Canadian journalist Knowlton Nash
passed away on May 24th of Parkinson’s Disease. He was 86. Nash’s funeral is scheduled to take place this afternoon in Toronto and is open to the public.
He is best known to Canadians as the anchor of The National, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nightly news broadcast. Nash served in that capacity from 1978 to 1988 before giving way to Peter Mansbridge in an effort to keep him from being lured to the U.S. after CBS made Mansbridge a job offer.
Before becoming a news anchor, Nash was both a print and broadcast journalist. He spent many years as the CBC’s Washington correspondent and covered Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The latter event would become a subject of one of Nash’s books
Kennedy and Diefenbaker: The Feud That Helped Topple a Government. Nash knew both men and there was no love lost between the liberal President and the conservative Prime Minister. Nash also wrote books about his times as a correspondent and his times with the CBC.
Nash had a very distinct voice. Here he is putting it to good use
at the helm of
The National on December 19, 1984. (Yes, that is Rich Little dancing with Jim Carrey at the beginning of the clip.)