Grant Lawrence

Who is Grant Lawrence?

Grant Lawrence is a veteran Canadian radio personality and writer based in Vancouver, primarily associated with CBC Radio 3. Lawrence was also the vocalist for the indie rock group The Smugglers.

In addition to his regular shifts on Radio 3 itself, Lawrence was the host of Radio 3's Saturday night program on the CBC Radio 2 network until March 17, 2007, when that program was discontinued. He is also regular host of the service's monthly podcast, which is the most widely downloaded Canadian podcast on the Internet as of 2006. Spin magazine dubbed it the best podcast in Canada. In 2012, he also hosted the summer series The Wild Side on CBC Radio One.

Lawrence began his association with the CBC in the 1990s, filing stories about life on tour with the Smugglers for David Wisdom's show Night Lines. When Nightlines ended in 1997, Wisdom and Leora Kornfeld, the former host of Realtime, went on to host the new series RadioSonic. Lawrence initially worked for the show as a researcher, and later became a producer, and became host of RadioSonic in 2001 after Wisdom and Kornfeld left the program.

In the summer of 2013, Grant and director Brent Hodge did a cross-country tour called The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, which was distributed as a web series on CBC Music and other streaming video sites. It followed Lawrence across Canada visiting various musicians and other personalities along the way, including the Darcys, Hollerado, Sam Roberts, Theo Fleury, Hawksley Workman and others. The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions won an award for Best Original Program or Series produced for Digital Media – Non-Fiction at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards.