Background
Drea was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, and educated at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, USA. He was hired by the Toronto Telegram in 1955, and was a long-time reporter and columnist at the paper. In 1961, he won the National Newspaper Award and the Heywood Broun Award for Crusading Journalism for his work as a labour reporter for his coverage of a strike by Italian-Canadian building trade workers.
From 1963 to 1965, he worked as public relations director for the United Steel Workers of America in Sudbury, Ontario. A fervent anti-Communist, Drea played a leading role in the Steelworkers' unsuccessful campaign to raid and destroy the Communist Party influenced Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union which had dominated the mining industry in Sudbury. Drea's campaign was a failure, and he was fired.
He returned to the Telegram in 1965 as the paper's Action Line columnist, serving as an early consumer advocate. He remained with the newspaper until shortly before its demise in 1971. He also served with Dale Goldhawk as an outspoken, open-line host at CHIC Radio in Brampton, Ontario and worked for CTV on the public affairs program W5.
Read more about this topic: Frank Drea
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)