Iconic news anchor Lloyd Robertson to be inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame

Lloyd Robertson can add yet another milestone to his already incredibly successful career. He will be inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame at a gala tonight in Toronto at the Rosewater supper club.

In his 41 years of anchoring a national newscast, he covered numerous major events including many Olympic Games, the death of Princess Diana and Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope.

Lloyd Robertson can add yet another milestone to his already incredibly successful career. He will be inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame at a gala tonight in Toronto at the Rosewater supper club.

In his 41 years of anchoring a national newscast, he covered numerous major events including many Olympic Games, the death of Princess Diana and Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope.

Robertson was born in Stratford Ontario on Jan. 19, 1934 and began his broadcast career at age 19 at the CBC where he spent four years in Winnipeg then two in Ottawa before ending up in Toronto, the city where he’d begin his ascend. He hosted CBC Weekend in Toronto, before becoming the anchor of The National from 1970 to 1976. He then made a difficult decision to leave the CBC to join CTV in September of the same year. He left the CBC partly because of his frustration with segregated unions. As an “announcer” he wasn’t able to participate in any of the writing process of the very scripts he would read. Robertson's leaving CBC would change this for future news anchors at CBC, says Peter Mansbridge.

Less than 10 years later, in 1984, he was named CTV’s network senior editor and chief anchor. He would stay at CTV for 35 years and become known as "Canada’s most trusted news anchor."

“You can’t go on forever,” Robertson said in an interview with the Toronto Star last year. “The aging process is inevitable. Your body begins to tell you little things.”

He told the Star, “I really wanted to leave at the top of the game rather than sit there and let the slide in my own presentation begin.”

Robertson hosted his final news cast on September 1, 2011 and the following Monday the CTV National News with Lloyd Robertson changed to the CTV National News with Lisa LaFlamme. And that was perhaps the last time Canada would hear Robertson’s signature sign-off, “and that’s the kind of day it’s been.”

Lloyd Robertson's Final Newscast on Sept. 1, 2011.