Article

Ernest Leslie Bushnell

Published Online September 3, 2008

Last Edited March 7, 2014

Ernest Leslie Bushnell, pioneer broadcast executive (b near Lindsay, Ont 19 Nov 1900; d at Ottawa 30 Apr 1987). He trained as a singer at the Toronto Conservatory but turned to announcing and then station management.

Ernest Leslie Bushnell

Ernest Leslie Bushnell, pioneer broadcast executive (b near Lindsay, Ont 19 Nov 1900; d at Ottawa 30 Apr 1987). He trained as a singer at the Toronto Conservatory but turned to announcing and then station management. He managed CFRB and CKCN in Toronto 1929-33, then started Canada's first advertising agency for radio. With the CBC 1945-58, he became asst general manager 1953 and retired as a vice-president.

He was acting president while Joseph-Alphonse OUIMET was absent owing to illness and had to deal with the Montréal producers' strike in 1958. His difficulties with a parliamentary committee after cancellation and reinstatement of "Preview Commentary" after political pressure led to his being pensioned off. In 1960 he founded, in partnership with Stuart Griffiths, CJOH-TV in Ottawa, the second station of the CTV network. In 1983 he was honorary chairman of Bushnell Communications Ltd.