Rafe Mair, 85, on Oct. 9. Mair was called to the B.C. bar in 1961, practicing law in Vancouver and Kamloops before being elected as a Kamloops councilman in the early 1970s. Mair went on to win the Social Credit party nomination for Kamloops in May 1975 and held the seat until retiring from politics in 1981. After leaving government, he served as a talk show host at CJOR Vancouver, before moving over to rival station CKNW where he gained notoriety for his views on the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional accords. Despite high ratings, his show was cancelled in 2003 and he was subsequently hired to host the morning show at oldies station CKBD-AM. In 2005, he became a regular guest on Omni Television current affairs program The Standard, in addition to turns as a regular panelist and political commentator. He was a columnist for online magazine The Tyee, up until his death. Mair was a recipient of the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jack Webster Foundation and an inductee of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. In 2009, he also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Simon Fraser University.
Ray Turnbull, 78, on Oct. 6, of leukemia at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre. After winning the 1965 Brier, finishing second in the World Curling Championships, and travelling the world as a coach and an umpire, Turnbull joined the TSN curling coverage team in 1984, alongside Vic Rauter and Linda Moore. Affectionately known as “Moosie,” Turnbull retired from broadcasting at the end of the 2009-10 curling season. In 1993, he was inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame as both a curler and a builder, was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2009 and into the World Curling Hall of Fame in 2015.
