Fred has had a full career as a CBC TV host and reporter. He has written countless articles for many renowned publications such as The Economist, The Globe and Mail, BusinessWeek and many more, as well as more than 2000 obituaries. He is also a successfully published author and ghostwriter. His current projects include writing and co-authoring books, as well as lending his talents as a speaker and interviewer for webcasts.
William Wilder, who has died at 96, was one of the most powerful men on Bay Street from the 1950s to the 70s, helping build Wood Gundy into what was then the largest brokerage and corporate-finance firm in Canada. Bill Wilder, as everyone knew him, was a super salesman who could run numbers in his […]
Canadians are living longer. Is 85 really the new 70? Or to be more precise, the new 71, the year you can’t put it off and have to convert your RRSP into a registered retirement income fund (RRIF) and start taking payments from the money you’ve saved. There are three-quarters of a million Canadians over […]
(Mr. Sutherland is on the far left in this photo of his wartime Dam Busters crew, which demolished the Eder Dam in Germany’s Ruhr Valley in 1943) Fred Sutherland, who died on Jan. 21 at the age of 95, was the last survivor of the 30 Royal Canadian Air Force airmen who took part in […]
Alfred Bader, who died in Milwaukee on Dec. 23 at the age of 94, came to Canada as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany at the age of 16, deported from Britain as an “enemy alien.” After almost two years in a detention camp in Quebec, he enrolled at Queen’s University and excelled in his […]
Michael Maclear, who died in Toronto on Christmas Day at the age of 89, was a pioneering foreign correspondent for CBC Television. His work took him to more than 80 countries, but his greatest achievement came in Vietnam. There he attained what no other TV news reporter dared to hope for: access to North Vietnam, […]
Lyman Potts compiled a huge catalogue of Canadian content for radio stations. He did it not because some government edict told him to, but because he wanted to. Mr. Potts, who has died at 102, built the foundations for the Canadian music industry by creating domestic content for radio stations, recording bands and singers in […]
Although he had little formal education, Harry Leslie Smith, who died on Wednesday at the age of 95, became famous for writing and speaking eloquently about Britain’s National Health Service and the human toll of poverty. His own impoverished childhood in Yorkshire and the death of his sister Marion from tuberculosis at the age of […]
Eric Murray was the greatest Canadian bridge player of the 20th century, according to his bridge partner, many of his opponents and the Canadian Bridge Federation, which describes him as ”the greatest Canadian bridge player ever.” Mr. Murray, who died last month at the age of 89, dominated bridge tournaments in this country for four […]
Don Laubman, who died in Red Deer, Alta., on June 20 at the age of 96, was one of the top air aces of the Second World War. Remarkably, he shot down 15 German aircraft, even though he only arrived in England in 1942, three years after the start of the war. He was the […]
Imagine you're 23 years old, the low man on the newsroom totem pole, and they are about to send the police reporter, the oldest guy in the room, to cover
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July 27, 2020. Volume 1 # 14 This newsletter comes out every Sunday night/Monday morning. There is a subscription charge of $50 a year after you receive a few issues. The content is usually, but not always, money-related. Some weeks there will be an interview and/or a video. To subscribe, email me at fred.langan@gmail.com. […]
Larry Stout always loved ABBA. On a family road trip, his son John asked him why he listened to their music so much. “He told me when he got out of Beirut at a pretty hairy time during the civil war, the first music he heard when he was safe was ABBA. And he said […]
