Robert Guy Scully

Robert Guy Scully (born 1950) is a Canadian television producer, interviewer and host, as well as a former journalist. He started as a TV broadcaster with the French-language network Radio-Canada (SRC) and subsequently with the English-language network Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). He has hosted shows such as Bibliotheca, Scully RDI, Venture, Scully rencontre, Impacts and The Innovators. He also produced the series of short film vignettes known as Heritage Minutes. He currently hosts an independent talk program distributed by American Public Television (APT).

Robert Scully was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1950 and is of Irish and French ancestry. Coincidentally, the surname is derived from the Irish name "O'Scolaidhe," meaning either "descendant of the storyteller" (a regular official at the courts of the old Irish kings), or "descendant of the scholar" (from the Gaelic scolaidhe, meaning "scholar"). Scully grew up in the working-class district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in Montreal and was educated at McGill University.

Encouraged by Claude Ryan to pursue journalism at the age of 19, Scully learned the ropes of journalism at Le Devoir, first as Latin American correspondent. He even landed an interview with Salvador Allende. At the age of 21, he became the literary and arts editor at Le Devoir, the youngest journalist ever to hold that job. In 1975, he moved to the United States and wrote columns from New York and Louisiana for both The Gazette and La Presse.

In 1977, as a print journalist, Scully was accused of harbouring anti-Quebec sentiment in the wake of a caustic article he wrote in the Washington Post that railed against what he viewed as a backward, empty Quebec society. The article used exaggeration for effect and some of the subtlety and insight might have been lost to some Quebec readers whose grasp of English and of the use of caricature as a literary tool was limited. He apologized five days later on the French program Ce Soir for having offended some people with his article, claiming that the article had been written for an American readership, primarily to stir up discussion over the Quebec issue in America. Shortly thereafter, Scully strangely confided to a journalist from La Presse that he was a separatist (or at least, had independentist leanings) as he had actually voted for the Parti Québécois around that time and insisted that his sentiments had been misconstrued. In 1978, he co-wrote a book with the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Claude Ryan, about the history of the Quebec independence movement, two years before the first Quebec referendum on sovereignty. In that referendum, Ryan successfully campaigned for the "No" (federalist) forces and won against the separatist forces in Quebec.

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