Lifetime Achievement Award

About the Lifetime Achievement Award

The annual Canadian Journalism Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a Canadian who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution over multiple decades to journalism. Individuals who have worked in any type of media (print, broadcast, digital) and in any journalism category (news, business, politics, sports, editorial cartoons, arts, etc.) are eligible for consideration. The recipient will have consistently demonstrated, throughout his/her career, a commitment to the highest journalistic standards and ideals. Their work and contribution to the field and society should serve as a model that inspires excellence in others.

Criteria for the Lifetime Achievement Award:

Among the items to be considered are:

  • Body of journalistic work during a multi-decade career
  • Contribution to their community and broader society through outstanding journalism
  • Recognition and respect from peers and audiences

**Note: Lifetime Achievement cannot be awarded posthumously. 

Judging Methodology
The judging panel is comprised of four to eight jurors (with bilingual representatives), who review all submitted entries through an online portal, rank the entries and then attend a face-to-face meeting or participate via conference call with their rankings to agree upon the recipient of the award. See this year’s jury.

The recipient will be recognized at the CJF Awards ceremony in June 2024.

2023 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: Haroon Siddiqui

The Canadian Journalism Foundation’s (CJF) Lifetime Achievement Award this year goes to Haroon Siddiqui in recognition of his decades-long groundbreaking career in Canadian journalism and his commitment to diversity, journalistic integrity and social justice.

“Haroon Siddiqui is a trailblazer of astonishing vision and compassionate decency. Nuanced and brilliant, he is unique in the pantheon of great Canadian journalists,” says The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, the 26th governor general of Canada, and a member of the CJF’s Lifetime Achievement Award Jury.

Throughout his 50-year career in Manitoba and Ontario, Siddiqui has reported or supervised coverage of Canadian news, as well as reporting from 50 countries. He has covered events of global importance including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution and the post-9/11 War on Terrorism. His career has been shaped by a commitment to diversity and equality of opportunity in newsrooms and in society at large, to championing free speech balanced with freedom from hate and to confronting racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

“I am delighted that our Lifetime award jury unanimously selected Haroon for this honour,” says CJF board chair Kathy English. “Decades before the long-overdue, current racial reckoning in journalism, Haroon pioneered equal dignity in media portrayals of all groups and championed the imperative for diverse, inclusive newsrooms.

“His unwavering commitment within journalism and beyond to this most basic principle of fairness remains an inspiration to a generation of Canadian journalists and their readers.”

Siddiqui received the Order of Canada in 2001 and the Order of Ontario in 2000. In addition to these accolades, Siddiqui holds an honorary doctorate from York University and has received multiple awards including the National Press Club’s UNESCO Award and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association award for “explaining and re-explaining diversity and equality, for denouncing racism and stupidity, for challenging Islamophobia, for doing so wittingly and irreverently, and with un-shattered confidence and hope in democracy.”

Editorial Page Editor Emeritus and former columnist at the Toronto Star, Siddiqui is a Senior Fellow at Massey College. His memoir, My Name is Not Harry, is due in the fall, from Dundurn Press.

Past Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award

2022 Michèle Ouimet
2021 Thaioronióhte Dan David
2020 Kim Bolan
2019 John Honderich
2018 Peter Mansbridge
2017 Jean Pelletier
2016 Lloyd Robertson
2015 Michel Auger
2014 Peter Bregg
2013 Michael Maclear
2012 Jack Sigvaldason
2011 Patrick Brown
2010 Lise Bissonnette
2009 
Joe Schlesinger
2008 Sally Armstrong
2007 Norman Webster
2006 Knowlton Nash
2005 Pierre Berton (posthumous)
2004 June Callwood
2003 Doris Anderson
2002 Trina McQueen
2001 Doug Creighton
2000 Mark Starowicz
1999 Bernard Derome
1998 Peter C. Newman
1997 Peter Gzowski
1996 Robert Fulford