Knowlton Nash unfazed by Parkinson’s, ‘daunted’ by lifetime achievement award

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This article was published 21/06/2006 (7055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO (CP) – For decades, it was the venerable voice of Knowlton Nash that brought Canadians news of such momentous events as the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War and the Kennedy assassinations.

But when Nash accepts a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation on Thursday, it will be his wife who addresses an audience of peers on his behalf. Nash’s battle with Parkinson’s disease has by and large spared him the tremors that typically come with the degenerative illness, but on occasion arrests his voice, making articulate speech difficult.

“It’s one of the frustrating parts of this whole thing,” Nash said Wednesday from his Toronto home, noting his symptoms have, so far, been relatively mild.

“If it does affect me, it affects my voice, in the sense of sort of seizing it up. Or it can give you pains, which sometimes happens, back pain. And sometimes tremors as well, though I haven’t been very affected by tremors.

“It’s a challenge.”

Nash, 78, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s roughly three years ago, after he noticed a slight tremor while reading a newspaper one morning.

Since then, the symptoms have targeted the authoritative delivery that for years was heard in living rooms across the country.

Nash’s 60 years as a newsman included 20 years as CBC-TV’s foreign correspondent in Washington and 10 years anchoring the station’s flagship news program, The National, through much of the 1980s.

The CJF lauded him as a national treasure as they announced a lifetime achievement award for a long and distinguished career.

“For several generations of Canadians, Knowlton Nash’s face and voice on The National were the face and voice of Canada at its best: civilized, unpretentious, wise, committed and concerned,” gala co-chair John Fraser said in a release.

Nash traces his first moments in the business to his days selling three-cent newspapers on a Toronto street corner. The passion for news has remained strong ever since, he said.

“Journalism has been the love of my life,” said Nash, who still writes a column for the Osprey newspaper chain.

The author of several books, his days spent in Washington covering the Kennedys are among his most cherished memories.

“I had an awful lot of time for Robert Kennedy. He was the most charismatic politician I’ve ever known,” Nash said, recalling the incredible access to public figures reporters enjoyed in the late 1950s.

“I did a lot of coverage of the Senate labour rackets committee, which was investigating the Teamsters union and. . .at the end of the day we’d always go up to Bob’s office and just sit around and chat about what went on during the day or go out to his house to grab a bite to eat or swim in his pool.”

“I think in many ways I was a better reporter because I got to know the individuals, whether it was John Diefenbaker or Bob Kennedy or Mike Pearson, I got to know them a little bit on a personal basis.”

It’s been a good run, Nash admitted, and recognition of his work by colleagues is the highest honour that has left him “quite daunted.”

The work still thrills, enough to keep Nash writing “until it gets boring.”

“And I can’t imagine it ever getting boring,” he said.

Nash, who takes medication to slow the effects of Parkinson’s and jogs about six kilometres a day to keep fit, is one of approximately 100,000 Canadians to have the disease.

The late former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and actor Michael J. Fox are among the prominent Canadians who have battled the progressive neurological condition. It affects movements such as walking, talking, and writing and usually emerges after age 60, slightly more often in men than women.

Parkinson’s symptoms can take years to progress to major problems and when they do, many of the symptoms can be treated.

Nash said he doesn’t worry about what the disease may eventually do to his body.

“You know, what happens will happen. Life is an ongoing mystery.”