I only had one encounter with the great Gordie Howe and while it was indirect, it was a beaut. “Mr. Hockey” died Friday at 88. In June of ’93, Mike Norris, then the sportswriter at TV Guide Canada, invited me along to join him at the opening of the newly relocated Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
When people ask, as they occasionally do, who is the biggest star I ever met, I only ever have one answer: Muhammad Ali. “The Greatest” died Friday in Scottsdale Arizona. He was 74. Growing up as I did in the ’60s, there was no bigger hero than Ali. He was mesmerizing in the ring, floating and
On Thursday, when the news broke, there was a temptation to blame the sudden shuttering of Canada AM to loosening Canadian content requirement requirements. These were implemented last year by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission. One of the results of that “Let’s Talk TV” pow-wow in Ottawa was a gradual reduction in the number of hours Canadian Over-The-Air
I write about television, but very seldom about television sets. This is a story about one I brought home from my parent’s house today. It is a Clairtone. It was the first colour set my family owned. With my mom’s move to a retirement home, the time had come to sell and empty out her
Like Art Linkletter, Alan Young was one of those Canadians embraced as all American in the early days of U.S. network television. He died earlier this week at 96. Born in England, his family moved to Scotland and then, when he was six-years-old, West Vancouver, He got hooked on radio as a lad due to
In a brave, new digital era of binge viewing, trust me to get hooked on a series which began back in the ’60s. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father ran for three seasons, from 1969 to ’72. I liked it as a pre-teen and enjoyed it even more the past several weeks as I caught up with
Still several time zones removed from reality, I managed to scramble downtown earlier this week to attend Wayne & Shuster in Black and White, a presentation of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Held at the University of Toronto’s Innis College (a wonderful mid-size screening room I hadn’t been in since attending U of T), the
Look up “’60s TV Dads” in the dictionary and there should be a photograph of the gentleman to the right: William Schallert. The actor passed away earlier this week at 93. Best known as patriarch Martin Lane on The Patty Duke Show (1963 -’66), Schallert’s face and voice were as familiar as test patterns throughout the