Yesterday I learned about the recent death of an old CBC colleague radio producer Michael Finlay in Toronto. Michael was randomly assaulted in the dead of winter on the street by a stranger. He was out grocery shopping when he was attacked. He was pushed into a concrete planter on the sidewalk, breaking several ribs and puncturing his lung. He died of his injuries five days later.

It is important to mention that he was safely installed in the hospital when they decided to send him home just two days after his injuries were sustained. Soon after he arrived home, his condition rapidly deteriorated. He stopped breathing for about twenty minutes in the ambulance on the way back to the hospital. He was declared brain-dead three days later and was removed from life support.

If you had known Michael Finlay, you would understand how incongruous his name and the words brain-dead would be in the same sentence. Michael Finlay was one of those geniuses buffered by a cynical and sarcastic and caustic exterior. But as many of his closer CBC colleagues wrote about working with him, not only did he care deeply about the words and stories that were published on-air, he also cared about them personally.

My memories of Michael Finlay were the rigor and ridiculousness he brought to CBC’s As It Happens newsroom back in the day. It was during the Falkland Islands War and for reasons still not fully understood, the newsroom inherited custody of a huge and grotesque tarantula spider. Michael named s/he/it her Malvina – as the Falkland Islands were known in Spanish. My colleague and later boss Hal Doran took charge of the care and feeding of Malvina.  Four crickets from Eaton’s department store pet section every third Saturday.” Tarantulas don’t eat much,” he recalled dryly. I only hoped the cover on the thing’s tank was secure.

I was a so-called intern at As It Happens which was code for knowing essentially jack squat about radio production. The senior producers were accommodating and tolerant towards me personally. Behind closed doors, not so much I gathered. Michael Finlay was the brooding presence in the newsroom. He followed each producer’s progress as stories from around the world either came to fruition or blew up for some reason leaving a hole in the show that quickly had to be filled. Michael – rather Finlay as he was known – was intolerant of lightweight journalism. He often shook his head and complained that the upcoming show was going to be “a dog’s breakfast” or was “going down the toilet.”

Finlay once set me on a project to track down an English-speaking Pole. They were looking for someone who could speak to the mood in Gdansk, Poland, following a major development in the ongoing power struggle between communism and the Solidarność” labor movement. We all had to learn to pronounce Lech Walesa’s name correctly: WA-when-sa. Rube that I was I called the Gdansk Solidarność” office and reached someone who spoke English. The woman claimed to have no official role so I hung up and told Finlay. “Call her back!!” he roared. “She speaks English!!” Whoever she was, she was interviewed and ran on the show that night as a color piece about the mood in Gdansk.

I was there during an odd summer in the history of CBC and As It Happens. The NABET technicians who ran the boards and production studios were on strike. Music programming filled the airwaves for weeks instead of the news. Barbara Frum had recently given up the chair as host of As It Happens to transition to television and an exciting new TV news program, The Journal. When the strike was resolved, a number of guest hosts from across the country filled the chair in a bid to land the job permanently. No one wandered away from the As It Happens newsroom that summer. In the world of Canadian broadcasting, there were no greener pastures. I eventually left As It Happens “to pursue other opportunities.”

Finlay continued for many decades on a number of other important CBC Radio shows. Finlay spearheaded a particularly strong radio program that was a digest of stories from CBC foreign correspondents called Dispatches. That it was brilliant and exceptional programming isn’t the least bit surprising knowing Finlay was involved.

Finlay was one of those guys you figured you’d meet up with again up the road one day. It upsets me tremendously that I won’t. I hope he delved more deeply after retirement into the poetry he wrote on the side when he wasn’t busy making a living. I hope he knows the place he occupied in the esteem and affection of countless colleagues who saw through his crusty exterior. We’ll never know. His death is another stark reminder of life’s cruelty and capriciousness. A random assault against an esteemed artist who deserved more time on the planet. For his own sake and for those who knew his true value.

RIP Michael Finlay. He has left an unfillable void.