Michael Easton, unexpectedly, on June 24. Easton’s radio career started as an announcer and producer with CKDA and CFMS-FM Victoria in the mid-1960s. He went on to work at CJVI and CHEK-TV Victoria, and later CJJC Langley, CJCA-FM Edmonton, and CKPG Prince George. In 2006, Easton founded Puget Sound Radio, a media industry news and commentary site focused on Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
Sunny Sidhu, 51, on June 20, after a lengthy battle with scleroderma. A graduate of BCIT, Sidhu’s broadcasting career started at A-Channel in Edmonton in the mid-1990s as an entertainment anchor and fill-in weather host. He worked with the station for seven years, before pursuing freelance projects as a host and producer for MTV Asia, covering festivals and interviewing artists for the network’s markets in India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong, and later for the Channel V music network. While continuing to pursue hosting, acting, voiceover, documentary and other projects, Sidhu simultaneously launched a successful career in real estate. Among his recent projects were 2022 short doc, Punjabi Pioneers of Alberta, which he wrote and starred in; and Singhs in the Ring, the forthcoming feature documentary on the Singh wrestling dynasty for Crave, on which he served as a producer and executive producer. Read more here.
Bryan Onley, 87, on June 13 at the Manitoulin Health Centre, in Little Current, ON. Born in England, Onley moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 13 and settled in Hamilton. He discovered his love for radio shortly after leaving high school early to take a job as a bank teller, joining the radio station in Timmins and then CKWS Kingston, starting in the late 1950s. He was a popular DJ on both AM 960 (CKWS-AM) as well CKWS-TV where he hosted “Teenage Dance Party” throughout the 1960s, modeled after Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.” Among other career highlights, Onley welcomed the Beatles to Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens on Sept. 7, 1964. After going back to school at Queen’s University as a mature student where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and then a Master’s Degree with Honours in Political Science, he took up teaching in the Broadcast Journalism program at Loyalist College in Belleville in the late 1970s, where he served as a professor and then Dean and Associate Vice Principal. He went on to become the Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Regina and later travelled to Abu Dhabi to develop and lead the Communication, Journalism and Media Studies programs at the Higher Colleges of Technology.
Lynn Kelly, 72, on June 5 after a long battle against early onset Alzheimer’s. Born in Montreal, Kelly spent her formative years in Europe. Interested in broadcast journalism, she overcame her natural shyness and applied to CBC Toronto in the early 1970s, starting out in a clerical role in the news department before rising to become a reporter, writer, and producer in both New Brunswick and Toronto. She ended her career with the public broadcaster as a producer on The National.
Stanley “Stan” Fox, 97, on May 20, in Victoria. Fox was hired as a film editor at CBC Vancouver in 1953, later becoming a producer and director with the station’s film department. He was also involved in the Vancouver Film Society, which he took over alongside Alan King in 1948, co-founding the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1958. His amateur filmmaking work included award-winning films “Suite Two: A Memo to Oscar” (1947) and “In the Daytime” (1949-50), both of which are preserved in the BC Archives. He returned to television in 1981 at TVOntario as the Director of Adult Programming, acquiring and developing programs. He also served as an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Film at York University from 1971-84. He went on to work as an independent media producer in Victoria.
