By Alexander Wooley

Trina McQueen, BJ/64 (Photo by Mike Pinder)

Trina McQueen, BJ/64, has always been a little ahead of the curve. The executive vice-president of CTV Inc. and the winner of the 1999 A.D. Dunton Alumni Award was the first woman news reporter at CFTO television in Toronto. "After I left they didn't hire another woman for eight years. I must have made an impression," she says with a smile. She was the first female host of W-5, the popular investigative news program. McQueen then spent 25 years at the CBC, oversaw the launch of CBC Newsworld onto the airwaves and then did the same for the popular Discovery Channel on cable.

As one of McQueen's nominators for the Dunton award, fellow broadcaster Jane Gilbert, BJ/80, said, "She is a strong and innovative leader who has been at the forefront of many changes in Canada's broadcasting industry."

As the recently-appointed executive vice-president of CTV, McQueen is responsible for all programing and sales at the private broadcaster as well as its specialty channels. At the time of this interview, just six months into her position, CTV was in the midst of buying Netstar and awaiting CRTC approval on the sale. Unflappable, McQueen denied her new job, with its myriad responsibilities, was a three-ring circus. "It's an eight-ring circus," she says, allowing another smile.

It's no coincidence that McQueen, who also chairs the Banff Television Festival, has been the vanguard of advances in the profession. Modestly omitting her own hand from some of those sea changes, she pen-sketches one or two lines from each of her past lives: Of Newsworld, where she oversaw its launch as vice-president of television news and current affairs: "It has become what we all hoped it would be: authoritative, good-looking, diverse, has character." Of the Discovery Channel, which she helped launch in 1995: "Everything worked there. The Canadian programing has always been in the top rank, at least as popular as the foreign programing. @Discovery.ca is everything it should be, it's amazing television. Viewers and the advertising community love it and the scientific community respects its integrity. One of the things we managed to do with @Discovery.ca was to show that science is cool," McQueen says.

Canada clearly infuses her every approach to journalism. "My job has been to tell Canadian stories, Canadian drama. We're much more globally oriented than Americans. We're explorers, traders. I think there will always be a need for the Canadian viewpoint."

In accepting Carleton's A.D. Dunton Alumni Award -- given annually in recognition of outstanding achievement or contribution in any field of endeavour - -- McQueen said she was especially honoured to receive an award named after A. Davidson Dunton. Even as a student, McQueen was well aware of Dunton's legendary presence. The former Carleton president was widely known as an outstanding Canadian journalist, CBC head, and co-chairman of the bilingualism and biculturalism commission.

"I have great respect and admiration for Dunton. He was Carleton's president through the revolutionary 1960s, but even through those times he held your respect and you knew you couldn't trifle with him."

As a reporter, the most memorable news event McQueen says she covered was 'Trudeaumania' at the 1968 convention. At the same time, riots were underway throughout the U.S., the result of the Martin Luther King assassination. "The atmosphere was electric," she recalls.

McQueen sees changes in the journalism profession today as challenges to embrace. "Everything is done faster now, thanks in large part to technology," she says. "Reporters, producers and editors have less time for reflection and context." But she adds, "Content-wise, we're at liberty to report much more than we were then."