Mansbridge Celebrates 20 Years at CBC's 'The National'

by Jarrett Martineau | May 2, 2008 at 12:10 pm | 147 views | add comment

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Remember the days when someone could be discovered by a national broadcast network while reading departure times at a small town airport? Neither do I.

But, fortunately for us all, CBC Television news anchor Peter Mansbridge experienced just such a serendipitous event in the mid 1960s and the rest is history.

He's been the face of CBC's nightly primetime newscast, The National, ever since.

Peter Mansbridge marked 20 years as the anchor for CBC Television's flagship nightly newscast The National on Thursday night.
To celebrate, a guest on the weekly At Issue politics panel surprised Mansbridge by interrupting him at the end of the segment and playing a clip of an old newscast

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Peter Mansbridge, 59, became the anchor for the National on May 1, 1988. (CBC)

"Wait, wait, wait, there's another story that we haven't talked about," Allan Gregg of Harris/Decima said.

Mansbridge coolly replied, "Well, we're out of time."

Gregg then cued a clip of an old newscast showing a younger Mansbridge.

"On behalf of everyone including the millions of viewers that invite you into their living rooms every night, congratulations for 20 years being in the chair," said Gregg.

Mansbridge, 59, was born in London, England, but moved to Ottawa at a young age. He later served in the Canadian Navy in the mid-1960s.

His career with the CBC began by chance when someone from the corporation overheard him on the PA system at an airport in the northern Manitoba town of Churchill, where he was working for the airline Transair, and asked him to come work at the local radio station. He was 19 at the time.

"When I go through airports now and I'm listening to them calling flights, I always think this could be the next big anchor of the National," joked Don Martin of the Calgary Herald, another panelist.