[CBC]George Elroy Boyd, Canada’s first Black national news anchor, dies at 68 | CBC News

“We’ve got it, it’s there. The product is there and all we have to do now is work harder to better what we have now,” Boyd said in a news piece on the glitchy launch of the channel that originally aired July 31, 1989.

His obituary, published in the Halifax Chronicle Herald on Saturday, says he enrolled in the broadcasting program at the Nova Scotia Institute of Technology after studying at Saint Mary’s University.

After Boyd left broadcasting in the 1990s, he turned his attention to writing, about which he was passionate.

“George has written for radio, television, motion pictures, and also became a songwriter for his radio play, God is My Warden [title song],” his obituary said. 

“With his debut play, Shine Boy (1988), George became the first Indigenous African-Nova Scotian to have a play professionally produced on the main stage of Halifax’s Neptune Theatre.”

The obituary noted Boyd was appointed writer-in association with Neptune Theatre in 1995. His play, Consecrated Ground, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for drama in 2000. 

Another of his plays, Wade in the Water, was nominated for a Montreal English Critics Circle Award in 2005.

His play, Gideon’s Blues, was adapted into an hour-long TV drama, The Gospel According to the Blues, in 2010.

Boyd was also invited to be a writer-in residence at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ont. He represented Canada at the Rafi Peer Theatre Festival in Lahore, Pakistan.

Boyd has received an honorary diploma from the Nova Scotia Community College in 1998 and an Atlantic Journalism Award in 1988.

Boyd died on July 7 at the Mont Sinai Hospice in Montreal. A graveside service is scheduled for Boyd on Monday. There will be no reception because of COVID-19.