Daniel Peter David

Dan David is an award-wining journalist and the first head of news at Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network. Since January 2021, he had been working with Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) as an expert trainer to support the capacity-building of local journalist in Kenya. Dan brought a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to the role.

Dan was a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk in your language), Bear Clan, born in Syracuse, New York, and raised at Kanehsatà:ke (formerly known as the Oka reserve), west of Montreal. He’s the son and grandson of proud, stubborn people who made a habit of standing up against wrongs done to them, their community, their nation, and their people. They also stood up for anyone whose human rights had been violated regardless of color, creed, or nationality. He grew up enveloped in the warmth of books, newspapers, magazines, and dangerous ideas. Despite this, his early adult years were filled with the struggle to overcome ugly stereotypes about “native people” imposed by the outside world...until journalism found him.

After graduating high school, discouraged by government officials from pursuing journalism school, Dan futhered his education by working with people who lived life; he dug ditches, painted houses, was on a garbage truck, studied with tree and construction crews as a laborer, learned photography and became an offset printer before eventually becoming a print shop manager. After a thankfully short time as a federal civil servant at Indian Affairs, Dan took an intensive course in journalism and was hired right after graduation. He began a life of telling stories to whoever would listen or read his words.

Dan worked across Canada at CBC in radio and TV news as a reporter and editor, as a producer at TVOntario, a provincial educational channel, and VISION TV, an ecumenical network, before becoming the Chair of Diversity and radio instructor at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. Dan was already an experienced broadcast journalism trainer when he was hand-picked by South African journalists to be part of the team of CBC trainers to help transform the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from state-run into a public broadcaster before the first democratic elections in that country.

That began a 10-year summertime love affair with South Africa topped off by a one-year stint as head of TV training at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg.

Upon his return to Canada, Dan helped build an national news network at the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN). Since then, Dan worked in Indonesia, Denmark, Norway, and Azerbajiian as a journalism trainer or communications officer.

Dan worked as a researcher/writer on a provincial justice inquiry and one Royal Commission, both examining Canada’s broken relationship with Indigenous peoples.

Some of Dan’s writings have been published in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, NOW weekly, THIS Magazine, the Montreal Gazette, the Montreal Review of Books, CBC online, Open Canada.

Dan earned two National Magazine awards, the Duke and Duchess of Wessex Award for Aboriginal Literature, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation Dan also received the Starblanket award from APTN in 2018. This last award is the one Dan prized the most as it came from his fellow Indigenous journalists at the network that he helped build.

Dan said that he wanted to be a real writer, a writer of literary fiction when he grew up.

Dan worked with the Journalists for Human Rights (JHR). Initially he was fearful that it would be yet another group using Indigenous peoples’ lives as training material for non-Indigenous student journalist. But JHR dispelled those suspicians with its proven track record of developing Indigenous peoples in human rights journalism, telling their own stories and in their own voices.

Dan liked the hard work, excellence, and professionalism exhibited by his fellow trainers both in Canada and in Kenya. Dan loved the passion and committment that he was blessed with in the trainees and the mentees. Dan has said that he was constantly energized and gratified by the journalists he got to work with as trainers.

Dan said “It’s a cliche but it is nonetheless true that as trainers we learn more than we can ever teach them about this profession called journalism.”

Thaioronióte Daniel Peter David: June 2, 1950 – January 12, 2026. He is survived by his sister Linda (John), his brother Walter (Lise), sister Denise, brother Nicholas, sister Marie, and sister Valerie and his cherished nieces and nephews.

Dan was the son of Walter M. David and Thelma Nicholas of Kanehsatà:ke; grandson of Daniel Peter Nicholas and Lena Gabriel of Kanehsatà:ke, and Sarah Terrance and Peter David of Akwesasne.

The memorial service for Dan will take place on Sunday, February 1, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM, then from 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Salon Guay Funeral Home, 146 Rue Saint-Louis, Saint-Eustache, QC.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Quebec Writer’s Federation

Or give to the Quebec cancer society in his name.