CKNX o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2005-08-16 published
TROTT,
Muriel
Margaret (née
LOOBY)
Muriel Margaret
(LOOBY)
TROTT of Clinton passed away peacefully
at the Clinton Public Hospital on Monday, August 15, 2005 in
her 87th year. Born in Dublin, Ontario, July 9, 1919, she was
the last remaining member of a family of eight children born
to the late Louis James
LOOBY (1938) and his wife, the former
Ann Marie RYAN (1981.) Muriel received her elementary and secondary
education from the Ursuline Sisters in Dublin, Ontario. On July
9, 1941, she was married at Saint Martin's Catholic Church, London,
Ontario to Clarence A. (Ted)
TROTT,
Seaforth, who predeceased
her on January 22, 1987. Muriel had a writing career, which she
commenced as a free-lance journalist and photographer in 1944,
retiring in 1974. As such, she was associated with the London
Free Press, The Stratford Beacon Herald and
CKNX a.m. Wingham.
Muriel was a dedicated member of St. Joseph's Catholic Church,
Clinton for 55 years and contributed to its history by her extensive
research. She was a faithful member of the Catholic Womens League
and was recently presented with her 60 year membership pin. Her
interests in the community earned her an honourary life membership
with the Clinton Public Hospital Auxiliary and recognition as
a charter member of the Clinton Community Credit Union, now Heartland
Credit Union.
Surviving are a daughter Ann
COOKE,
Barrie, two grandchildren,
Katherine JACKSON, and her husband Chris, Oakville and Peter
NESBITT and his wife, Janice, London, three great grandchildren,
Matthew and Joshua
JACKSON, and Jeffrey
NESBITT.
Also surviving
is her grandchildren's father, David
NESBITT,
Kitchener and a
brother-in-law Romaus J.
CURRAN,
Montreal,
Quebec.
Muriel will
be missed by her many nieces and nephews, and their families,
who provided constant love and support. The devotion and care
shown by her niece, Pauline Goettler
HARTFIEL brought her great
joy and happiness during her senior years. Besides her husband,
Muriel was predeceased by an infant granddaughter, Susan
NESBITT,
two sisters Loreen
CURRAN, and Ally
GOETTLER and her husband
George; five brothers, Reverend Arthur R.
LOOBY, C.S.B., Joseph
and his wife Edna, Clayton and his wife Kathryn, Clarence and
his wife Margaret, Louis and his wife Bernice and a nephew Arthur
Clayton LOOBY and a great-niece Ann
HARTFIEL.
Friends will be
received at the Falconer Funeral Homes Ltd., 153 High Street,
Clinton on Wednesday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Mass of the Christian
Burial will be held at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Clinton
on Thursday, August 18, 2005 at 11 a.m. Interment St. Patrick's
Cemetery, Dublin. Parish prayers will be held at the funeral
home on Wednesday at 3: 45 p.m.
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CKNX o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2005-09-16 published
MEADOWS,
Don
The family of Don
MEADOWS regretfully announces his passing on
September 14, 2005 at the age of 82. Don died peacefully at Listowel
Hospital following a short illness. He was born in Cayuga, Ontario
on July 2, 1923. He was the eldest of 3 children of the late
Howard Arthur Vincent
MEADOWS and Frieda Kathryn
(KLINE). His
early work in radio became a life long passion beginning at
CKOC
Hamilton in the late forties until his recent commercial work
at CKNX in Wingham. He married Patricia
(MARSHALL) in 1947 relocating
from Simcoe to London where his family grew to three children.
There he was involved in several business ventures including
radio sales, dry cleaning, tour boat rentals and corporate sales.
Eventually Don and Pat moved to Listowel where Don was Sales
Manager for Spinrite Yarns. He was an active member of First
Baptist Church, Listowel for many years, a member of the Board
of Directors of the Public Utilities Commission and an enthusiastic
promoter of both business and charitable activities. He was named
Listowel's Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year in 1992. As
a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment Reserves he became the
social convener of the group of members that came to be known
as Junior Officers Protective Association. For over 40 years,
the Junior Officers Protective Association husbands and wives
continued their extraordinary Friendships, getting together several
times a year for bridge and other enjoyable events. Listowel
has also provided many Friendships. Over the years Don was also
a devoted member of the Progressive Conservative Party, an avid
tennis player and golfer. In addition to his parents, Don was
predeceased by his sister Lois and his daughter Lee Anne. He
is survived by Pat, his loving wife of 58 years, his son David
(Susan POTTS,) daughter Merry Lou (Joe
CHANG,) grand_son Jason
MEADOWS, sister Betty
ADAM/ADAMS, sister-in-law Margaret
(MARSHALL)
ELLIOT/ELLIOTT
(Jack
ELLIOT/ELLIOTT,) and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
The family will receive visitors at the Simpson Funeral Home
at 285 Elizabeth Street, Listowel (519-291-4424) on Friday September
16, 2005 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. A Memorial Service will be held
at First Baptist Church, Listowel on Saturday, September 17,
2005 at 2: 00 pm with Reverend Bob
LEWIS officiating. In lieu of flowers
donations were made to the Cancer Society and First Baptist Church,
Listowel in Don's memory.
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CKNX o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-01-24 published
Harry J. BOYLE, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcaster:
Farmer's son from southwestern Ontario shook the soil off his
feet to become a radio and television pioneer who shaped Canada's
air waves, writes Sandra
MARTIN
By Sandra MARTIN,
With files from Canadian Press, Monday, January
24, 2005 - Page S6
Broadcaster, playwright, novelist, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
executive and a former Chair of the Canadian and Radio Television
Commission,
Harry
J.
BOYLE was a huge influence on Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation radio and television as a programmer, talent spotter
(think Wayne and Shuster), broadcast boss and policy maker.
"He helped the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation become the link
that held the country together," said novelist and radio producer
Howard ENGEL. "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in my time
[the 1950s-1970s] was like the railway a century earlier. It
let people in Corner Brook know what was going on in Edmonton.
He was very important that way in his writing and in his broadcasting."
Harry BOYLE was born on a farm in 1915 in southwestern Ontario.
After graduating from Wingham High School and St. Jerome's College
(now part of the University of Waterloo) he worked as a journalist
for the Goderich Signal Star and a stringer for the London Free
Press and the Globe and Mail.
He got his first job as a broadcaster in 1936 at Radio Station
CKNX in Wingham, Ontario, the town later made famous as the birthplace
and literary home of short-story writer Alice
MUNRO. He left
the radio station in 1941 and worked for a year at the Stratford
Beacon-Herald before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
as a farm commentator in 1942. He quickly rose to become a network
supervisor of features and director of the National Farm Radio
Forum.
"He literally had an understanding of broadcasting and life from
the grass roots up because he was a farmer," said playwright
and Toronto cultural maven Mavor
MOORE who was a colleague at
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio as far back as the 1940s.
There were two Canadian programs that were way ahead of every
other in the world in terms of the size of their collective audience
audiences that would gather in halls and meeting places across
the country to listen to radio, according to Mr.
MOORE.
One of
them was the Citizen's Forum and the other was the Farm Forum
under Mr. BOYLE's supervision.
"He was a real thinking farmer," said Mr.
MOORE, "and a good
deal deeper than people expected of the head of the farm dept."
Those programs gave him an insight into the importance of broadcasting
across the country, an understanding that he used "to turn radio
into a medium where difficult and large topics could be tackled,"
said Mr. MOORE.
With his "enquiring mind and his lively concern
about big issues in society and communications" he was an "anomaly
among the people starting radio and television, who were on the
whole pretty low brow," according to Mr.
MOORE.
He was an anomaly in other ways, too. A devout Irish Catholic
who enjoyed a drink or three, Mr.
BOYLE hated hypocrisy, top-down
bureaucracies and micro-managing. The legendary broadcaster Max
FERGUSON was a staff announcer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
in the late 1940s. By that time Mr.
BOYLE was head of the Trans-Can
network.
"I was the lowest paid announcer on staff," Mr.
FERGUSON remembered
yesterday, "Every year we got an annual increment, although we
called it the annual excrement because it was about ten dollars
a year." That year -- it was 1949 -- Mr.
FERGUSON was told by
a functionary that he wasn't going to get a raise at all, even
though he was doing Rawhide, his satirical commentary in addition
to his regular duties.
In the ensuing blow-up, Mr.
FERGUSON either quit or was fired
for insubordination, depending on who is telling the story. While
Mr. FERGUSON was still seething, along came Mr.
BOYLE with the
suggestion that he should think about selling Rawhide to the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a freelance basis. "He was
like the army sergeant interceding for the privates with the
officers, except he did it between the announcers and the producers,"
said Mr. FERGUSON.
"He sold that Rawhide show to them [the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation]for about five times my salary and I was able to
move back to Halifax, which I certainly preferred to Toronto.
Things worked out beautifully and I owe it all to Harry
BOYLE.
He was the only one who would listen to you and go to bat for
you with his bosses."
When the Dominion Network was established at the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, Mr.
BOYLE created the feature show Assignment which
reflected "homey" local stories from across Canada and his real
triumph, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Wednesday Night, a
mix of opera, musicals, classical and original plays and even
documentaries that ran for 90 minutes or three hours depending
on the strength of the program. Until then, the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation schedule was divided into rigidly fixed and timed
segments. What Mr.
BOYLE did, to the delight of both listeners
and freelance producers, was to make the process more flexible
so that the quality of the program determined the schedule rather
than the other way around. This was the era that is known as
the "golden age" of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with actors
and producers of the ilk of John Drainie and Lister Sinclair
fusing listeners to their radios.
"He was the making of me," said retired radio producer Howard
ENGEL, only one of many people Mr.
BOYLE took a chance on as
broadcasters. "I was a high-school teacher and not much enjoying
it in the mid-1950s," he said, confessing that after a single
pedagogical year in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, he had given it
up and moved to Toronto and was looking for work. The two met
over a drink at a crowded table in the Evereen, a pub across
from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Jarvis Street,
just north of the Celebrity Club, a local watering hole that
Mr. BOYLE was known to frequent.
He sent Mr. Engel off with a tape recorder and commissioned him
to do a short documentary about the celebration of Chinese New
Year in Toronto's Chinatown. "That meant I had to learn how to
use a tape recorder, to edit tape and to do a mix," Mr.
ENGEL
said, confessing that he produced a 45 minute script that he
had to boil down to about five minutes. He soon became a tape
editor on Assignment with host Bill
McNEIL.
Mr. BOYLE made the tape recorder an indispensable tool of broadcasting,
said Mr. ENGEL, as essential as a typewriter was for print journalists
at the time. In doing so, he ruffled the technicians union. He
was in favour of unions, said Mr.
ENGEL, but he thought this
was new territory and in the same way that you wouldn't impose
somebody sitting on the lap of a print journalist writing on
a typewriter, he believed broadcast journalists should be allowed
to go out and record sounds and voices.
Although Mr.
BOYLE had a bad enough drinking problem that he
would disappear from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for
as much as a week at a time, Mr.
ENGEL said he could always re-invent
and resurrect both himself and his career with brilliant new
programming ideas. "He was a multiple phoenix," said Mr.
ENGEL,
who was able to save himself by his own invention.
He could arouse envy as well as admiration in other broadcasters.
Margaret LYONS, former vice-president English radio services
for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was a senior producer
in public affairs and "a competitor for air time" in the 1960s.
She remembers Mr.
BOYLE as "very independent minded" with no
patience for political or any other kind of "correctness." Saying
that Mr. BOYLE was a great generalist who always wanted to poke
fun at the establishment and against all forms of intellectual
pretension, she said he was an iconoclast who gave legitimacy
to an irreverence about public life and broadcasting bureaucracy.
"His commonsensical approach was a good thing," she concluded.
He was always at loggerheads with the brass above him, said Mr.
ENGLE and when he went to Ottawa he found himself in the same
situation with his political bosses. In 1968, Mr.
BOYLE was appointed
vice chairman of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications
Commission, the independent public authority that regulates and
supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in Canada. He
succeeded Pierre
JUNEAU as chairman when Mr.
JUNEAU resigned
in 1975 and was later confirmed to the position in 1976.
A committed nationalist, Mr.
BOYLE had a huge influence on the
Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission and
the shaping of the 1968 broadcasting act, according to Joan Irwin
a journalist who wrote about the Canadian Radio-Television and
Telecommunications Commission for a number of print outlets at
the time. 'Harry was better at cutting through crap than anybody
I have ever known. He was absolutely real and he could see through
anybody -- a terrific guy."
Mr. BOYLE left the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications
Commission after a year, having gained a reputation, along with
Mr. JUNEAU, of safeguarding domestic ownership of Canada's broadcasting
industry and creating a set of Canadian content quotas for television,
among other initiatives.
In 1977, Mr.
BOYLE presided over a committee of inquiry which
examined national broadcasting shortly after the victory of the
separatist Parti Quebecois victory in Quebec's 1976 election.
The report was critical of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
for failing to promote communications among the country's regional
and linguistic communities, and expressed concern about the centralization
of the system, the lack of programming from regions outside central
Canada and the gap between French and English audiences.
Mr. BOYLE was also a newspaper columnist, an essayist, novelist
and playwright. His novels, included, A Summer Burning (1964),
With a Pinch of Sin (1966), Memories of a Catholic Boyhood (1973)
and The Luck of the Irish (1975). His radio and stage plays including
Strike, The Macdonalds of Oak Valley and The Inheritance. He
won the Stephen Leacock award for humour and the John Drainie
award.
Harry J. BOYLE was born on October 7, 1915 in St. Augustine,
Ontario He died in Toronto on January 22, 2005. He was 89. He
is survived by a son and a daughter.
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