Ernest Tucker

Ernest Tucker was a Bermudian-born Canadian author, educator, and former journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Tucker is considered to be the first Black journalist at CBC.

Early life and education Ernest Scott Tucker was born in Warwick, Bermuda, in 1931.

He was the son of Benjamin Tucker and Eleanor Anderson, one of seven siblings, and named for his grandfather Ernest Scott Tucker, a founding member of the Bermuda Union of Teachers in 1919. His aunts Elmira Tucker Hunt (wife of Alma Hunt), May Johnston, and cousin Esther DeShields Pitt taught him at Spring Hill School in Warwick. His earliest employment was at Belmont Manor Hotel, working as a waiter under his father, the maître d'hôtel.

Tucker attended The Berkeley Institute in Pembroke Parish, Bermuda, until he was 14. He moved to Canada at 14 in the 1950s, following his older brother George, who earned a teaching scholarship in Toronto. He completed high school in Toronto and in 1954 became the first Black graduate of the journalism program at Ryerson Institute of Technology (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Among his assignments were the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1970 Front de libération du Québec kidnapping of James Cross. Tucker had also begun a master's degree at Sir George Williams College (later Concordia University), finishing it in 1975.

He was among 12 Ryerson journalism alumni honored in 2013, the school's diamond anniversary year, for "Making A Mark" in their careers.

In 2020, Ernest Tucker was posthumously inducted into the CBC News Hall of Fame. He is the seventh inductee.