Alain Guilbert accepts the Michener-Baxter Special Award from His Excellency David Johnston, Governor General of Canada. The photo was taken during the Michener Award ceremony held at Rideau Hall, June 11, 2014.
Mr. Guilbert was honoured for his dedicated work on the French version of the Michener Awards website. Development on the site began in 2000. Shortly after he joined the Foundation board in 2002, he began the onerous task of converting the English to French in a fashion that was noted for its faithfulness to the essence of the original text. The translations included those pages of the site dating back to 1970.
Alain Guilbert established a distinguished record as a journalist and communicator during a long and successful career spanning close to 5 decades.
In 1972, Mr. Guilbert was Editor-in Chief of the original Actualité magazine. In 1974, he was invited to join the organizing committee of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as Director of Information.
Following the Olympics, he served in a variety of senior editor and management roles for a number of Quebec newspapers including La Tribune, La Voix de l’Est, Le Soleil, DBC Communications – a community newspaper group in St-Hyacinthe.
He then moved into marketing and communications as a senior executive with Groupe Everest – a marketing and business advisory company in Montreal – and later as President of Transcontinental Publications.
In 1997, Mr. Guilbert was appointed Vice President of Communications for Canada Post in Ottawa where he remained until his retirement in 2005.
He continues to serve on the Board of the Michener Awards Foundation.
The Michener Special Award was created to honour an individual whose lifetime work exemplifies the best in public service journalism. It is presented only occasionally and at the discretion of the Foundation.