Jacques Proulx, who was the morning host on CKAC radio for two decades, died on Saturday at 78 years old. He was well before my time, so I’ll leave it to others to do proper obituaries. Here’s what I’ve found online:
- Radio-Canada
- TVA Nouvelles
- Cogeco Nouvelles
- La Presse Canadienne
- La Presse
- Radio X talks to his brother Gilles Proulx
- Le Devoir talks about how things used to be better in Proulx’s days
- Statement from his family
- Hebdo Rive-Nord republishes a story it wrote a few years ago
And a tribute video from 98.5FM:
Thanks a lot for this. I grew up on CKAC and Jacques Proulx. He was French Montreal’s George Balcan. Every morning we’d listen to him and Tex Lecor’s “Les Insolences d’un téléphone”. CKAC was also the official radio station of the CECM, the precursor of the CSDM. So when on the very, very few times they would shut the French Catholic schools because of a snow storm, Jacques Proulx was the man. He is also the very, very mild mannered brother of Gilles Proulx, who of course is anything but well or mild mannered. It’s unfortunate the English media barely mentioned his passing.
He was one of the first morning man to be easy going and knowledgeable at the same time. In those days radio was a serious affair and he introduced daily laughter to an otherwise very information centered media. .
Radio-Canada was doing a serious kind of radio trying to be an example on good language and sounded more like cousins from France (they still do sometimes).
Jacques Proulx had a great voice and had a smile in his voice and it really felt like one of us was speaking .In those days there was no swearing and no stupid teenagelike comments…Telephone pranks were a new thing and were one of the successes of his team of daily collaborators.
When he left his morning man job and CKAC merged with CJMS it is then that Paul Arcand became the king of the airwaves. Proulx was that king for decades.
A great man, a simple man.
Frenchie Jarraud, Serge Belair, Jacques Proulx, and Pierre Pascau made morning radio interesting and treated their listeners with respect.
Gilles could stand to learn much from his older bro without sacrificing his polemicist side.
Pierre Pascau could be quite the polemist when he put his mind to it.