John Christopher Rose, 74, died peacefully on Sept 2, of kidney failure with the help of MAID. Born in East York, ON, Rose started his journalism career at the Associated Press (AP) typing copy from the dictatype machine. He worked his way up, eventually becoming a radio reporter with AP in both Toronto and Ottawa. Rose went on to become an editor and political reporter with Broadcast News (BN). In the mid-1980s, he joined CBS as part of a newsroom videotext development trial. He returned to Canada in 1986 to work for CTV National News and was involved in the development and launch of their 24-hour news channel in 1997. Following several years of teaching broadcast journalism and film production in Toronto, Rose trained as a chef. He retired to Vancouver Island in 2013 to pursue another passion, golf, but confessed, unlike his professional career, he never got better.
Bill Onn, 93, peacefully at Greater Niagara General Hospital on Aug. 26. Born in London, ON, Onn was an avid electronics buff who started working for a local radio shop and local radio station, CFPL, at their transmitter site in his early teens. He went on to join General Electric Canada as an electrical parts salesman, getting his first major position in radio at CHLO St. Thomas where he would meet his future wife, Ruth Carless. Onn joined CKEY Toronto in 1964 as an electrical engineer where he stayed until his retirement in 1990 as VP of Engineering. He concurrently ran his own business, BES, which specialized in supplying radio transmitter apparatus, much of which he built himself, in addition to installing mini radio antennae transmission towers in the Toronto area. In 1993, Onn was named Engineer of the Year by the Association of Central Canada Broadcast Engineers (CCBE).
Fred Locking, 73, on Aug. 23. Locking began his broadcast career in Brampton at CHIC-FM, which would later become CFNY. He joined CFRB Toronto as part of the station’s sports team in the late 1970s and for a time served as the Toronto Argonauts arena announcer and as part of the broadcast team for the Toronto Blue Jays, alongside Bill Stephenson and Dave Hodge. Locking went on to work at TSN from 1991 to 2004 after which he joined Skywords as a morning traffic announcer. He retired from Skywords in 2019.
