Bob McKeown

Early Years

Bob McKeown’s father, journalist Robert McKeown, was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the editor of Weekend Magazine. When McKeown was five years old, he created his own newspaper and delivered it to neighbours. His lifelong love of football was instilled when his father took him to Ottawa Rough Riders games. He played for the Brookfield High School football team and for the varsity football team at Yale University, where he graduated in 1971.

CFL Career

In 1971, McKeown made the roster of his hometown Ottawa Rough Riders. He played centre in 70 CFL games over five seasons. In 1973, he and the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup. A year later, he was named to the CFL’s Eastern Conference All-Star team. He retired from professional football in 1975.

Journalism Career

While he was with the Rough Riders, McKeown also reported on sports, giving three radio broadcasts a week on Ottawa’s local CBC station. This led to more work with the CBC. From 1981 to 1990, he co-hosted CBC TV’s popular long-running investigative journalism program, The Fifth Estate.

In 1985, McKeown wrote, produced and directed Les Canadiens, a documentary about the storied history of the Montreal Canadiens, the National Hockey League’s most successful franchise. In 1987, McKeown wrote, produced and directed The Boys on the Bus. The acclaimed documentary offers an intimate portrait of the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers during the 1986–87 season, culminating in a Stanley Cup victory. The documentary earned McKeown a Gemini Award for Best Sports Program or Series.

In 1988, McKeown wrote, directed and produced the documentary Strangers in a Strange Land: The Adventures of a Canadian Film Crew in China. It depicts his and his crew’s frustrations while attempting to make a documentary in China about Norman Bethune. It won the award for Best Documentary at the 1988 Chicago International Film Festival.

Journalism Career in the United States

In 1990, McKeown accepted a position with CBS News in New York. Shortly afterward, he became the first Western journalist in Kuwait City. He filed live reports detailing the fleeing of Iraqi troops from the city during Operation Desert Storm. McKeown and his crew were imperiled by artillery barrages and sniper fire. The importance and accuracy of McKeown’s reporting was demonstrated when Pentagon officials asked CBS to ensure that McKeown continue to make his reports. While at CBS, McKeown contributed stories to the programs America Tonight, Street Stories, 48 Hours and the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.

After five years with CBS, McKeown moved to NBC. For eight years, he co-hosted the popular investigative journalism program Dateline. He covered a range of stories across the United States and around the world. He contributed impressive reporting of the Oklahoma City bombing and from New York City after the attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

McKeown won an Emmy Award for his work on Dateline and another for his coverage of the Gulf War. While with Dateline, McKeown also co-hosted a popular and acclaimed 1998 Discovery Channel documentary about the Titanic.

Return to Canada

In 1999, McKeown told Maclean’s magazine, “There is a peace and tranquillity in Canada quite different from the United States.” McKeown returned to Canada in 2002 and resumed his co-hosting duties on The Fifth Estate. In 2004, he won his second Gemini Award for writing the episode “Run for Your Life.” He was nominated for a total of eight Gemini Awards for his work on the program.

McKeown also continued to produce documentaries. He executive produced the documentary The Wild Horse Redemption (2008), about inmates at a Colorado prison who were charged with the task of taming wild horses. He also wrote for the television investigative journalism series True Crime Canada, which began in 2013.

Commitment on Concussions

In 2017, McKeown made a list of men with whom he had played professional football or who had played for Ottawa and had either died or suffered from a degenerative brain disease; the list totalled 15 people. In a stirring report, he noted that when he was playing football both at Yale and in Canada, concussions were not taken seriously. He claimed to have suffered “between several and a dozen” concussions and recalled three significant ones in high school, university and the CFL. He advocated for changes in concussion protocols in amateur and professional sports. He also arranged for his brain to be donated to science after his death to help research the long-term effects of concussions.

Honours

In addition to his Emmy and Gemini Awards, McKeown won a National Press Club Award, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Gracie Awards for work about women, and two National Headliner Awards. In 2021, McKeown was made a Member of the Order of Canada for “his excellence in investigative journalism for television.”