Peter Gzowski 1934 - 2002
Canadian broadcaster and author Peter Gzowski died on Thursday, January 24, 2002.
For fifteen years he was the host of the daily radio program Morningside carried on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network across Canada. It was said that on the program he conducted over 6000 interviews of personalities from Prime Ministers and business leaders to hockey players and housewives.
In student days he was editor of The Varsity, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto, and subsequently worked at newspapers in Timmins, Moose Jaw, Chatham, and Toronto, before becoming managing editor of Maclean's magazine in 1962. He began his broadcast career with CBC in 1971 as host of This Country in the morning. After a time working in television he returned to radio, where Morningside (1982-1997) made him a household name throughout Canada. After retiring from that position he became an author of several books, and a regular columnist in The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper.
One of his great passions was literacy. He sought to arouse awareness of the problems of illiteracy, and raised funds to encourage reading. He set out to raise $1 million, but in the end raised $6 million by a series of celebrity golf tournaments. The 2001 tournament was held in the Arctic at Pangnirtung. There was no grass on the fairways, only snow, and the holes were cut in the ice.
He was a member of the Order of Canada, and the father of five grown children.
Peter Gzowski was a member of Zeta Psi. He joined the Theta Xi Chapter during his days as a student at the University of Toronto in the early 1950s.
Canada has lost one of it's finest.
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