Neil McKenty, the former broadcaster and author, died early on Saturday.
McKenty’s broadcasting career was before my time, far enough that I can’t really add anything insightful to the obits already done about him today:
- Former Gazette reporter Alan Hustak writes a detailed obit for The Métropolitain
- CTV’s Camille Ross speaks with his widow, people at CJAD and Hustak
- CJAD has an obit with an audio report from Shuyee Lee, plus interviews with Rick Leckner and Joe Cannon
- The Gazette has an obit with a nice vintage photo of McKenty at CJAD
- A few memories from Mark Korman on his Montreal Radio Blog.
McKenty’s blog, where he did most of his writing recently, has been updated with a note announcing his death and giving funeral information.
If you want to get an idea what he was like, you can watch an episode of McKenty Live, put on CFCF’s website last year as part of its 50th anniversary.
UPDATE (May 21): McKenty Live’s producer, Daniel Freedman, shares a eulogy he delivered at McKenty’s funeral.
He certainly cared about getting it right. Years ago, I brought some interview guests to his show on CF, when I was working as a film publicist. I don’t even remember who, but I do remember that as the interview was taking place the camera guys were chatting and one threw a roll of duct tape to another, across the floor of the darkened studio, out of shot.
McKenty didn’t miss a beat but as soon as the red light was off, turned and blasted the crew as unprofessional, right there in front of his bemused visitors. It was odd to see, and I gathered he had his share of frustrations with his crewpeople at CF.
In the Gazette obit of Neil McKenty there’s no byline. Any idea who wrote it(maybe it was written in advance by different people over the years)?
It was written by a few people over a few days. It was started a few days ago when the paper heard of his hospitalization.
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