Webster Foundation names Jim Taylor 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient

VANCOUVER, Sept. 7 /CNW/ - The Jack Webster Foundation today announced that celebrated BC sports journalist Jim Taylor will receive the 2010 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award November 1 at the 24th Annual Jack Webster Awards Dinner.

The Jack Webster Foundation, founded in memory of the late iconic BC reporter, names its Lifetime Achievement Award after Bruce Hutchison, the legendary Vancouver Sun journalist who started out at the Victoria Times in 1917 and went on to become the confidant of prime ministers.

In announcing this year's Hutchison Award winner, Jack Webster Foundation Co-Chairs Neil Soper and Debora Sweeney noted that this year's recipient is the first from the sports journalism field. Soper and Sweeney went on to say that Taylor has for decades always engaged his audience with insightful, informative and often highly humourous commentary that goes well beyond the game of the day.

"Jim Taylor has delivered the inside story day-in and day-out to legions of readers and set a high benchmark for reporting in British Columbia," Sweeney said.

"Jim's contributions to excellence in sports journalism have uniquely spanned the spectrum of commentary, from daily print to broadcast and books," Soper said.

Taylor wrote 8,000 newspaper columns, from his start as a part time reporter at the Daily Colonist in Victoria at the age of 17.  After graduation, he moved into its sports department for 10 years to fine-tune the craft of writing deadline news and opinion. He then moved to the Lower Mainland, where he wrote a daily sports column at the Vancouver Sun for 13 years, spent a year at the Vancouver Times and 17 years at the Province. He went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist for the Calgary Sun. Somehow throughout all this, Taylor managed to intersperse his newspaper reporting with groundbreaking books on figures like Wayne Gretzky, Jim Young, Rick Hansen and the late dean of Canadian sportswriters, Jim Coleman. 

"I'm stunned and humbled to get the Hutch," Taylor said. "To me it's our Oscar and Emmy combined. I couldn't be happier it's finally made it into the sports department. Thanks to all." 

The Jack Webster Foundation, named after the late broadcaster who was Western Canada's best known and most influential reporter, was established in 1986 to recognize excellence in British Columbia journalism.

Previous winners of the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award, the foundation's most prestigious, include: Bill Good, Steve Wyatt, Jim Harrison, Vaughn Palmer, Vicki Gabereau, Tony Parsons, Rafe Mair, Allan Fotheringham, Patrick Nagle, Roy Peterson, Cameron Bell, Keith Bradbury, Dan McLeod, Denny Boyd, George Garrett, Moira Farrow, Jim Hume, Warren Barker, Len Norris, and Hutchison himself. The Jack Webster Awards Dinner will be held November 1 at the Westin Bayshore. Tickets are $150 per person and may be reserved by emailing [email protected] or by calling 604-261-6184.

The work of the Foundation is made possible by the generous sponsorship of BCLC, Bell, CGA Association, CN, HSBC Bank Canada, Labatt Breweries, Teck, Terasen Gas, Port Metro Vancouver and WorkSafe BC.

For further information:

Jack Webster Foundation
Nora Newlands, Executive Director at 604-261-3348
[email protected]
www.jackwebster.com