Margaret Collier at Lakeshore Lodge, c. 2019-2020.Mary Young
During the early 1980s, when the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television sought a worthy name to attach to a lifetime achievement award for film or television writing, the name of one person, still living, dominated all others: Margaret Collier.
The fiery Ms. Collier long championed writers during her 35-year career with the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), particularly after her 1982 appointment as the first executive director of its writers’ division, then called the Writers Guild of Canada.
The first Margaret Collier Award was bestowed in 1986, as part of the Gemini Awards. Since 2013, it has been included each year as one of the Canadian Screen Awards.
Ms. Collier, a diminutive Scot with coiffed red hair, ultra-stylish clothes and an accent as thick as marmalade, was unwavering in her belief that writers, the backbone of radio, film and television, must be protected from unscrupulous producers. It was not unheard of, in the early days of Canadian broadcast entertainment, for a producer to wheedle a free re-write from a writer or even make alterations to a script, like changing its adjectives, in order to claim authorship. Writers were Ms. Collier’s most cherished cause, although she advocated equally for the rights of all within her purview.
A formidable opponent and a demanding employer who could reduce her secretaries to tears, Ms. Collier also commanded affection, admiration, and respect. She retired from the business side of entertainment in 1994. Ms. Collier died on April 11 at Lakeshore Lodge, a long-term care facility in Etobicoke, Ont., after a period of cognitive decline. She was 88.
In 1959, as a new immigrant to Canada and an entertainment business neophyte, her introduction to those working in radio, and the fledgling film and television industry, began when she was hired as a secretary at an organization of artists that evolved into ACTRA.
She moved rapidly through its ranks into managing contracts and residual payments for commercials. Organizing the ACTRA Awards and assisting with the creation of Face to Face with Talent, a thick catalogue of head shots and bios of performers and writers, fell under Ms. Collier’s bailiwick. Pre-internet, Face to Face was one of few sources of information about Canadian talent. When Ms. Collier became national executive director of ACTRA’s writers’ membership in the early 1970s, those activities were assigned to others. The writers fascinated Ms. Collier. A voracious reader since childhood, she now could deal directly with revered authors such as Pierre Berton, who wrote a history series for CBC television called The Last Spike.
As part of professional development, Ms. Collier and her staff organized screenwriting seminars for ACTRA members. At the behest of Ms. Collier, Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, Ken Taylor of The Jewel in the Crown and Stirling Silliphant of The Towering Inferno all came to Toronto to discuss their craft.
“No one ever refused Margaret’s invitation, even though there was no fee or honorarium involved,” said Krisztina Bevilacqua who worked as Ms. Collier’s right-hand assistant for 13 years. “Guests got airfare, one night in a hotel and an informal dinner with Margaret and members of the Toronto Writers Branch Council, usually at a seafood restaurant on King Street,” she said.
Thanks largely to Ms. Collier, at one point the writers’ department was composed almost entirely of women. “She had an uncanny ability to pick the right person for the job even if they didn’t know they could do it themselves,” Ms. Bevilacqua said. The day Ms. Collier interviewed her for the position of writers’ steward is indelibly etched in Ms. Bevilacqua’s memory.
“She was smoking a cigarette in a cigarette holder, alternately puffing at it and talking, never taking the holder far enough away that you could see her lips. All through the interview she paced up and down, smoking furiously, speaking rapidly with a thick Scottish accent and frequently stuttering. With her back to a huge window through which the sun was shining, draped in a striking outfit of nubby material, wreathed in clouds of blue smoke, she was certainly a dazzling figure.”
Margaret Thomson Collier, born on Dec. 19, 1932, in Glasgow, was the eldest of three children. During the war years, like many children, she was sent to live with relatives outside the city as a safety precaution against bombs raining from the skies. Her father, a real estate agent, died as Margaret was entering her teenage years. She left school at 14 to help her widowed mother raise the younger children. Secretarial training, routinely given to girls in those days, landed her a job as an office worker at a solicitor’s office where she managed to absorb legal terminology and glimpsed the skills required for negotiation. By the late 1950s, post-war Britain was a dull place for a clever young woman. She was ready for adventure, immigration to Canada, and the beginning of a long career at ACTRA.
A whiz at shorthand, Ms. Collier never hired a secretary who didn’t possess the skill. Some colleagues speculated Ms. Collier thought in shorthand. She could dictate perfectly worded letters but when words couldn’t keep pace with her rapid-fire thoughts, she stuttered. It was an impediment that occurred throughout her life, although never when she appeared on stage in amateur theatrics, a hobby she gave up as her free time became scarce. She did however, remain a regular theatregoer.
By the late 1970s, Ms. Collier’s life had become one long series of negotiation sessions with broadcasters and independent producers both nationally and internationally. She was instrumental in formulating ACTRA’s Independent Production Agreement, which laid the foundation for national agreements.
When copyright legislation was being drafted in Parliament, Ms. Collier oversaw proposals taken to Ottawa that aimed at ensuring writers had the right to protect their creations. She also helped establish minimum rates and working conditions for writers while addressing grievances, contract negotiations and labour relations.
“She was at her best in collective bargaining sessions, fighting for writers so fiercely that, on one occasion, a beleaguered negotiator on the CBC team on the other side of the table protested, only half-kidding ‘Don’t look at me in that tone of voice Margaret’,” Ms. Bevilacqua recalled.
Dedication to her job left little time for socializing, although after a negotiation was concluded, Ms. Collier would happily join colleagues at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto for a Campari and soda. She never married but appreciated a good-looking man when she saw one.
Ms. Bevilacqua remembers a meeting that took place with a devastatingly handsome young singer from the Canadian Opera Company to discuss surtitles (the translated lyrics/dialogue projected above a stage during a foreign-language opera). During a break in the proceedings, Ms. Collier and Ms. Bevilacqua stepped outside. “We were silent for a moment but we were both thinking the same thing,” Ms. Bevilacqua recalled. “Margaret looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes. She said ‘And he sings too!’”
To commemorate Ms. Collier’s 25th year of working for ACTRA, Roger Abbott, of Royal Canadian Air Farce fame, and Lorraine Thomson, dancer and spouse of broadcaster Knowlton Nash, helped Ms. Bevilacqua organize a Scottish-themed dinner, complete with a bagpiper.
“Margaret was proud of her roots but she was equally proud of being a Canadian,” Ms. Bevilacqua said. “As to the work she did on behalf of screenwriters, it’s remembered every year with the presentation of the award in her name. It stands as her legacy.”
Ms. Collier leaves her nieces, Eleanor Collier and Linda Gibbs, and a nephew, Andrew Collier.