John Drainie
John Robert Roy Drainie (April 1, 1916 – October 30, 1966) was a Canadian radio and television actor and presenter. Orson Welles called him “the greatest radio actor in the world.” He was best known in Canada for the lead role of Jake in the radio version of Jake and the Kid and for a popular one-man show where he played humorist Stephen Leacock. He also appeared as Matthew Cuthbert in the 1956 CBC film Anne of Green Gables and narrated the CBC series Sunshine Sketches in 1952. He played Jake again in the 1963 version of Jake and the Kid.
Drainie began his career in Vancouver radio, working at CJOR, CKNW and CBU, and later moved to Toronto to join the CBC during its “Golden Age of Radio.” He worked with many noted actors and, in 1954, gave a lifelike imitation of Joseph McCarthy in the satirical radio play The Investigator. In 1963 he acted in Disney’s The Incredible Journey as Professor Hunter.
In 1964 Drainie cohosted the controversial news program This Hour Has Seven Days with Laurier LaPierre, but he left the show in 1965 due to cancer and was replaced by Patrick Watson. He died of cancer in 1966 at age 50 in Toronto.
His wife Claire later married Nathan A. Taylor. Their daughter Bronwyn Drainie became a journalist and broadcaster and wrote Living the Part: John Drainie and the Dilemma of Canadian Stardom (1988) about her father. The John Drainie Award (ACTRA) and the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize (Writers’ Trust) are named in his honor, and he was posthumously inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:46 (CET).