Ron Wood
Ron Wood was born in Midland, Ontario and became a Calgarian at age three in 1946 when his father relocated the family for business reasons.
In 1963 he returned to Midland for a brief visit while on his way to Guelph where he planned to study veterinary medicine. During his brief stay there he was offered a job by the manager of CKMP radio. Wood flipped a coin and says, “when it came up heads I took it as a sign that I should avoid things with tails and accepted the radio job.” Nine months later he was offered, and accepted, an on-air job with CKPM radio in Ottawa. He arrived in Ottawa in the fall of 1964 and in February, 1965 was handed the Parliamentary Correspondent assignment for that radio station and several others owned by the same company. During the next few years he covered Parliament for CKPM and was designated Bureau Chief for United Press International Radio. He also worked as eastern Ontario stringer for the Globe & Mail and did voice-over work for commercials and documentaries. In 1967 he left radio for a job at what was then CJOH-TV News in Ottawa. In 1971 he was promoted to the position of Promotions Manager and then to Director of Creative Services, a position created for him and where he was responsible for on-air promotion, corporate public relations, commercial production, sales promotion and viewer community relations.
In October of 1967, Wood married the beautiful and charming Michaele Jane Cassidy of Ottawa. They are the proud parents of Jennifer and Michael.
In 1975, Ron Wood was headhunted by the federal civil service and accepted the position of Manager of Media Relations for the Metric Commission of Canada. “They were doing the paperwork to make me the Director of Communications in 1978 and I started worrying about us getting trapped in Ottawa. We didn’t want our kids to grow up thinking that Ottawa was the centre of the universe so I let word get around that I might be interested in returning to radio. CKXL Radio in Calgary called within days and flew me out for a chat and I agreed to become News Director and Editorialist.” Wood worked at CXKL and sister station CHFM until 1989. During that period he won several regional radio awards and capped his career by winning the National Radio Awards “Best Opinion/Commentary Broadcaster in Canada” in 1989.
In 1990 he signed on as Communications Adviser/Press Secretary to Preston Manning, Leader of the fledgling Reform Party of Canada and began commuting between Calgary and Ottawa after the general election of 1993. In 2001, Wood was invited by Official Opposition Leader John Reynolds to become his Executive Assistant and Communications Advisor, a position he accepted with alacrity because it would mean working with an old friend. When his friend and former colleague Stephen Harper was elected Leader of the Alliance Party, Wood moved to the offices of Official Opposition House Leader Reynolds and Chief Opposition Whip Dale Johnston as Communications Adviser to both.
Wood ended his political career working in the Communications Office of Opposition Leader Stephen Harper and with Election Campaign Co-Chair John Reynolds on election readiness, candidate recruitment and various other tasks as requested by the party leader. He left Ottawa days before the election of 2006 and returned to Calgary to catch up on all the fishing, hunting and golfing days he missed over the previous sixteen years. He also grows tomatoes.
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