Linden Joseph MacIntyre

Cape Breton University is honoured to celebrate the distinguished career and accomplishments of Linden Joseph MacIntyre, an award winning Cape Breton journalist, broadcaster and novelist, who has had a stellar career and continues to reach new milestones.

Mr. MacIntyre was born in Newfoundland and grew up in Port Hastings, NS. He was one of three children of parents Dan Rory MacIntyre and Alice Donohue. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. FX University. He also studied at Saint Mary’s University and the University of King’s College in Halifax, NS.

The newspaper industry is where Mr. MacIntyre began his career as a journalist, working for the HalifaxHerald as a parliamentary reporter in Ottawa from 1964 to 1967. He continued in a similar role with theFinancial Times of Canada from 1967 to 1970. In late 1969, he moved back to Cape Breton, where for six years he worked as a correspondent for the Chronicle Herald.

In 1976, Mr. MacIntyre moved to television and joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Halifax, where for three years he hosted a regional public affairs show called The MacIntyre File. It was while working with this program that he launched a successful legal challenge before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia over affidavits and documents relating to search warrants. Later heard before the Supreme Court of Canada, the successful suit was a landmark case, which set a precedent in support of public and media access to information in Canada.

In 1980, Mr. MacIntyre moved to Toronto, where he still resides, to work as a producer and journalist on CBC’s news program, The Journal. This appointment took him around the world preparing documentary reports on international affairs. He held various jobs at the CBC throughout the eighties and in 1990, was appointed co-host of the weekly newsmagazine, the fifth estate, with which he is still involved. He is also a frequent guest host of The Current on CBC Radio One.

Beyond his journalistic work, Mr. MacIntyre is an accomplished and award winning author. He has written The Long Stretch, The Bishop’s Man, for which he won the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Who Killed Ty Conn (with Theresa Burke) and Causeway: A Passage from Innocence. He has won nine Gemini Awards, an International Emmy and numerous other awards for writing and journalistic excellence.

Through all of this, Mr. MacIntyre has remained connected to his Cape Breton roots. In particular, he is a great friend and proponent of Cape Breton University (CBU). In 2008, he emceed a special fundraising event held in Toronto to support CBU’s Centre for Sustainability in Energy and the Environment. In April of this year, Mr. MacIntyre was on campus and read excerpts from his book, The Bishop’s Man, at an event to announce significant plans to enhance the CBU Library.

Mr. MacIntyre has five children and in 2000, he married Carol Off. He and Carol currently reside in Toronto.

Cape Breton University conferred the degree Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on a Cape Breton man who takes his talent to the world through his literary and journalistic work and who never forgets his roots throughout the process, Linden Joseph MacIntyre.

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