Rick MacInnes-Rae

For more than a decade, listeners to CBC Radio News heard reports from many of the the world's hotspots from Rick MacInnes-Rae. From Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, northern Ireland, Iraq, Haiti, El Salvador and more, he brought a Canadian perspective to international conflicts with award-winning panache. Born in Montreal, he was raised in Vancouver and Toronto, and recruited by the CBC while still a student. Mr. MacInnes-Rae formally joined the corporation in 1977, after graduating with a journalism degree from Ryerson Polytechnical University. Transferring to Newfoundland, he spent three years there, discovering "some of the most wonderful stories and wonderful people you'd ever want to meet." After another year posted to New Brunswick, he departed for Toronto to run the local newsroom, subsequently joining National Radio News as Assignment Editor. In 1984, Mr. MacInnes-Rae became a national reporter which included frequent secondments to the Washington bureau. International assignments followed; the war in El Salvador, Noriega's fall in Panama, Hurricanes Gilbert and Hugo, the San Franciso earthquake, unrest in Haiti. In 1992, Mr. MacInnes-Rae won Best Investigative Report from the Canadian Association of Journalists, for a series on the growth of hate groups. He previously had shared two medals at the New York Radio Awards. A year later, Mr. MacInnes-Rae was appointed London Correspondent for CBC Radio News, with a beat stretching at times from Ireland to India. He was based in London from 1993 to 1999, but more than two solid years of it were spent out-of-country on assignment, much of it in zones of conflict. For his report reports from Lebanon, Iraq and Rwanda he has won three citations from the Prix Bayeux, an international competition in France recognising war correspondents who "excel under perilous conditions." Amnesty International also recognised his work in Africa with its radio award in 1997, and again in 1999 for coverage in Kosovo. In 2002 Mr. MacInnes-Rae was a finalist in CAJ's investigative awards for his Dispatches documentary Who Killed Father One-Speed September 5, 2001.