This city is great and has so much to offer. There is a lot happening day-to-day, and I have never worked with a better crew when it comes to telling stories.”
If that sounds like media gypsy Kimberley Fowler has finally found a home, you’re right. Given her ambition, energy, and talent, not to mention the fluidity of the industry in which she works, who knows if we’ll get to keep her? But for now, the Markham-raised beauty who serves as CTV Ottawa’s weekend news anchor is all ours, an arrangement benefiting both parties.
Fowler’s first professional dream was to be a music VJ. But when she enrolled in Ryerson University’s famous Radio and TV Arts program where she realized that her lifelong love of sports ran deeper than her love of pop tunes. Upon graduation, though, she was made to realize something else: the tragic paucity of female sportscasters. “There were not many women—and none who looked like me—covering sports. I remember watching Teresa Kruse on TSN, and Terry Leibel on CBC when she covered the Olympics, thinking, ‘Why can’t I be like them?’” She suffered another gut punch when she shared her dream of co-hosting a certain sports station’s nightly newscast with the bureaucrat toying with hiring her for an entry-level position. “He told me it would never happen in my wildest dreams because I didn’t have the right ‘look.’ I was gutted.”
Undaunted, Fowler refined her skills in Humber College’s post-graduate radio program. Eight months later, she was the part-time traffic reporter on Toronto’s CFRB.
But life in a major market came with a price. She ended up with the toughest job you could get: traffic reporting. “People think it’s easy,” Fowler shares, “but it’s not. In a busy city, you have major highways to keep track of, and all the in-town collisions, construction, and closures within the listening area. And you have to jam all that into 30 seconds.”
“Plus,” she adds, “I didn’t have access to the resources I had in the newsroom. No computer, no internet, no phone. I had a notebook and a pen…that’s it! I relied on communicating on a 2-way radio with the ‘eyes and ears on the ground’. At one point, I was doing reports for two television stations and three radio stations. I was listening to two separate feeds while switching channels to contact other stations to record reports, plus checking in with co-workers for updates and listening to the pilot’s instructions—and I operated the camera while doing the TV reports!”
It was a hectic classroom-in-the-sky, which imparted all of the major lessons that have served Fowler well in subsequent jobs: multi-tasking, adaptability, and time management. That last one she holds in particularly high esteem. “If you have good time management skills,” she advises, “you’ll do well as a broadcaster. Everything we do revolves around time.” It’s true, whether she’s accommodating a commercial, policing an interview that’’s going too long, or making room for a breaking story.
While she enjoyed being on the air by being in the air, Fowler came to earth to be a morning show reporter in Regina. Next stop: Ottawa, a major change in geography and, yes, time. “The hours have totally flipped,” she says, still stunned that she’s bagged such a comparatively comfortable assignment. “Morning show hours are brutal. For over a decade, I started work at 4 A.M.; now, I start work at 4 P.M.”
That’s not all she’s enjoying about Ottawa. “Living here feels like the best parts of Toronto and Regina. Downtown Ottawa has the big city feel like parts of Toronto, and the suburbs feel like Regina. I also love the walking trails and bike paths.”
Ottawa, in turn, loves her. Fowler has been recognized at the grocery store, the gym, and Sens and RedBlacks games. Yes, the girl who grew up playing rugby, basketball, and bowling is still into sports. For the past ten years, she’s been an avid powerlifter, which is how she spends her off hours along with cooking.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time for romantic investigation, so for now, she’s happy to stay single. Besides, it facilitates professional mobility—though for the moment, she’s extremely happy to be where she is. “I want to learn as much I can anchoring and reporting in Ottawa,” she maintains. “Maybe one day I’ll report or anchor on a national newscast or make the move to sports. But I like where I am. I love my job at CTV Ottawa.”
By Dan Lalande
