CBC has announced that Colleen Jones will retire at the end of the month after nearly four decades with the public broadcaster.
Jones, who already had made history in 1982 as the youngest skip to ever win the Canadian Women’s Curling Championship, joined Don Wittman and Don Duguid on CBC Sports curling broadcasts a few years later.
She joined CBC Newsworld, starting in 1993, as the early morning weather presenter and sports reporter, in addition to covering 11 Olympic Games for the public broadcaster and serving as a curling commentator for NBC during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Since 2012, she’s been a reporter with CBC Nova Scotia, carving out a niche as a local storyteller, including two stints biking around the province to tell stories about ordinary Nova Scotians from “the road less travelled.”
“Colleen impresses everyone she meets,” wrote Ian Brimacombe, Managing Editor, CBC News, Current Affairs and Local, CBC Nova Scotia, in an announcement Thursday. “The assignment producers, hosts and videographers who’ve worked with her know her to be a journalistic force of nature…Colleen’s storytelling is marked by deep, honest curiosity about so-called ‘everyday’ Canadians who do extraordinary things. She will bike, swim, paddle, run or walk with anyone, anywhere to bring out the best in their stories – often to the great challenge of the videographers trying to keep up with her. Through it all she says, she’s had one philosophy: ‘As one person in Tatamagouche told me…you bring back yard stories to the front yard for all of us to see.'”
Jones was named to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2016, and appointed to the Order of Canada in 2022. She penned autobiography “Throwing Rocks at Houses: My Life in and Out of Curling” after contracting bacterial meningitis in late 2010 and later undergoing brain surgery.
Her last day with the public broadcaster is April 30.
Subscribe Now – Free!
Broadcast Dialogue has been required reading in the Canadian broadcast media for 30 years. When you subscribe, you join a community of connected professionals from media and broadcast related sectors from across the country.
The Weekly Briefing from Broadcast Dialogue is delivered exclusively to subscribers by email every Thursday. It’s your link to critical industry news, timely people moves, and excellent career advancement opportunities.
Let’s get started right now.