What began as a teenage fascination with news became a forty-year career for  

Linda Oland.  She started as a summer student at CFTO News (now CTV Toronto), cutting her news teeth as assistant to the assignment editor before being hired full-time in 1987.  Many roles followed — assignment editor, field producer, lineup editor, 5:30 and then 6pm producer — before Linda moved to CTV National as the Daily News Service (DNS) Manager.  There she created a system of better collaboration for both resources and content between the national and local newsrooms, helping strengthen CTV’s news power across the country.

In 2010, with the media landscape changing rapidly, Linda left Agincourt and headed to 299 Queen West, becoming Senior Producer of CTV’s newly acquired local all-news station, CP24.  Six weeks later, the G20 riots took over the streets of Toronto and all eyes turned to CP24 as the mayhem unfolded in real time.  In 2011, Linda was promoted to Director of News and Information Programming at CP24 and was instrumental in transforming the station into the GTA’s go-to source for breaking and daily news, part of the fabric of the city today. She led coverage of twelve elections, the Danforth shooting, the Yonge Street van attack, verdicts, storms, floods, royal visits, even Prince Harry and Meghan’s unscheduled first public appearance which was captured live on CP24 and replayed around the world.  All while building the team in front of and behind the camera.  She also covered the 2012 London Olympics as part of the Broadcast Consortium’s Assignment Team.

And then came 2020 and the story that changed everything — the COVID pandemic. Linda balanced the editorial demands of the most important news story in a generation with compassionate, disciplined leadership of a team required to work around the clock in the most challenging of conditions.

Now retired, Linda feels incredibly privileged to have worked with so many wonderful, accomplished, dedicated colleagues throughout her career and is honoured and thrilled to receive RTDNA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.