Elizabeth Gray

Elizabeth Gray ( Binks; April 26, 1937 – October 25, 2023) was a Canadian journalist and radio broadcaster who through much of her career worked as a host and documentary producer for CBC Radio.

Life and career Born in Toronto, her parents were George Binks, of Lachine, Québec, and Enid Watts Binks, of Letterston, Wales. She worked at the Toronto Telegram (and he at the Toronto Daily Star) for several months, and then they moved to London, England, where they lived for five years. From the UK, she wrote for a number of Canadian periodicals, including Maclean's, Star Weekly, Weekend, Chatelaine, and newspapers including the Telegram and the Montreal Star, under the byline Elizabeth Binks or Liz Binks. She contributed pieces to the CBC program, Countdown, and then continued to freelance for the broadcaster. In summer 1976, she hosted Olympic Magazine, CBC radio's coverage of the Montreal Olympic Games. In 1979 she presented an open-line show on the Ottawa commercial radio station, CKOY.

In April 1984, ACTRA presented Gray its annual honour for excellence in broadcast journalism, the Gordon Sinclair Award. The next year, in a controversial decision by the show's producers, at the end of the broadcast season her contract was not renewed. She presented her last As It Happens program on June 14, 1985, and was replaced that September by Dennis Trudeau. Toronto Star entertainment columnist Sid Adilman saw her as a "scapegoat" for problems with the broadcast, which had already endured staff changes, had been shortened from 90 minutes to one hour, and was slipping in the ratings. and, in 1988, the association's Norman DePoe Award for investigative journalism, for her feature, "In South Africa, I Would Be White."

After having been admitted to hospital following a heart attack in September 2023, she died from lung cancer on October 25, 2023, at the age of 86. She is survived by her children, Colin, Rachel, and Joshua Gray, all of Toronto.