Pratley, Gerald, 1923-2011 : Gerald Pratley was born in 1923 in London, England. He immigrated to Canada in 1946, intending to study film at the National Film Board but finding a job instead writing scripts for CBC's announcers. This led to a career as film critic and commentator with the CBC, beginning in 1948 and lasting until 1975; among the programmes he appeared in were Pratley at the Movies, Music From the Films, The Movie Scene, Assignment, and Anthology. In 1967, Pratley was appointed film consultant to the Canadian Centennial Commission. He had earned a Queen's University Diploma in the teaching of film in 1949 but didn't begin his career as a teacher until 1968, when he taught at York University's Glendon College for a year. For the next twenty years he taught variously at York University, University of Toronto, McMaster University and Ryerson. He also lectured on film across the country and in the United States. In 1969, he founded the Ontario Film Institute with Patricia Thompson, and he was director of the Stratford International Film Festival, 1970-1976. Throughout his career, Pratley contributed articles on film to newspapers and magazines and was the Canadian correspondent for Variety's International Film Guide. He is the author of a number of books on film, including ones on John Frankenheimer (1970), Otto Preminger (1972), David Lean (1973) and John Huston (1975). His book on Canadian film, Torn Sprockets: the Uncertain Projection of the Canadian Film, was published in 1987. Since the mid-1990s, Pratley has acted as presiding officer representing Citizenship and Immigration Canada at citizenship awards ceremonies.
For his contributions to film, Gerald Pratley received Poland's Award of Merit in 1981 and in 1984 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada (becoming an Officer in 2003). He received honorary degrees from York University in 1991, from the University of Waterloo in 1993, and from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in 1994. Past awards include a Canadian Radio Award (honourable mention) 1952, Canadian Film Awards 1959 and 1973, and an ACTRA Writers Guild award 1987. He received the Canadian Film and Television Association's lifetime achievement award in 1989 and a Genie lifetime achievement award 2002. In 1993, Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation created a Gerald Pratley scholarship administered by the Film Studies Association of Canada. Gerald Pratley died on March 14, 2011.
