Retired TV producer Jim Murray, best known for executive producing The Nature of Things, will be feted at Banff with ACTRA’s John Drainie Award for his contribution to broadcasting.

Murray began his career as a radio producer at the CBC in 1957 and later, in the TV realm, launched Science Magazine with David Suzuki. That program merged with the then-half-hour Nature of Things in 1979. Ironically, Suzuki won the Drainie Award just ahead of Murray, who originally brought him to the CBC’s attention.

‘I got [Suzuki] into The Nature of Things and he’s done all sorts of great things since,’ Murray says.

Suzuki, calls Murray ‘his greatest teacher and greatest friend’ and says that Murray ‘never lost his notion that humans are part of the whole spectrum of life.’ Suzuki cites his friend’s commitment to promoting this biocentric perspective as one of his major contributions to science programming, in the face of ‘99% of all reporting [being] from the perspective of humans as the centre of everything.’

One of Murray’s most renowned pieces was his co-direction of The National Dream, the dramatized 1974 doc mini about the building of the transcontinental railway, written and hosted by Pierre Berton. Suzuki says that after that huge success, Murray could have written his own ticket – and what he decided to do was return to science programming and his preoccupation with teaching viewers about the importance of the biosphere.

‘He educated me that if we don’t have pristine forests and vital oceans, we’re in trouble,’ Suzuki says.

Murray has also served as exec producer on A Planet for the Taking, an eight-part series inspired by the writings of former Nature of Things exec producer John Livingston. Murray has won four Geminis for best doc series for The Nature of Things as well as the John Grierson Gold Medal for Achievement in Film and the Canadian Science Film Association Award.

The John Drainie Award is named for the legendary CBC radio actor and is adjudicated by previous winners, based on suggestions from ACTRA members. Past recipients of the award include Peter Gzowski, Barbara Frum and Knowlton Nash. The award ceremony takes place June 9 at the Banff Rockie Awards Show.