Robert Gardner (born April 4, 1938) is a Scottish Canadian television writer, director and producer. He is a professor emeritus of Ryerson University, having served three times as Chair of the School of Radio and Television Arts before retiring in 2003.
Dr. Robert Gardner, BAA, BA, MA, EdD was born in Parkhead, Glasgow, Scotland on April 4, 1938 to Robert Gardner and Jean Cooper Gardner. His siblings were twins, ten years his senior. The late Irene Gardner Keeney became an award-winning journalist for her work at the Albany Times Union, and Jean Gardner Cole, MS is a respected specialist and trainer in child development associated with the Brazleton Institute as a Trainer Emeritus. Dr. Robert Gardner attended Newlands School, Riverside Senior Secondary, and - during a period of time in East Africa - the Eldoret Hill School in Kenya. In 1951 his family emigrated to Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, where he completed high school at Simcoe Composite School in 1956. He married Anna Maria Galuppi in 1961 and had three children: Robert Edward Gardner Junior, Andrea Maria Gardner, and Jared Joseph Gardner.
His entire childhood was spent in a working class district of Glasgow within a short distance from Celtic Park, the soccer field. He was raised during the shortages of the war years and experienced the bombardment of Glasgow by the Luftwaffe and the necessity of staying, night after night, in bomb shelters next to the tenement buildings. He was part, too, of the exodus of young children from the city centre to the surrounding countryside to escape the possibility of further German air attacks.
The bleak post war years were relieved by an unexpected and extensive stay in Uganda, then part of British East Africa. Suddenly he was in a world of servants, large homes, and an exclusive private residential school in Kenya. Glasgow seemed like a dour world in comparison to colonial Africa and the family decided to emigrate to Canada in 1951. In quick succession he experienced industrial Glasgow, colonial Africa, small town Ontario, and then he was to move on to writing professionally for television, teaching, academic administration, and ever lengthening visits to provincial Italy.
Robert Gardner Senior graduated from the School of Radio and Television Arts at the Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1959. Although his studies were financed, in part, by his parents, Gardner contributed by winning scholarships, bursaries, and by working as a writer/announcer at a small, Simcoe-based, AM radio station (CFRS). He later noted that his Ryerson studies provided him with a career and the funding to continue his formal education. He earned BA and MA degrees in English literature from McMaster University (while at McMaster University he was awarded an Ontario Graduate Teaching Fellowship) and a doctorate in education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His master's degree thesis (Adaptation of Works of Literary Merit to the Film and Television Forms) was supervised by the film scholar, Professor Graham Petrie, Faculty of English, McMaster University. The Doctoral thesis (Structuralism and Procedural Knowledge as Keys to Understanding the Dramatic Form), was supervised by the dramatic theorist, Professor Richard Courtney, Department of Curriculum, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. In 1972, when Ryerson evolved into Ryerson Polytechnic University, Gardner was awarded a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree (BAA )in Radio and Television Arts.