Year Born:
1943
Year of Induction:
2000
Member of CAB Hall of Fame
Kent, Peter (1943- )
After having tested careers in law, engineering and naval aviation, Peter Kent opted for broadcasting. In 1964, he broke into radio news in Vancouver with CJOR and CFUN. One year later, he made the jump to television news with Calgary’s CFCN-TV. In 1966, he was in Viet Nam as a reporter/cameraman.
Prior to join the Global news team in 1992 Peter had distinguished himself in assignments with CTV, CBC and NBC which, among others, involved the evacuation of Saigon, the apartheid in South Africa and the fall of the Berlin Wall. When with the CBC, he was the founding producer, instrumental in starting-up the current affairs magazine, The Journal. He spent three-year writing, reporting and anchoring, and his assignments took him to Uganda, Cambodia and back to Viet Nam. At Global, he became a driving force in the establishment of the fledgling network’s First National, Canada’s first early evening national newscast.
Peter Kent has many awards to his credit – among them, an “Actra” for his documentary on the fall of Cambodia; the Chicago Film Festival “Gold Hugo” for a news special on the 20th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War. When working for World Monitor in Boston in 1991, for a series on the inner city, he won the “Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award”.
While Peter’s journalistic accomplishments are many, his personal contribution to the industry is just as great. As a teacher, he set many young Canadians on the path to success in television, radio and other media.
In 2000, Peter Kent was inducted into the CAB Broadcast Hall of Fame.
In the Canadian federal election on October 14, 2008, Peter Kent ran for the Conservative Party of Canada and was elected as the member of parliament for the riding of Thornhill, Ontario. On October 30, 2008, Peter was named Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Americas), and in January 2011 he was made Minister of the Environment.
Kent was demoted from Cabinet in the summer of 2013, shortly after his 70th birthday, but when the Conservative Party was defeated in the October 19th 2015 election, Peter retained his seat in the House of Commons as an Opposition back bencher.
Written by Pip Wedge – November, 2008