Gary William Bannerman (May 23, 1947 – July 11, 2011) was a broadcaster, writer and corporate communications consultant based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the author of several books. From 1973 until 1988 on Western Canada's largest radio station, CKNW, he hosted the dominant public affairs radio program in British Columbia, a three-hour network forum each weekday consisting of news, investigative reporting, celebrity interviews and open-line audience participation. His books focused on history, passenger shipping and, most recently, wasteful spending in the health care industry. In 1989, he and his wife Patricia, through their holding company Bannerline Enterprises Ltd., established Bannerline Corporate Communications, a consulting firm, advising what would become a long list of corporations both small and large. Although he continued to broadcast part-time for CKNW and other radio stations through most of the 1990s, the consulting and writing endeavours had become so time-consuming that media work was restricted to rare guest appearances. Bannerman died July 11, 2011, from liver complications.
Biography and personal life
Bannerman was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the eldest child of William MacDonald Bannerman and Norma Agnes (Scobie) Bannerman. His father's ancestry dated back to the first Scots settlers of Nova Scotia, immigrants from northernmost Sutherland who landed in Pictou County in 1773 aboard The Hector. His maternal Scobie grandparents emigrated to Canada from Paisley, Scotland, settling in Sydney in 1923. His father "Bill" was a salesman who spent most of his career with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, for many years the company's regional manager for Atlantic Canada, based in Moncton, NB. Bannerman was followed in the family by brother Ross and sisters Wendy and Karen. As his father's career evolved, promotions moved the family from Sydney to Moncton; then to Halifax, NS, and finally back to Moncton to stay.
Education and early career
Bannerman graduated with honours from Moncton High School in 1965. He was accepted into the Canadian Army's Regular Officer Training Plan (ROTP) and attended Le College Militaire Royale du Saint-Jean, near Montreal (now defunct), the only bilingual college of Canada's three military universities, transferring the next year with ROTP to the University of New Brunswick. A serious car accident in the state of Maine early in 1967 led to weeks of hospitalization, making it impossible-to-complete his university year.
During the summer of 1966, between the two universities, he had obtained a job in Wabush, Newfoundland and Labrador through family connections, and ended up as an engineer's assistant monitoring asphalt paving contracts. After full recovery from the car accident injuries a year later, this qualified him for a similar position with the New Brunswick Department of Highways, assigned to inspect and monitor the work of contractors on a major project in southwestern New Brunswick. It was during this period that he contemplated the future. He became certain that engineering would not be his career although university was still in the plans.
One morning, at a cafe in St. George, New Brunswick, he was reading the Saint John Telegraph-Journal and spotted an advertisement that the newspaper was seeking to hire a junior reporter, with or without experience. Bannerman had always been a prolific writer: letters, essays, school newspapers, club newsletters and wherever a need presented itself; and he had always had a keen interest in government, politics and news of any description. Spontaneously, he wrote an application for the job and, after a subsequent interview, he began work at the paper. Newspapering became a passion so great that the prospect of doing anything else would soon seem absurd.
Patricia and marriage
Bannerman's newspaper work moved him to Vancouver in September 1970. Also that month, arriving from England to reside just a few blocks away from Bannerman's apartment was Patricia Walrond, an artist, photographer, professional secretary and world traveller. Her previous adventures had led to lengthy stays and employment in Germany, Sicily, Greece, Israel and Australia. This time she had traveled to join friends who had painted an exciting portrait of the west coast of Canada. She gained employment in Vancouver as secretary of a respected arts organization Jeunesses Musicales, which organized concert tours of performers across Canada and Patricia would subsequently become secretary to the Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Bannerman and Patricia met early in 1971. They were married in September of that year and considered Patricia's family base in London (Wimbledon) as important in their lives as Canada. The daughter of William Eric Walrond, a Lloyd's of London underwriter and broker, and Rosemary (Larcom), Patricia would soon add a creative dimension to a succession of Bannerman's writing and business pursuits. They continued to build the business together and travel the world whenever opportunities presented themselves. They did not have any children.
The newspaper years Under the mentorship of Telegraph-Journal managing editor Fred Hazel, Bannerman's development as a reporter was meteoric. Within months he had traversed the usual apprenticeship through obituaries, menial rewrites, the cop shop, the courts, City Hall and canvassing the provincial hinterlands nightly by telephone for any useful items scavenged by contacts and stringers. A fortuitous vacancy emerged in the provincial capital, Fredericton, and Bannerman was posted there as a one-man bureau responsible for coverage of government and all happenings in the capital city. Only when the Legislature was in session or when major stories erupted would he get more senior help from the Saint John newsroom. Within a year of his posting he was not only writing for the Telegraph-Journal, he became an Atlantic Provinces stringer for Time Canada, the Globe & Mail (Toronto), the Toronto Star, the Star Weekly, Maclean's magazine, The Montreal Star and, through a Toronto agency, hundreds of trade and business publications. His output of stories was so prolific that he would, on occasion, overwhelm the CN-CP Telecommunications office in Fredericton. The solution was the installation by CN-CP of his own teletype machine in the bedroom/office of his apartment. After that, Bannerman would type his stories directly on the teletype keyboard creating tape that would later be fed through the machine over the phone lines to his editors in Saint John and across Canada.
This New Brunswick chapter was remarkable in other ways. He leveraged his support for the military into outstanding stories from the army at CFB Gagetown and flights with the air force to the Canadian Arctic, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean; usually rough no-frills passage, brief stops (if any) - the RCAF CP-107 Argus could remain aloft over the Arctic for up to 30 hours per flight - and down time almost exclusively in military messes, but great adventures for a young reporter. It was during this Fredericton period that Bannerman became schooled in political strategy, developing friendships with a notable Liberal backroom strategist Wendell Fulton and Conservative thinkers such as the national guru Dalton K. Camp and Richard B. Hatfield. Hatfield, who became a close personal friend for the rest of his life, became the longest serving Premier in New Brunswick history (1970–1987).
In addition to the Telegraph-Journal'''s Hazel, Bannerman worked for and learned from some of the most remarkable people in Canadian journalism: John Scott of Time Canada, Richard L. Duncan of Time International (eventually to become managing editor of Time Inc.); Clark Davey, then managing editor of the Globe & Mail; Courtenay Tower of Maclean's; and, Charles Lynch, chief of Southam News, then in charge of bureaus around the world.
By 1970, Bannerman was receiving offers to work at major urban dailies outside of the Maritime provinces, but the decision to leave was difficult. In major markets with scores of talented and established reporters available, the freelance sideline would be nowhere near so lucrative, nor would his work be exclusively the best of the prime assignments. Eventually, however, it became apparent that career development required that big step. He first approached Lynch and the Southam News boss - by then a national icon - told Bannerman to take his pick of any Southam newspaper coast to coast and he would endeavour to get him placed. When he advised Lynch that the Vancouver Province would be preferred (an opportunity to learn about the west coast) Bannerman insisted upon just one prerequisite from any new employer: the role must be full-time political reporting, a beat position.The Province recruited him to cover Vancouver City Hall and also the provincial legislature, as the junior of two reporters when the Legislature was in session in the BC capital of Victoria. Both assignments were fortuitous. In 1970, reclaiming the cities was "in" and Bannerman soon evolved the City Hall beat into a column on Urban Affairs, also writing about developments nationally and internationally. The newspaper gave him a budget to travel and he visited the mayors of Toronto, Montreal (the charismatic Jean Drapeau) and the urban affairs minister in Ottawa. In Victoria, he would soon become close to perhaps the greatest figure in British Columbia history, Premier W.A.C. Bennett. When Bannerman privately introduced himself to the legendary Bennett, a NB native himself, and advised that his brother Russell Bennett had been one of his teachers in Moncton High School, Bennett somewhat adopted the new arrival. Another mentorship began and intensified after Bennett was defeated in the 1972 election. Bannerman would later work with W.A.C. Bennett and write his last formal paper on any topic, a brief to a Royal Commission studying BC Rail, which was published in full in The Vancouver Sun, spanning two full pages.
Another aspect of the work at The Province, nurtured and supported by his editors, was investigative reporting, which had become somewhat of a specialty. Several exposés of frauds and misbehaviour had attracted widespread attention. This is the work that piqued the interest of CKNW Radio and led to another intriguing job offer.
Broadcasting Radio icon Jack Webster left CKNW Radio in 1972, departing amid an acrimonious contract dispute and signing with a rival radio station. A talk radio host and reporter, who spoke with a distinctive Glaswegian Scots brogue, he was a media figure on the west coast and a national Canadian celebrity.
His departure was a crisis for the CKNW broadcasting battleship, creating a serious challenge to the station's preeminence. Program director Hal Davis, who had likely developed more genuine stars than anyone in the national industry, faced a real challenge. A decision was made to replace Webster - temporarily - with a team of people to be known as "The Investigators". The hope of some at the station was that if a team could succeed, no one personality would be able to hold the station to ransom but Davis, privately, knew that the odds would be better if, within the team, they also developed a personality for the future. The bigger problem was the title "Investigators", with promotions implying a daily menu of non-stop exposés. Davis knew that major investigations can each take months and also a more disturbing fact: the skill set of a radio news reporter requires quick thinking, speed, the ability to grasp the essence of a story from complicated information and to then move on. Investigations require plodding deliberation, study, frustration, the patient development of sources, legal counselling and frequent dead end streets. Davis had hired Jack Webster from The Vancouver Sun many years before, and attributed much of Jack's success to his newspaper training.