CBC's Juanita Taylor on her Canadian Screen Award, and telling northern stories
CBC
A day after being named best national reporter at the Canadian Screen Awards, CBC North journalist Juanita Taylor said the significance of the award was just starting to sink in.
"I've been getting so many messages from, you know, friends and family, and people across the North have been sending me some congratulatory messages. So now it's starting to hit me," she told Lawrence Nayally, host of Trail's End on CBC Radio in the N.W.T.
"I'm just very honoured that people will share their stories with me, and I'm very, very honoured to be, I think I'm the first Inuk to get this award."
Taylor, originally from Arviat, Nunavut, began her journalism career as a correspondent for APTN in Iqaluit. From there, she moved to CBC North in Yellowknife and eventually became host of Northbeat on CBC TV. Since 2021, she has been the North's senior reporter for The National.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Congratulations!
Thank you so much. I'm feeling very honoured right now.
I've always felt honoured even just to be nominated for an award like this, and you know, I'll be honest, I didn't really know too much about this award when the nominations came out. So I've been learning as I've been going and yeah, it's just, it's a nice way to be recognized, I guess, for the work that I've been doing.
Could you share a little bit about your path to becoming a journalist?
I'm just thinking we don't have enough time for that!
It's always been a passion, my wanting to tell my people's stories. Always. And it wasn't until I was about 28, 29 years old, and I had two children by that time, we were living in Iqaluit and I said to my husband, "I want to go back to school and learn about broadcasting, learn about journalism. I want to do this by the time I'm 30." And my husband has always, always been supportive of me. And so that's what I did.
And I went to school when I was 30 — went to the Academy of Broadcasting in Winnipeg. And thankfully for me, it was a short course that I could complete it within a year. And that's what I wanted to do because at the age of 30 and with two kids and family responsibilities, I didn't want to take up too much time in school anymore. So I wanted something that I could get a really good taste of it and see if, you know, maybe that is the route that I want to keep going in. And it turned out that it is. And ever since then I've been doing it.
I applied for my first job as a reporter with APTN in Iqaluit when they established the bureau there. I stayed there less than a year before going back home to Rankin Inlet to my family. And shortly after that I was like, "I need to get back into reporting, into broadcasting," because I always wanted to host Northbeat. That was my eye on the prize, since I was a little girl growing up in Nunavut.
Is there a particular story that you're most proud of?
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