- He won/ was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. ( Canada's highest civilian honour).
- In 1916, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and served in France.
- In Hollywood from silent days, often associated with the director Cecil B. DeMille. Latterly in Britain, working for Alexander Korda and London Films. An adventurer at heart (his peers called him "Crazy Canuck"), specialist in outdoor and nature cinematography, he often toiled under hazardous conditions enduring either searing heat, locust plagues or being dive-bombed in the Mediterranean and nearly killed.
- In 1952, he retired from the film industry and moved with his family to the 80-acre Cheam Farm at Chilliwack, British Columbia, where he became a dairy farmer.
- He was a Canadian cameraman, cinematographer, and veteran of World War I and World War II.
- Borradaile's grandson is former rugby union footballer Norm Hadley.
- Much of this footage was taken in Africa, where he met and filmed the rituals and daily lives of several tribes.
- He started in Hollywood filming silent movies during which period he made movies starring, among others, Wallace Reid and legends such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, and Lillian Gish.
- He went on to "talkies" working closely on numerous films with Cecil B. DeMille.
- In the late 1940s, Borradaile travelled to Antarctica to file sequences for Scott of the Antarctic, one of the most ambitious film projects for the time period.
- Borradaile's speciality was filming natural environments to serve as backdrops and stock footage.
- He filmed the aerial sequences for Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (Hughes was his pilot), this being a precursor to the location and outdoor shooting that would become his trademark.
- In 1957, he was commissioned by the Government of British Columbia to make a documentary film commemorating the province's upcoming centennial. The Tall Country was released in 1958, and won the Canadian Film Award for Best Theatrical Short Film at the 11th Canadian Film Awards in 1959.
- He was behind the camera for the films of Sabu, including Elephant Boy, The Drum, and The Four Feathers, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Colour Cinematography.
- While living in Medicine Hat, he saw one of his first movies when he was seven years old.
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