Former C-FAX 1070 personality Joe Easingwood, whose booming baritone was one of the most recognizable voices on Victoria airwaves for more than 50 years, has died.
Easingwood checked into Victoria Hospice June 17 and died peacefully just after 1 a.m. Saturday, from complications related to brain cancer.
He was 75.
Easingwood will be remembered for his lively political debates, sharp news sense and good humour, said friends and colleagues.
“He was garrulous, full of bonhomie,” said fellow C-FAX host Barry Bowman. “There was only one Joe Easingwood.”
Easingwood’s career in radio began early. As a 10-year-old boy in Langley in 1948, he swept floors and filed records at CKNW in return for movie passes.
He attended Victoria High School, but dropped out after Grade 11, taking his final year by correspondence because he said the temptation of a full-time radio job as a technical producer was too good to pass up. He worked in every area — from sales to program director — at CJVI before making the jump to C-FAX in 1981.
Easingwood was proud of his self-produced programs, telling the Times Colonist in 2009 they were what made him so happy at C-FAX: “You’re responsible for your own show, and if it works, you’re fine, and if they don’t, that’s your problem. I just love that freedom.”
He was an early riser, said former C-FAX news director Ed McKenzie, who met Easingwood in 1974. He scanned three or four newspapers a day, never tuning out of current events.
“He had a radio on almost all waking hours. You can see that, at work or at home, he was the consummate news guy,” McKenzie said. “He was always keen to have the breaking newsmaker on air. … It didn’t really matter to him if he got someone out of bed.”
One year before he retired in 2010, Easingwood was ranked No. 1 in the 8:30 to 11 a.m. weekday time slot, with 36,404 listeners tuning in over five days of programming. By that point, he said he had more than 13,000 broadcast days under his belt in 55 years of radio work.
A large part of his success came through the spirited debates he hosted and his self-described role as a “professional provocateur.” But McKenzie said it was about more than being opinionated for the sake of controversy.
“He actually believed in advocacy to build a better community. And he felt that stirring the pot, as he called it, was a way to generate dialogue that would lead to change,” McKenzie said.
But he was a skilled interviewer and always fair, said NDP Leader Adrian Dix, who sat on Easingwood’s political panel alongside Liberal Adam Leamy for the final decade of the broadcaster’s career.
“While he would provoke, he would absolutely always give you the opportunity to say your point of view and get it out there,” Dix said. “He didn’t make the interview about him, he made them about the issues that were interesting and important to the community.”
In addition to his radio work, Easingwood also supported the community as an active advocate, director and donor to C-FAX Santas Anonymous. He also raised money for local charities — up to $300,000 by 2010, he estimated — through the sale of his cookbook, Joe’s Notebook.
And while Easingwood wrote a monthly opinion column for the Times Colonist for five years, for him, nothing beat radio.
“It was his first and only love as far as media was concerned,” McKenzie said.
He saw power in its immediacy. And he also told McKenzie that radio was about intimacy: “You were really speaking to people in their own homes, one to one.”
Easingwood is survived by his wife, Dawn. The couple would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this September.
A public service for Easingwood will be held July 6 at 11 a.m. at McCall Bros. Funeral Home at 1400 Vancouver St. In lieu of flower, the family asks that donations be made to Victoria Hospice (250-519-1744) or C-FAX Santas Anonymous (250-920-4644).
C-FAX plans to air a three-hour tribute broadcast to Easingwood from 9 a.m. to noon on Monday.
asmart@timescolonist.comm
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Times Colonist readers remember Joe Easingwood in Facebook messages and emails:
“He knew how to rile the guests but if he believed in what you were saying, he was behind you 100%. I related a story many years ago to him while our Union was negotiating our contract. He felt it ‘silly’ that we would be so gung ho about getting washroom facilities for our drivers. I called in and told him, being female, that I was totally embarrassed by having to “drop my drawers” beside my bus on dark and dreary Sunday night because there were no washroom facilities up at Royal Oak exchange. He was flabbergasted and joined our Unions crusade. We soon had a facility built at Royal Oak. You were a good man Joe Easingwood. You will be missed.” — Betsy Lockwood
“My condolences to a great man... he opened up that Art Bell show years ago.He knew what he was doing.I told him.What a man and will greatly missed.” — Cat Thunder
“Joe was really interesting guy and well-rooted part of Victoria’s popular media culture.” — John Newcomb
