Hal Wake, former CBC host and Vancouver Writers Fest artistic director, dead at 73
Wake hosted Vancouver's The Early Edition on CBC Radio and was a stalwart of Canadian literature
Former CBC Radio host and writers festival director Hal Wake has died, according to his family.
Wake, 73, died on Wednesday, according to a short statement from his family.
“He loved words. He loved books. He loved writers. He enjoyed a good ball game,” it said. “Above all, he loved his family.”
Wake died peacefully at his home on Vancouver Island, according to his family.
Wake worked for CBC Radio for 17 years and in the mid-1980s he was the book producer for CBC Radio’s Morningside with Peter Gzowski.
From 1994 to 1997 Wake hosted CBC's morning current affairs radio show in Vancouver, The Early Edition.
'Sit up and take notice'
Alison Broddle, senior managing director for CBC in B.C., worked with Wake and said in a statement he was dedicated to the craft of radio storytelling in his career.
“He loved finding unexpected angles to stories, quirky characters and spontaneous moments within interviews that made you sit up and take notice,” said Broddle.
“He was passionate about making communities better and more connected.”
Following his career at CBC Radio, Wake went on to be the artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Fest for 12 years until 2017.
He was also a former board member of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and a juror for the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.
“Hal gave his entire life to our literary community,” said David Leonard, executive director of the trust.
'A great loss'
Leonard said Wake was particularly skilled at helping writers well into their careers and needing a boost.
“Hal was one of the names we turned to because of his deep connection to this community, but also his deep care for the community … trying to push it along … and really understanding that Canada's writing life needed support and needed people like him to bring it all together.”
Leonard also said that part of Wake’s legacy will be how he promoted books and writers as an important part of the world’s social and intellectual fabric.
“In this time when reading is more important than ever and sense-making is more important than ever, Hal was someone who really understood that books and writers are how we make sense of this world and certainly it’s a great loss.”
The trust said Wake hosted or moderated hundreds of literary events at festivals in Vancouver, Victoria, New York, Melbourne, and Sydney and is an honorary member of the Writers’ Union of Canada.
Vancouver-based author Kevin Chong, who was Wake's close friend, said he first met the former CBC Radio host at a 2003 event in Victoria.
At the time, Chong had just written his first major book — and he was at the event with established writers like Claire Keegan and Brian Brett.
Chong said Wake made them all feel welcome and valued in the same way, and described his work as an essential service to readers and writers.
"Both reading and writing are acts of communication between one person and another, but they're also solitary acts, and so there's this sort of contradiction that exists there," Chong told CBC's On The Coast.
"It took someone like Hal and events like the writers festival to make the, sort of, communicative acts for introverts into something that was more communal and face-to-face."
With files from On The Coast