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Award-winning Ottawa broadcaster, writer, and community organizer Lowell Green has died, according to his family.
Best known as the host of a long-running morning talk show on CFRA, Green began his career at the radio station in 1960 as a news and farm reporter.
His first open-line talk show, Greenline launched six years later.
Green was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1936 to Canadian parents. The family later moved to Arthur, Ont., where he was raised before attending Macdonald Agricultural College of McGill University.
In this photo, a young Lowell Green is pictured with his family delivering milk for the Green dairy in Arthur, Ont. (Submitted by Green family )
Green was known to use his platform to rally his listeners in support of causes he championed.
In the late 1960s, he organized a campaign encouraging listeners to send bottles of polluted water from the Rideau River to Queen’s Park.
That initiative later helped form the Rideau River Conservation Authority.
Green also launched a campaign to save the Centennial flame on Parliament Hill in 1967.
In the 1970s, he advocated for safer gun laws, following a shooting at St. Pius X High School in Ottawa that was committed with a shotgun the shooter purchased at Giant Tiger.
Outside his career in broadcast radio, Green authored several books. (Submitted by Green family )
In 1983, Green founded the Ottawa Sunday Herald, the predecessor to the Ottawa Sun.
Then in 1995, ahead of the Quebec separation referendum, more than 100,000 Canadians from outside Quebec joined Green in a “unity rally” he helped organize in Montreal.
Green is also remembered as the co-founder of the Ottawa chapter of Big Brothers, and the Help Santa Toy Parade.
By the time he retired in 2016, Green was North America’s longest-running open-line talk show host. Two of his broadcasts are preserved at Library and Archives Canada.
‘A proud Canadian’
“Lowell will be remembered for promoting ‘common sense’ and his ‘island of sanity,'” his family wrote in a statement Sunday announcing his death.
In a social media post, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said he grew up listening to Green before becoming both his colleague and friend.
“He was a groundbreaking talk show host and a proud Canadian,” wrote Sutcliffe, who worked as a broadcaster at CFRA before entering politics.
“My deepest sympathies to his family, his friends, and his many listeners who will miss him greatly.”
Green died Saturday, his family said. He was 89.