White, Pete

• Peter White

Pete White (sometimes credited as Peter White) was born in Kaslo, British Columbia in 1946. White lived in Kaslo until 1954, until his mother remarried. White’s stepfather was a miner, and the family moved around a series of mining camps, ending up in Elliot Lake, Ontario. White attended high school in Elliot Lake, and then went on to work as a miner while writing poetry in his spare time.
In the late 1960s, White moved to Edmonton, where he met the English singer and guitar player Paul Hann. The pair bonded over music, and White’s focus shifted from poetry to song-writing. White wrote or co-wrote many of Hann’s songs, while also managing and promoting Hann’s career. Ultimately, White’s songs appeared on several of Hann’s albums, including “A Fine White Thread” (1973), “Another Tumbleweed”(1975), “Paul Hann” (1977), “High Test” (1979), and “Hometown Hero” (1980).
White and Hann also composed music for film and television soundtracks together, including the theme to the program “Come Alive” for Access Alberta. While working on the score of this show, White was offered the opportunity to write television scripts. White accepted, and left the music business in order to pursue a career in writing for film and television. In 1977, He formed a production company, Kicking Horse Productions with friend Avri Liimatainen. Over the next several years, White worked to master the craft of writing for film and television, and left Kicking Horse in the early 1980s to pursue writing on a more fulltime basis.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, White served as a writer on television shows such as “The Beachcombers,” (1982-1990), “Danger Bay,” (1983-1990), “Northwood,” (1991-1992) and “Da Vinci’s Inquest” (2003-2004). He was also the screenwriter of the television movies “Striker’s Mountain” (1985) “The Legend of the Ruby Silver” (1996) and “Peacekeepers” (1997), all three of which earned White earned Gemini nominations for Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Series. White went on to receive the Writer’s Guild of Canada Top Ten Awards for “Ruby Silver” and “Peacekeepers.” White received the Margaret Collier Award, a lifetime achievement award, at the 2006 Gemini Awards for his outstanding body of work in film and television writing.
At the same time, White became a key player in working to protect the rights and interests of Canadian screenwriters. White was president of the ACTRA Writers Guild from 1986-1988. When the writer’s split from ACTRA in 1991 and formed the independent Writers Guild of Canada (WGC), White served as VP representing the Pacific Region of the Guild. White then served as the president of the WGC from 1994-2003. Under White’s leadership, the WGC helped to establish the Telefilm Canada Screenwriting Assistance Program, which funded writers directly through the screenplay development stage. White was also instrumental in bringing story editors, story consultants, and animation writers under the Independent Production Agreement (IPA) with the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association (CFTPA, now the Canadian Media Producers Association, or CMPA). In 2004, White received the Writers Guild of Canada’s Writer’s Block Award, in recognition of his service to Canadian screenwriters.
White currently lives in British Columbia. He has an avid interested in military history and Canadian history, and was a member of the Kootenay Lake Historical Society. He has published a historical non-fiction novel, “Crimea Sabre” (2015) and is working on his memoirs.

December 14, 2023

• English

Dillon, Mark. “Words from the Top.” Canadian Screenwriter. Summer 2016, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 24-27.
“Pete White”. Internet Movie Database. Accessed at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0925317/
“Hann, Paul.” The Museum of Canadian Music. Accessed at: http://citizenfreak.com/artists/96251-hann-paul
White, Pete. “Pete White.” University of Toronto Media Commons Archives. Pete White Fonds, 2017.020.410, “Misc. Miscellaneous – [Bios and Resumes], 198[?]-2014.”

Created by Lindsay Grant, Assistant Media Archivist, Media Commons Archives