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KNIGHTS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-16 published
KNIGHTS, Glendon Smith
On July 14, 2008, Glen (76), after a fearless and undaunted battle, died peacefully from complications of bladder cancer at Sunnybrook Hospital's Palliative Care Wing. A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, he will be missed by his beloved wife Marjorie (NICHOLSON,) son Derek, and daughter Catherine and her family -- Jim, Courtenay and Emily BETTS, all of Toronto. One of three loyal and steadfast brothers, alongside Dennis and wife Gwen of Calgary, and Graydon and wife Beryl of London, Ontario, he was much loved by his nieces and nephews as well. He was a proud son of the late Arthur and Nina KNIGHTS of Pembroke, Ontario. Glen was further blessed with many great Friends from Wisconsin to Mexico, British Columbia to Nova Scotia, and all four corners of the world. He fought to keep his wry and often off-the-wall sense of humour to the end, and was comforted in his final moments with his family by his side. Services will be held at 4: 00 p.m. Saturday, July 19, 2008 in the Chapel, York Cemetery, 160 Beecroft Road, Toronto, Ontario. In Glen's memory, please consider donations to the Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care, or Sunnybrook's Palliative Care Unit or their "cancer-below-the-waist" walkathon (www.uncoverthecure.org). Then take a walk on a beach somewhere, for the world has lost a very special person.

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KNILL o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-07-12 published
GUTHRIE, Glen▼
Peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, July 10, 2008 in his 95th year. Loving husband of Phylis (née PILLSWORTH) for 62 years. Beloved father of Bob (Judi) and John (Camilla). Dear grandfather of Mark, Karen, Tim, Andrea (Steve COOK,) Christopher, Adam, Lucas and Christina and great-grandfather of Avery and Victoria. Loving▼ brother of Mary JOHNSTON and the late Fred GUTHRIE, and brother-in-law of Bill and Sue PILLSWORTH. Glen▼ will be greatly missed by niece Mary Lynne (Paul KNILL) and nephews Ian JOHNSTON (Nancy,) Ross and Derrick GUTHRIE and their families. Glen was a World War 2 Veteran and returned to establish a lifelong family business in the corrugated paper industry in the Toronto area. Friends may call at the Turner and Porter Butler Chapel, 4933 Dundas St. W., Toronto (between Islington and Kipling Aves.) from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. on Sunday, July 13, 2008 and 6-9 p.m. on Monday, July 14, 2008. A private family service will be held with cremation to follow. Interment to take place at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, London at a later date. If desired, donations in Glen's memory to the Alzheimer Society would be appreciated.

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KNILL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-11 published
GUTHRIE, Glen▲
Peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, July 10, 2008 in his 95th year. Loving husband of Phylis (née PILLSWORTH) for 62 years. Beloved father of Bob (Judi) and John (Camilla). Dear grandfather of Mark, Karen, Tim, Andrea (Steve Cook), Christopher, Adam, Lucas and Christina and great-grandfather of Avery and Victoria. Loving▲ brother of Mary JOHNSTON and the late Fred GUTHRIE, and brother-in-law of Bill and Sue PILLSWORTH. Glen▲ will be greatly missed by niece Mary Lynne (Paul KNILL) and nephews Ian JOHNSTON (Nancy,) Ross and Derrick GUTHRIE and their families. Glen was a World War 2 Veteran and returned to establish a lifelong family business in the corrugated paper industry in the Toronto area. Friends may call at the Turner and Porter Butler Chapel, 4933 Dundas St. W., Toronto (between Islington and Kipling Aves.) from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. on Sunday, July 13, 2008 and 6-9 p.m. on Monday, July 14, 2008. A private family service will be held with cremation to follow. Interment to take place at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, London at a later date. If desired, donations in Glen's memory to the Alzheimer Society would be appreciated.

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KNIPFEL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-03-13 published
WALKER, Mary▼ Pearl▼ " Mickey▼"
Peacefully at her home in Bala on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in her 91st year. Beloved mother to Stephen KNIPFEL of Gravenhurst and Launi BANNISTER of Oakville. Beloved grandmother to Joseph Stephen KNIPFEL. Beloved▼ sister to George WALKER. Predeceased by her sisters Irene JACKSON, Maude▼ MOREY, and Hazel McNALLY, and by her brothers Ted, Tom and Reg WALKER.
At the request of Ms. Walker cremation has taken place. There will not be any funeral services held.
A Celebration of her life will be held in Bala, Ontario next summer.
In memory, donations to the Muskoka Interval House in Bracebridge, Ontario would be appreciated by the family.
Arrangements entrusted to the W.J. Cavill Funeral Home Ltd., Gravenhurst, Ontario (705) 687-3242.

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KNIPFEL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-03-31 published
With a wrist shot 'like a bullet,' she played hockey for 73 years
There's longevity in sport and then there was the veteran from Bala, Ontario, who competed for most of the 116 years that Canadian women have been playing organized hockey
By Ron CSILLAG, Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S11
It was on a frigid windswept lake in central Ontario's Muskoka region where Mickey WALKER's parents strapped a pair of bobskates to her tiny feet when she was three years old. As she grew, the girl played shinny with her father and four big brothers. She learned to stickhandle quickly. "If I didn't," she would recall, "I never would have had the puck."
At 12, Ms. WALKER joined her first hockey team with her brother's hand-me-down skates, an old stick (a new one cost 25 cents), and magazines wrapped around her shins for protection. She was 73 when the Ontario Women's Hockey Association recognized her as the oldest woman in Canada still playing, and 85 when she finally stopped skating in regular Monday night scrimmages at the arena in her native Bala, Ontario
She twice contested the Canadian women's championship in the 1930s, and pioneered the growth and development of hockey for girls and women. "She was so dedicated to women's hockey," remarked her friend of 25 years, Hazel McCALLION, the irrepressible mayor of Mississauga who's leading an effort to preserve Ms. WALKER's small mountain of hockey memorabilia. "She always encouraged young girls to get involved."
Ms. WALKER so loved the clean way women played that she spoke out against the violence in today's professional game every chance she could. "These young women play the game the way it should be played - without violence," she told The Muskokan newspaper in 1994. "I hate the violence of the National Hockey League! [Commentator] Don Cherry and the National Hockey League players who promote and play violent hockey should pay attention to those women.
"Great hockey players over the years, whether men or women, have never been violent. Only the goons who can't play the game and are out to injure the great players are violent. They should be barred from the game."
Little got her dander up like Mr. Cherry. "All he does is promote violence in the hockey telecasts and he makes videos out of them and sells them," she huffed in the Muskoka Sun in 1993. (Attempts to reach Mr. Cherry for comment were unsuccessful.)
Her disdain for violence and concern for women and children extended beyond hockey. Over several summers in Bala, she was known for sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words: "My name is Mickey WALKER and I abhor mental, physical and sexual abuse against women and children. It has to be stopped!" She was also a fierce supporter of the death penalty.
She came into the world as Mary WALKER, the youngest of eight children born to Ada Berry WALKER and Captain John WALKER, who worked on Imperial Oil supply boats on the Great Lakes. The clan's Muskoka roots went back to the 1860s (Walker's Point bears the family name). The "Mickey" moniker stuck after young Mary endlessly sang a popular song she learned from the radio: "Mickey, pretty Mickey."
Her athletic skills came naturally. "We were a sports-oriented family," she recalled. "My mother was a beautiful skater and was still skating at 65. My father was a good hockey player well past the age of 50. So, hockey and sports just came naturally to me."
She also excelled at baseball and curling, and canoed well into her 80s.
Ms. WALKER began playing for the Bala girls' team in 1930. Practices were Friday at 4 p.m., and young Mickey so looked forward to them that she devised a way to get out of school early to get to the arena before anyone: She'd begin talking to someone in class until the teacher would holler, "Mary WALKER - out!"
That worked until the principal saw her scurrying along with her skates and stick before school was over. The next time the teacher spied his talkative pupil, she was kept for a half-hour after class.
"Well, that cured me," Ms. WALKER recalled in the 1995 history of women's hockey in Canada, Proud Past, Bright Future, by Brian McFarlane. "I never tried my little trick to get to the arena early ever again."
In 1934, Ms. WALKER's cousin returned to Bala after a stint in the semi-pro leagues in the United States, and joined the men's team in Bracebridge, Ontario, about 50 kilometres away. When he heard that the women's squad in nearby Bracebridge needed players, he told them about Ms. WALKER, who soon got an offer, accompanied by room and board.
When a teammate noticed that the toe of one of Ms. WALKER's skates was worn through, with her sock sticking out, she marched Mickey to her father's hardware store, where Ms. WALKER was handed a pair of $5 CCMs. They were the first new skates she'd ever owned.
She soon developed into her playing height and weight - 5 feet 8 inches, 130 pounds - and in her first year with Bracebridge, played for the national championship against the legendary Preston Rivulettes. The old Bracebridge arena was packed to the rafters. Ms. WALKER and her teammates had never played before such a large crowd and were so nervous, "it took us most of the first period to settle down," she told the Ice Times newspaper in 1991. The fearsome Preston girls, who reigned as champs for 10 years, were used to crowds and won the game 3-1 to retain their title.
Ms. WALKER and a group of Bala girls joined the team in Gravenhurst, about 15 kilometres down the road, for the following season, and again faced the Rivulettes for the national crown. The 1935 outdoor game was a disaster. For one thing, rain had dumped more than two centimetres of water onto the ice surface. "Have you ever tried to stickhandle on water?" Ms. WALKER later pondered. "The puck won't go anywhere."
For another, the champs had singled out Ms. WALKER as the only real threat on the opposing team. They identified her as the one whose wavy hair curled with perspiration (this was before helmets). Cries of "Get Curly!" could be heard from fans and the Preston bench.
Soon, the Rivulettes' big Marm Schmuck came barrelling down a wing straight at Ms. WALKER. " Step into her, Mickey! Step into her!" yelled her brother, Reg, from the stands. She complied, and both went down, but not before the Preston player's stick smashed Ms. WALKER across the nose and left her with two black eyes. "It wasn't an accident," she said, years later. A scar across the bridge of her nose was a lifelong souvenir.
As if that wasn't bad enough, an irate fan tried to swat Ms. WALKER with an umbrella every time she skated by. This time, her team lost 9-1, and the wild hit cemented her distaste for violence in hockey.
The Bracebridge and Gravenhurst teams folded and it was back to Bala until the Second World War broke out. At age 22, Ms. WALKER moved to Toronto to work at a small-arms plant that made Lee-Enfield rifles. Among 7,000 employees, she was soon picked among only a half dozen women to work in the "tool room," where she operated her own machine and earned the resentment of the men. "Girls in the tool room," she later mused. "Unheard of."
Two-and-a-half years later, she married a plant engineer and moved to Mississauga, where she played pickup games on the lake and in backyard rinks. Her daughter, Launi BANNISTER, a onetime figure skater, laughs heartily when asked whether she ever joined in. "Oh God, no! I didn't know what to do with a hockey stick!" Her mother was always chosen first and always shamed the guys with nimble skating and stick handling, and a deadly wrist shot that was "like a bullet."
But the story gets a little murky here. All her family will divulge is that Ms. WALKER endured back-to-back abusive marriages, both ending in divorce. She returned to Bala, alone, at 64.
She dived back into hockey, coaching a girls' team and captaining the Young Tymers, a squad of women over 35. She also started the Ice Girls, who met every Monday night at the arena for informal games. "There were no hockey programs for women or girls," she said about Bala. "So I started one. I'm trying to teach them that hockey is fun."
That's a lesson Ann KNIGHT learned. "She taught us how to stickhandle, how to steal the puck and how to love the game," said Ms. KNIGHT, who played alongside Ms. WALKER for a dozen years.
When Ms. WALKER turned 75, former Toronto Maple Leaf great Darryl Sittler was among dozens of people who sent her birthday greetings. She carried fan mail in her purse from Japan, Australia and the Netherlands.
In gratitude to her boosterism, the Ontario Women's Hockey Association in 1993 inaugurated the Mickey Walker Most Sportsmanlike Award. Ms. WALKER watched the Ontario Women's Hockey Association's ranks swell from a few thousand in 1975, the year it was founded, to about 40,000 players on 2,300 teams today, according to Fran RIDER, the association's executive director.
She loved the fact that women's hockey caught on globally, especially in 1990, the year of the first Women's World Championship, and 1998, when it was first played as an Olympic event. "You don't know how happy I am to see how far women's hockey has progressed," she enthused. "We've got just great players. They can do it all."
At the 1997 world championships in Kitchener, Ontario, she was interviewed by CBS television. The clip caught the eye of the late Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip and an avid hockey fan who had staged the Snoopy Senior Annual World Hockey Tournament in California every year. He sent Ms. WALKER an invitation to play on his team (the 75- to 80-year-olds) but she was battling the flu and couldn't go.
But she was well enough to show up at the 2000 world championship in Mississauga decked out in full hockey paraphernalia, and with her face painted red and white.
Incredibly, Ms. WALKER chain-smoked, starting at 25, and quitting only two years ago after a bout of pneumonia.
She died four days before her namesake trophy was awarded to four-time world champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Jennifer Botterill, who helped power the Mississauga Chiefs to the 2008 Esso women's national club championship in Charlottetown this month.
Mickey WALKER was born Mary Pearl WALKER in Bala, Ontario, on January 18, 1918. She died there on March 11, 2008 of natural causes. She was 90. She is survived by her daughter, Launi BANNISTER, son Stephen KNIPFEL and grand_son Joseph.

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KNIPFEL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2008-03-13 published
WALKER, Mary▲ Pearl▲ " Mickey▲"
Peacefully at her home in Bala on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in her 91st year. Beloved mother to Stephen KNIPFEL of Gravenhurst and Launi BANNISTER of Oakville. Beloved grandmother to Joseph Stephen KNIPFEL. Beloved▲ sister to George WALKER. Predeceased by her sisters Irene JACKSON, Maude▲ MOREY and Hazel McNALLY and by her brothers Ted, Tom and Reg WALKER. At the request of Ms. WALKER cremation has taken place. There will not be any funeral services held. A celebration of her life will be held in Bala, Ontario next summer. In memory donations to the Muskoka Interval House in Bracebridge, Ontario would be appreciated by the family. Arrangements entrusted to the W.J. Cavill Funeral Home Ltd., Gravenhurst, Ontario, (705) 687-3242.

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KNISLEY o@ca.on.grey_county.artemesia.flesherton.the_flesherton_advance 2008-01-30 published
HENRY, Emily Maude
Peacefully at Headwaters Health Care Centre, Orangeville on Tuesday, January 22, 2008, in her 76th year. Loving wife of the late Neil HENRY. Cherished mother of Faye and her husband Allan BENNINGTON, Keith and his wife Dorothy, Reg and his wife Trish, Margaret and her husband Sandy MORRISON and Jane HENRY. Devoted grandmother of 11 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. Survived by her brother Elgin ARMSTRONG and sister Irene KNISLEY. Predeceased by daughter Susan Elaine. The family received Friends at the Doney Funeral Home, Shelburne on Thursday from 6-9 p.m. The funeral service was held in the funeral home chapel on Friday, January 25, 2008 at 1 p.m. Spring interment at Shelburne Cemetery. Donations to the charity of your choice would be appreciated.
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KNIZHNIK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-25 published
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news anchor was 'meticulous, an announcer of the old school'
One of the last news readers hired by the corporation for voice alone and not for their reportorial skills, he broke the news to English Canada that Pierre Laporte had been murdered by the Front de Liberation du Québec
By F.F. LANGAN, Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
George FINSTAD was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcer who broke the news to much of English Canada that Pierre Laporte had been murdered by the Front de Liberation du Québec.
On the night of October 17, 1970, the body of the Quebec Labour Minister was found in the trunk of a car near Saint-Hubert Airport on Montreal's South Shore. Mr. Laporte had been kidnapped from his home in nearby Saint-Lambert six days earlier.
Mr. FINSTAD had just started as the backup and weekend newsreader for The National News. It was the first political assassination in Canada in more than 100 years and although Mr. FINSTAD made the announcement in his calm, trained voice, the event had a profound affect on him.
"George was really shaken by the incident," said Lloyd Robertson, then the main newsreader at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who was called in to work after news of the Laporte murder became known. "I remember him coming out of the studio and saying 'Wow, this is something that I never thought I'd see happen.' "
At first, Mr. FINSTAD went on without a script and read bulletins as they came in to the television station. He updated events as the night unfolded, introducing reports from the field.
"He was meticulous, an announcer of the old school. It made things easier that night since we had been working day and night for weeks on this story before the body was found," said Peter Daniel, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter in Montreal who spent long hours on the air during the October Crisis.
By then, George FINSTAD had spent almost two decades in broadcasting. The son of Norwegian immigrants, he grew up in Edmonton. His father, Carl, was often away from home, working on oil derricks, as a cook in lumber camps and later on ships in the merchant marine. His mother, Anna, worked in a factory in Edmonton during the war.
Young George had a great singing voice and there was some talk of him attending a music conservatory but the family couldn't afford it. Instead, he picked up a couple of other skills: golf and pool.
"My father was a something of a pool shark," said daughter Laurie FINSTAD- KNIZHNIK. "He was shy and sweet-looking, so people thought they could hustle him, but he could clear a table in minutes."
After graduating from Strathcona High School, known to its students as "Scona," he went to work at CKUA, a 250-watt radio station run by the University of Alberta and the provincial government. He did everything there, from reading the news to putting out the garbage. For a man who later became known as a dignified newsreader, one of his first announcing jobs was on a children's program in which he played a fish.
The money wasn't great, so he took a year off to operate a dredge at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. He then returned to the typical career path of a young announcer, working in a number of Western Canadian radio stations from Lloydminster to Victoria before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1964.
He first worked in Toronto as a summer replacement in 1965, and then moved full-time to the network headquarters in 1968. Along with reading The National News, he worked on a number of other programs. One of them was Lifestyles, a consumer-oriented show he co-hosted with newspaper reporter Joan Watson. It later morphed into a full-time network program called Marketplace. At the time, there was nothing of its type on television. Private stations couldn't run anything like it since they were in danger of alienating sponsors. Mr. FINSTAD was nominated for an award for his work.
"He was very focused, hard-working, driven in the sense that he wanted to ensure everything he did was right and proper on air and it always was," said anchor Peter Mansbridge, who was a reporter in Western Canada at the time. "I think back to watching George, I can never remember him making a mistake. He was always right on with everything, not only just the simple act of reading but ensuring he pronounced everything right. That can be a challenge in some newscasts."
Mr. FINSTAD's enunciation skills were in demand elsewhere, too. He provided voiceovers for many television productions, including the documentary Who Owns the Sea?, which he narrated with Gordon Pinsent. A specially edited version of this program was later shown at a series of environmental meetings held in Stockholm, Geneva and New York that led to the Law of the Sea Convention being reached at the United Nations.
By the mid-1970s, things have begun to change at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The broadcaster wanted reporters who had worked in the field, not professional announcers, to read the news.
There was also a bizarre union jurisdiction, with the announcers being in one union and the reporters and news writers in another. In theory, the announcer of the newscast wasn't allowed to change so much as a comma in the news copy. It frustrated announcers such as Mr. Robertson and Mr. FINSTAD, who considered themselves journalists, not just newsreaders.
In 1976, Mr. Robertson left to go to CTV, where he still reads the nightly newscast. Colleagues say Mr. FINSTAD expected to be promoted to be the main newsreader, but the job went to reporter Peter Kent.
Mr. FINSTAD stayed until the following year. At the time, he was 42, and his daughter said his departure could have been the combined result of frustration and an urge to do something different. In any event, he went to Montreal, where he auditioned at CJAD radio for the job of morning news reader, the top job at the city's top English-language station.
"The program director, Ted Blackman, just loved the sound of George's voice. He would play the audition tape over and over and call people into his office to listen," recalls Stephen Phizicky, the news director at the station and another former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation employee. "The station wanted traditional great voices, and George had one of those voices."
Several years later, he and Mr. Phizicky both returned to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where Mr. FINSTAD read the local news. He stayed on as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcer in Montreal. In September, 1988, he was driving home from work, listening to radio reports that Ben Johnson had just been stripped of his medal at the Seoul Olympics, when his car was struck by a large truck.
He was taken to nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, only to be revived by a visiting trauma specialist. His injuries were severe: Both lungs had collapsed and the rib cage was shattered.
"When he woke up four days later, he thought he had been injured in the Olympics," said daughter Kathy. "The accident had a real effect on his work. He couldn't finish a sentence without taking a breath."
In 1990, he retired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at 56. He and his wife, Betty, went to Vancouver for a while but moved back to Toronto after their first grandchild was born.
Mr. FINSTAD loved the spoken word and the written word. He was forever working at crossword puzzles, cryptic, acrostic and regular, and played word games with all his children.
"He drilled all five of us in homonyms and definitions so we knew the meaning of both enigma and conundrum," said Ms. FINSTAD- KNIZHNIK, the creator and writer of the television series, Durham County. "He was obsessed with language. There were vocabulary and grammar tests, Scrabble until midnight and more dictionaries than you could count. He had a true love of language and what could be done with it."
George FINSTAD was born in Edmonton on October 7, 1934. He died May 30, 2008, of a heart attack in hospital in Toronto. He was 73. He is survived by wife Betty, children Laurie, Rob, Mark, Kathy and Kim, a brother and four sisters.

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KNIZNIK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-03 published
KNIZNIK, Zev
On Wednesday, July 2, 2008, at Toronto General Hospital. Zev KNIZNIK, beloved husband of Esther. Devoted son of Balcia and the late Dov. Loving father and father-in-law of Aaron, Avi, Paula and David EICHLER, Jennifer, Jason, Ryan and Danielle. Loving zaidie of Jonah, Cole, and Alison. At Benjamin's Park Memorial Chapel, 2401 Steeles Avenue West (3 lights west of Dufferin) for service on Friday, July 4, 2008, at 11: 30 a.m. Interment Farband Labour Zionist section of Pardes Shalom Cemetery. Shiva 529 Douglas Avenue. Donations may be made to Zev Kniznik Memorial Fund c/o The Benjamin Foundation, 3429 Bathurst Street, Toronto, M6A 2C3, 416-780-0324, www.benjamins.ca

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