Background
Champ was born in Brandon, Manitoba, and studied arts at Brandon University in 1957 and 1958 (he did not graduate), with his first journalism job coming in 1960 as a sportswriter at the Brandon Sun.
Champ was born in Brandon, Manitoba, and studied arts at Brandon University in 1957 and 1958 (he did not graduate), with his first journalism job coming in 1960 as a sportswriter at the Brandon Sun.
During this time, he was among the last correspondents to leave Vietnam during the fall of Saigon and among the first Canadian journalists to be admitted into the People"s Republic of China. Champ also contributed to the CTV newsmagazine series W5 between 1978 and 1982 during which his pieces gained notoriety for exposing corruption and mishandling of Canadian foreign aid to Haiti, police brutality in Toronto, and the plight of a Canadian citizen wrongly imprisoned in Texas, amongst many other topics. He then moved to the United States as a correspondent for National Broadcasting Company News for ten years, where he was assigned to the network"s bureaus in Frankfurt, London and Warsaw, also serving for five years as National Broadcasting Company"s congressional correspondent in Washington.
In 1993 he returned to his home country to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1993 to become an anchor for Canadian Broadcasting Company News: Morning.
Champ received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Brandon University in 2005. He retired from the Canadian Broadcasting Company in November 2008 after serving as the Washington correspondent for Canadian Broadcasting Company Newsworld. and was appointed Chancellor of Brandon University for two three-year terms beginning in 2008.
Champ’s professional contributions were recognized with a 2009 RTNDA (Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada) President"s Award.