Andrew "Sandy" Stewart was a Canadian television producer and writer. He was the producer of Reach for the Top

Reach for the Top

Reach for the Top is a Canadian game show in which teams of high school students participate in local, provincial and eventually national trivia tournaments...

, a high school quiz competition that continues today.

Early life and career

Sandy Stewart was born in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, and in his childhood moved to Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 and London, Ontario

London, Ontario

London is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...

. His first job was as a technician at London's CFPL

CFPL (AM)

CFPL, or AM980, is a radio station owned by Corus Entertainment and based in London, Ontario, Canada that transmits at 10,000 watts at 980 kHz on the AM dial. The station primarily airs news, talk and sports programming.-History:...

 radio in 1948. He joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

 in 1952 with the Toronto outlet, and had a posting in the Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...

. He later moved to television and helped with the production of Razzle Dazzle

Razzle Dazzle

Razzle Dazzle was the title of a Canadian children's program produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between 1961 and 1966....

and The Friendly Giant

The Friendly Giant

The Friendly Giant is a popular Canadian children's television program that aired on CBC Television from September 1958 through to March 1985...

.

Reach for the Top

Stewart brought Reach for the Top, a televised quiz show for high school students, to a national audience in 1966, bringing teams from Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa to Montreal for a national final. He would produce the show until 1985, when it was cancelled by the CBC. He retained some rights to Reach for the Top, however, and continued to run a school-based version until his retirement in 1995. His final year was marred by job action in Ottawa that led Ontario schools to threaten to boycott the tournament if a team from Bell High School was allowed to participate.

Other pursuits

Stewart served as president of the Canadian Science Writers' Association and held regular dinner lectures up until his death in 1998. He wrote Here's Looking at Us, a book about Canadian television. He also wrote a strong criticism of CBC management during cuts to English programming in the 1990s.