Peter Bregg the first photojournalist to win CJF lifetime achievement award
Bregg, who has worked as a photojournalist for the Canadian Press and Maclean’s, has won the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.
Photo courtesy of Canadian Journalism Foundation
Peter Bregg is the first photojournalist to win the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.
Bregg started his career as a copy boy at Canadian Press. He rose through the ranks to become a photographer. Since then, he worked as the chief photographer at Maclean's for 17 years and a photographer and photo editor with the Canadian Press and the Associated Press in Ottawa, Boston, London, New York and Washington, DC. He was the official photographer to then-prime minister Brian Mulroney between 1984 to1985.
In his career, he has covered eight Olympic Games, Vietnam in 1973, the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.
View samples from his recent work and his archives.
“Being the first photographer given this award is fantastic," Bregg said in a press release. "I know a few of the past winners and being in same room as them was an honour. Now I am on the same list. How cool is that!”
Bregg is also member of PhotoSensitive, a photo collective that uses photography to support charitable causes, and he continues to work as a freelancer and teach photojournalism at Ryerson University.
“Peter's body of work has been an extraordinary composite sketch of Canada in the last nearly-half-century," said Kirk LaPointe, a jury member and adjunct journalism professor at UBC, in the press release. “He has remained true to the principles of high-calibre journalism while being an early adopter of modern, digital methods to tell visual stories. He exemplifies what a lifetime of journalism should be: constant renewal, consistent excellence, high integrity and a commitment to community.”
Bregg will be honoured at the CJF gala on June 4 in Toronto.
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Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.