBC named Mr. Burke its correspondent at the UN in New York, replacing Charles Lynch. "I gradually began to realize I was getting far more fun out of broadcasting than newspapering and decided to switch when the chance came," Mr. Burke said at the time.

Working at the UN meant he travelled the world, and was in Berlin in 1961 when the wall went up between East and West. In 1962, he was named the CBC's Paris correspondent, a job that meant covering not only France, but also conflicts in places such as Cyprus and Nigeria.

He was fearless in the field. Many years later his local newspaper, the Amherst Island Beacon in Kingston, Ont., recounted an incident during Algeria's war for independence, where Mr. Burke and his camera crew had just witnessed the massacre of 79 unarmed civilians. One of the killers stuck a gun in Mr. Burke's ribs demanding the film, but he refused and somehow survived.

Mr. Burke had a natural broadcast voice and a distinct delivery. He was good on radio but a perfect fit for television. David Halton, who replaced him as the CBC's man in Paris, said Mr. Burke was made for the anchor role: "He was a man of great sophistication with craggy good looks. You knew he had done his time."

The end of his time in the newscaster's chair came in 1969. Mr. Burke became transfixed by the Biafran war, a tragedy much like the war in Syria today. He visited Nigeria and implored Canada and other governments to do something about the conflict.

"The CBC gave Stanley an ultimatum. It was either Biafra or read the National News. Stanley, to his credit, gave up his salary of $30,000 a year, more than the president of the CBC, to remain true to his own conscience," Mr. Trueman said.

After leaving the CBC, Mr. Burke lived first in British Columbia, where he was owner and publisher of the Nanaimo Times. He later moved to Amherst Island near Kingston. A strong environmentalist (he was a co-founder of an anti-pollution group that later merged with Pollution Probe) he was against the growth of wind turbines where the St. Lawrence River joins Lake Ontario near his beloved island.

"Stanley and his wife Peggi were in the forefront in the fight against wind turbines here. It was one of his many crusades," said his neighbour, Harold Reddekopp. So far there are no wind turbines on Amherst Island, unlike nearby Wolfe Island.

Mr. Burke leaves his wife, Peggi Coulter-Burke, his children Brian, Kerry, Holly and Randy Burke; step-children Diana Coulter, Carolyn Coulter and Sheila MacNicol; 13 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren; and his former wife Daphne Burke.

Along with his various causes, Mr. Burke also wrote children's books satirizing Canadian politics of the 1970s, including Frog Fables & Beaver Tales, The Day of the Glorious Revolution and Swamp Song.

[DanNospamSay]

Tuesday May 31, 2016
BURKE, Stanley Louis
Death Notice in Globe and Mail

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to Stanley Louis Burke who passed away May 28, 2016, at age 93, after living an extraordinary and happy life. An original thinker with a passion for adventure, Stan was a genuine newsman who always sought the truth behind a story. Loving and kind, he will be greatly missed by his family: wife, Peggie Coulter Burke of Amherst Island, Ontario; his children, Brian, Kerry, Holly and Randy Burke of Vancouver, British Columbia; stepchildren, Diana Coulter, Carolyn Coulter and Sheila MacNicol; as well as 13 grandchildren, 7 great-grandchildren and his former wife, Daphne Burke.

Born in Vancouver, Stan was a proud graduate of the Little Flower Academy, St. George's School and the University of British Columbia.

During the Second World War, at age 21, he was one of the youngest Canadian naval captains. Later, he became a CBC newsman, foreign correspondent and anchor of The National News.
Throughout his career, he contributed to many important international stories such as the construction of the Berlin Wall, meetings at the United Nations with Nikita Khrushchev, former premier of the Soviet Union and Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India and the ground-breaking environmental documentary, The Air of Death.

He did relief work during the Biafra civil war and was on the original board of advisors for Pollution Probe. He authored a series of satirical fables, was owner and publisher of the Nanaimo Times, helped start the float house community on Granville Island and was always an eager partner in pranks with brother Cornelius, in businesses like Bogus Enterprises, 'dark and difficult deeds done, lips sealed, pigeons holed...'

In his latter years, he worked on a book inspired by Marshall McLuhan's theory of communications.

A Celebration of Life will be held on June 1st, on Amherst Island. As Stan always signed off: 'And that's the news.' Donations welcome to The Alzheimer Society or World Wildlife Fund.