Veteran newsman Keith Bradbury succumbs to Lou Gehrig's disease

2007-04-27 22:02:00






VANCOUVER (CP) - Keith Bradbury, a former lawyer and then longtime newsman at BCTV, died Friday morning at his home on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver.

He was considered one of the mainstays at BCTV, which is now known as Global TV, and was one of the reasons the station grew from third place in B.C. to one of the most watched stations in the country.

In a report aired Friday, Global TV reviewed his career and aired tributes from many of the people who worked with him.

He earned a bachelor's degree at the University of B.C. and then went to study law. He practised law for a time before the journalism bug caught him.

"Keith was responsible, virtually every day for determining the nature and direction of most of the editorial flow," former BCTV news boss Cameron Bell said in the Global TV report.

In his student days, he was once editor of the UBC newspaper, The Ubyssey, which was chosen the best student newsaper in Canada that year.

He and Bell believed in letting pictures tell the story and together they and their reporters broke many stories over the years.

He died of ALS - Lou Gehrig's disease.

He was named a lifetime achievement award winner in 2004 by the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada.

In 1999, Bradbury and former BCTV News boss Cameron Bell were jointly awarded the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jack Webster Foundation.