{"id":397368,"date":"2026-01-09T02:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397368\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T02:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:11:09","slug":"hal-wake-former-cbc-host-and-vancouver-writers-fest-artistic-director-dead-at-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/397368\/","title":{"rendered":"Hal Wake, former CBC host and Vancouver Writers Fest artistic director, dead at 73"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Former CBC Radio host and writers festival director Hal Wake has died, according to his family.<\/p>\n

Wake, 73, died on Wednesday according to a short statement from his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe loved words. He loved books. He loved writers. He enjoyed a good ball game,\u201d it said. \u201cAbove all, he loved his family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wake died peacefully at his home on Vancouver Island, according to his family.<\/p>\n

Wake worked for CBC Radio for 17 years and in the mid-1980s he was the book producer for CBC Radio\u2019s Morningside with Peter Gzowski.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA screen grab from a CBC News television story in 1997 covering the departure of Hal Wake from CBC Radio where he was host of Vancouver’s The Early Edition. (CBC News)<\/p>\n

From 1994 to 1997 Wake hosted CBC’s morning current affairs radio show in Vancouver, The Early Edition.<\/p>\n

‘Sit up and take notice’<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe loved finding unexpected angles to stories, quirky characters and spontaneous moments within interviews that made you sit up and take notice,\u201d said Broddle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was passionate about making communities better and more connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following his career at CBC Radio, Wake went on to be the artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Fest for 12 years until 2017.<\/p>\n

He was also a former board member of the Writers\u2019 Trust of Canada and a juror for the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.<\/p>\n

\u201cHal gave his entire life to our literary community,\u201d said David Leonard, executive director of the trust.<\/p>\n

‘A great loss’<\/p>\n

Leonard said Wake was particularly skilled at helping writers well into their careers and needing a boost.<\/p>\n

\u201cHal was one of the names we turned to because of his deep connection to this community, but also his deep care for the community \u2026 trying to push it along \u2026 and really understanding that Canada’s writing life needed support and needed people like him to bring it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leonard also said that part of Wake\u2019s legacy will be how Wake promoted books and writers as an important part of the world\u2019s social and intellectual fabric.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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\u2019s a great loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019 Union of Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-397368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}