WHALEN o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-03-12 published
Richard Nellis
BOWERMAN
In loving memory of Richard Nellis
BOWERMAN who passed away peacefully at Manitoulin
Health Centre on Thursday, March 6, 2003 at the age of 86 years.
Predeceased by dear wife Ethel
BOWERMAN
(JOHNSON) (December 12, 1975).
Predeceased by parents Herman and Bertha
(SISSON)
BOWERMAN.
Loved brother of Susie (1989) and husband Harry
LEESON, both predeceased.
Stanley (predeceased in 1997,) Hazel (1984) and husband Norman
BRANDOW, both predeceased.
Harold (1984) and wife
Beatrice
MEAD, both predeceased. Lila (1988) and husband Thomas
SIMPSON, both predeceased. Burton (predeceased in 1951.) Melvin and (wife
Dorothy
FRASER predeceased,)
Clinton and wife Betty
DOAN, Stella and husband Ron
MacDOUGALL, Pearl and husband Jack
ABRAHALL,
and Evelyn (husband Ted
WHALEN predeceased.)
Visitation was held on Friday, March 7, 2003. Funeral Service was
held on Saturday, March 8, 2003 at Manitowaning United Church.
Burial in Hilly Grove Cemetery in the spring.
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WHALEN o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-06-04 published
Joan HANER (née
BOCK)
After a courageous struggle with cancer on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 at the age of 68.
Beloved wife of Harold for 25 years. Cherished mother of Jim
STEWARD/STEWART/STUART
(Debbie,)
Bud STEWARD/STEWART/STUART, Debbie
WHALEN (Terry), Lorrie
STADNISKY (Steve), Heather
BOUCHARD
(Eric), Shelley
SAGHAFI (Abdi), Kevin
STEWARD/STEWART/STUART (Liz) and Pamela
BORETZ.
Loving grandmother of 27 and great grandmother of 21. Sister of Ruth
STEELE
(Jim,)
Rosella HARRISON
(Orville) and Evelyn
TARABAS (Pete.)
Daughter of the late
Ernest and stepdaughter of Frances
BOCK.
Aunt to several nieces and
nephews. Friends called the Arthur Funeral Home and Cremation Centre
on Friday, May 30, 2003. The funeral service was held on Saturday
May 31 with Reverend Phil
MILLER officiating. Interment Greenwood Cemetery.
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WHALEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-09 published
James Joseph
DINNEEN
By Robin WHALEN,
Tuesday,
December 9, 2003 - Page A24
Husband, father, son, brother, friend, Canadian Imperial Bank
of Commerce communications officer. Born December 20, 1971 in
Sudbury, Ontario Died October 28 in Toronto, of acute myeloid
leukemia, aged 31.
It's not only my husband's young age that makes his death a tragedy,
it was his fun-loving, larger than life, indomitable spirit
it was his incredible loyalty, commitment and unwavering passion
for his wife, two young children, family and Friends. At the
risk of sounding clichéd or colloquial, James was one of a kind.
A man larger than life; a man never to be replicated, never to
be forgotten.
In December, 2002, after a couple of months of feeling slightly
under the weather, James decided to dig up his health card and
go to a walk-in clinic (he didn't have a family doctor; why bother,
doctors were for sick people) to get some blood tests done.
What the clinic found forever changed our lives: his blood-work
results were abnormal. James was sent to Princess Margaret Hospital
on a Monday afternoon, diagnosed with leukemia in the evening
and started chemotherapy 24 hours later. We were bound and determined
to fight. And fight James did.
Through two rounds of intensive chemotherapy, James kept laughing.
He laughed at reruns of The Simpsons, he laughed with his Friends
and family, and he laughed when his kids called to sing to him
on the phone. He told me he felt fine, would fight with every
ounce of strength in his body. Despite the failure of both attempts
at attaining a remission, James plowed ahead. We took a vacation,
we spent our tax-return refund on landscaping, and we bought
the gourmet barbecue of our dreams. He didn't think about the
cancer. He looked forward, never back.
After another two rounds of experimental, highly toxic chemotherapy,
James kept laughing. He hosted dinner parties at our home, he
took his kids to Wonderland, he frolicked in the lake with his
Friends (even with a catheter line inserted into his chest),
and we bought the luxury car of our dreams. He didn't think about
the cancer. He looked forward, never back. And even with no immune
system to speak of, he braved more than 400,000 people and attended
the severe acute respiratory syndrome concert at Downsview to
see his favourite band, Rush. All this against the advice of
his doctors. He looked forward, never back.
Through 11 months of treatment, he spent only three months at
home. But I never saw this mountain of a man give up once. He
kept the spirit of all those around him alive by continuing to
joke even in the worst of times. In his final months of life,
he attended hockey games, basketball games, went out to many
five-star restaurants and lived life like a healthy man full
of vitality although it turns out he knew he was terminally ill.
Two weeks prior to his death, he wrote our two beautiful children
a letter, to be read by each on their 18th birthday. In this
letter he passed along his life lessons and wishes for his children
knowing that he wouldn't be around to deliver love and guidance
in person. He distilled his values into one beautifully written,
eloquent letter. I got the chance to read this after he passed
away and was reminded again of my husband's incredible character.
In his final hours of life, he called all those he loved to his
bedside, one by one, to tell us how he felt; to tell us how we
had changed his life, why he loved us and how to move on with
his memory. To keep smiling, to be brave, to always remember
and to never give up hope. In his words: "Don't cry, we had great
times." My husband gave me a lifetime of beautiful, loyal, cherished
memories as well as two blue-eyed angels who remind me of him
each and every day. As James said on our wedding day, "Forever
is a good thing."
Robin is the spouse of James
DINNEEN.
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WHAM o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-15 published
Radio pioneer built network
He founded Ontario's first French-language radio station in 1951
when his local station denied francophones airtime.
By Randy RAY
Special to The Globe and Mail Monday, June 16, 2003
- Page R7
He started in business as a butcher, and later was a soldier
and a hotelier, but Conrad
LAVIGNE's first love was show business.
Whether he was operating the television stations in Northern
Ontario that became the largest privately owned television broadcast
system in the world, appearing at the staid proceedings of the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission,
or at conventions, Mr.
LAVIGNE often delighted those within earshot
with jokes, stories, witty comments -- even singing.
Like the time he sang grace during the annual meeting of the
Association for French Language Broadcasters in the 1970s.
"Members of the head table, including myself and Premier Bill
DAVIS, walked into the room and stood behind our chairs," recalls
Pierre JUNEAU, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission from 1968 to 1975.
"Mr. LAVIGNE, who was chairman of the French-language broadcasters
group, began singing grace in French, and with his very strong
voice. People felt sort of strange with this."
When he was done, Mr.
LAVIGNE looked at Premier
DAVIS and quipped:
"Well, Mr. Premier, this is to show you that when you are chairman,
you can do whatever you like."
J. Lyman POTTS, former vice-president of Standard Broadcasting,
remembers the time in the early 1960s when Mr.
LAVIGNE appeared
before the Board of Broadcast Governors -- predecessor of the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission --
in support of a radio or television station licensing application.
At the beginning of his presentation, Mr.
LAVIGNE expressed his
regrets that Board of Broadcast Governors member Bernard
GOULET
had died at few days earlier. Then, without skipping a beat,
he looked toward the ceiling and said: "If Bernie were here today,
I think he would vote for my application."
"It broke up the room," says Mr.
POTTS. "If ever a meeting got
dull he'd liven things up. It was a joy to find him at meetings.
He was a unique personality."
Mr. LAVIGNE, who was born in the small town of Chénéville, Quebec,
on November 2, 1916, and raised in Cochrane, Ontario, died in
Timmins, Ontario on April 16 following a lengthy battle with
emphysema. He was 86.
Friends, family and business associates say Mr.
LAVIGNE had show
business in his blood in his late teens. On many evenings, the
young man who moved to Timmins from Cochrane at age 18 to open
a small grocery store and butcher shop with his uncle would act
in plays in the hall of a local church. But he didn't get into
the entertainment business in a big way until after he helped
Canada's war effort, got married and started his life as an entrepreneur
in the hotel business.
In 1942, he sold his butcher shop and enlisted in the Canadian
infantry. He became a commando training officer while stationed
at Vernon, British Columbia, and in 1944 headed overseas. While
on a furlough from Vernon he returned to Timmins and married
Jeanne CANIE.
The couple raised seven children.
Mr. LAVIGNE returned to Canada in 1946 and bought the Prince
George Hotel in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, which at the time was
a booming gold-mining town. He sold the business in 1950.
He entered the world of media and entertainment by founding
CFCL,
the first French-language radio station in Ontario in 1951, in
what, essentially, was his way of ensuring the area's large French-speaking
population had a voice in the North.
Michelle DE
COURVILLE
NICOL of Ottawa said her father launched
the station after a group of francophones that he was part of
in Kirkland Lake was told by the manager of an English-language
radio station that they would no longer be given regular air
time to discuss issues of interest to French people.
"He was very proud of being a francophone," says Ms. DE
COURVILLE
NICOL. "
When he was told that his compatriots would no longer
be welcome on the local station he said, 'Oh, ya!' and got the
idea of starting a French-language radio station. He moved to
Timmins, applied for a licence and got it."
CFCL soon attracted a faithful audience, especially in Northwestern
Quebec, where it could be heard more clearly than French stations
in Montreal.
In a 1988 interview with Northern Ontario Business, Mr.
LAVIGNE
remembered the time he hired a relative unknown named Stompin'
Tom CONNORS to perform live on
CFCL.
The radio station was located
above a jewellery store and the pounding from Mr.
CONNORS's size-11
boots caused china to fall off the shelves in the store below.
Radio was his first love until the mid-1950s when, on a business
trip to southern Ontario, he saw his first television broadcast,
on WHAM from Rochester, New York He fell for the concept of television
and he and an engineer friend drove to Rochester and learned
everything they could about the magic medium of television.
Back in Timmins, Mr.
LAVIGNE bought a hill in the north end of
the town, named it Mont Sacré-Coeur, built a road to the foot
of his hill, and began blasting rock and working in earnest to
put a television station on the air. By 1956,
CFCL-television
was a reality.
"There was always the fear of failure because of the sparse population,"
Mr. LAVIGNE said at the time. "But we had an engineer with us
named Roch
DEMERS, who later became president of Telemedia, and
together we started putting up rebroadcasting stations between
1957 and 1962."
Kapuskasing's rebroadcasting station was the first such facility
in Canada, and it added another portion of the sparsely populated
northeastern Ontario market to the growing station's network.
Eventually, Mr.
LAVIGNE built rebroadcasting stations in Chapleau
and Moosonee, Ontario and Malartic, Quebec, and by the time expansion
was completed,
CFCL-television served 1.5 million people. Eventually,
he built the station into the world's largest privately owned
system.
For many years he appeared on a very popular
CFCL program known
as the President's Corner, during which he would sit on camera
in a comfortable chair and read and respond to letters from viewers.
Between 1962 and 1970, Mr.
LAVIGNE's television network entered
the world of high technology with its own microwave network.
Mr. LAVIGNE had the northeastern Ontario television market virtually
all to himself for about 20 years until the Canadian Television
Network (CTV) arrived on the scene. He reacted by building new
stations in North Bay and Sudbury with a rebroadcasting station
in Elliot Lake to serve Manitoulin Island. Expansion continued
in 1976 with the purchase of a bankrupt television station in
Pembroke, in the Ottawa Valley. Eventually, Mr.
LAVIGNE's private
network stretched from Moosonee to Ottawa, and from Hearst to
Mattagami, Quebec
"When we first started we had the market all to ourselves," he
told Northern Ontario Business. "We had 20 hours a week of local
programming, and it was beautiful. We gave the North a unified
voice. One time, during a forest fire near Chapleau, our messages
arranged for accommodations for 1,000 people in Timmins."
Mr. LAVIGNE divested himself of his broadcasting holdings in
1980, primarily because he was refused permission to operate
a cable television service in the North. He remained a director
of Mid-Canada Television, the network that grew from his little
Timmins station in 1956, and was chairman of the board of Northern
Telephone Ltd. For a number of years, he served on the board
of the National Bank of Canada, and for 10 years served on the
board of ICG
Utilities (formerly Inter City Gas.)
His life after broadcasting also included 20 years as a property
developer in the Timmins area.
"He was always a physically active person," says Ms. DE
COURVILLE
NICOL. "In the years he was setting up his television stations
he would often go out with the engineers. He was not as happy
sitting behind his desk."
Mr. LAVIGNE was elected to the Canadian Broadcasting Hall of
Fame in 1990. His wife died in 1995. He leaves Ms. DE
COURVILLE
NICOL and six other children, Marc, Andrée, Nicole, Jean-Luc,
Pierre and Marie-France.
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WHARNSBY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-07 published
Desire impressed scout
By Tim WHARNSBY
Tuesday,
October 7, 2003 - Page S11
Toronto -- Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER had a twinkle in his eye and an eye for
beating the odds. Nobody knew this better than Atlanta Thrashers
scout Dan MARR, who took a chance on Snyder.
The first time
MARR sat down to have breakfast with
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER at
the Boot and Blade Dining Lounge in Owen Sound, Ontario, seven
years ago, the initial impression
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER made was good enough.
"Snydes had this twinkle in his eye that said he was going to
get there no matter what the odds were,"
MARR recalled yesterday,
a day after the 25-year-old hockey player died of fatal injuries
suffered in a car accident with teammate Dany Heatley last week.
The odds were stacked against
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER making it to the National
Hockey League. He was a scrawny teenager. He didn't possess a
grand scoring touch. He lacked the impressive speed that smaller
players need. But
MARR couldn't cross
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER off his list of
prospects.
"When you watch a game as a scout, you look at the basics,"
MARR
said from his Toronto home yesterday. "You look at skating ability,
size and strength. Dan didn't score high in the basics. But then
you make a list of the best players on each team and he was the
best player on his junior team [the Owen Sound Platers]."
MARR, who was a Toronto Maple Leafs scout at the time, simply
used common sense and invited
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER to the Leafs' rookie camp
in 1998. When
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER wasn't offered a contract, he returned to
Owen Sound for a fourth season.
MARR, who joined the expansion Thrashers a few weeks later, told
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER not to give up.
MARR wanted
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER for the Thrashers.
"I know this sort of thing is said all the time, but you wish
some of the players you see with more talent had the heart, courage
and determination of Dan
SCHNIEDER/SNIDER/SNYDER,"
MARR said. "He played like
his personality. He was an honest performer, whose work ethic
and attitude were infectious.
"Everything you saw with this guy is that he gave it his all.
That's why a superstar like Dany
HEATLEY took him in as a roommate
last summer and the two trained together...... He fit in everywhere."
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WHARTON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-08 published
Robert E. WHARTON
Peacefully at his home in Bermuda at 8: 25 a.m., Thursday March
6th 2003, at the age of 66, after a long and courageous battle
with cancer. Beloved husband of Gerardina ('Gert')
WHARTON for
44 years. Loving
son of Mary Elizabeth ('Lil') and the late Hugh
WHARTON
Sr.
Loving father of Richard and friend Janet
PARKIN
Sandra and husband Kevin
SULLIVAN;
Bridget and husband Scott
ROOS;
Robby and wife
Katy; and daughter-in-law Caroline. Dear
grandfather of Lara and Kendra; Thomas, Jack, Zoë and Ty; Tristin,
Nicholas and Jonathan. Survived by his brother Hugh and wife
Carmen; sister Mary
TULLIS and Don
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON; brother David and
wife Christi; and sister-in-law Betty
WHARTON.
Will be sadly
missed by his nieces and nephews and many good Friends. Special
thanks to Dr.
NELLIGAN,
Dr.
GULLANE and Dr.
O'SULLIVAN, for their
incredible efforts, support and kindness. Dr.
WARRICK and the
wonderful staff at Princess Margaret and Toronto General for
their support, dedication and kindness. A memorial will be held
at The Weston Golf Club on Tuesday March 25, 2003 at 4: 00 pm.
50 Saint Phillips Road, Etobicoke, Ontario ph# 416-241- 8538.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to 'The Wharton head
and Neck Centre' at Princess Margaret Hospital c/o The Princess
Margaret Hospital Foundation, 610 University Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada, M5G 2M9, (416) 946-6560 We love you and will
all dearly miss you. Rest in Peace Dad.
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