Allan McFee (June 4, 1913 – December 12, 2000)CBC broadcaster Allan McFee dies

cbc.ca CBC.ca is the English-language online service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It was introduced in 1996. Under its previous names, the CBC's online service first went live in 1993. The Web-based service of the CBC is one of Canada's m ...

, December 12, 2000. was an often irreverent announcer for the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

's radio and television networks. Born in

Belleville, Ontario Belleville is a city in Ontario, Canada, situated on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, located at the mouth of the Moira River and on the Bay of Quinte. Its population as of the 2021 Canadian census was 55,071 (Census Metropolitan Area population 1 ...

, he joined the CBC in 1937, and remained with the network until his retirement in 1989. Even after his retirement, he continued to be the announcer for

Max Ferguson Max Ferguson, OC (February 10, 1924 – March 7, 2013) was a Canadian radio personality and satirist, best known for his long-running radio programs ''Rawhide'' and ''The Max Ferguson Show'' on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). B ...

's Sunday morning CBC radio show up to the beginning of 1998. McFee was the announcer on such programmes as '' The Royal Canadian Air Farce'', '' Sunday Morning'' and ''The

Show''. He also hosted his own program, ''Eclectic Circus'' for almost twenty years running five nights a week until 1985 and then as a weekly program until 1989. In the show, McFee would converse with an imaginary mouse, a "small grey presence" which lived in his pocket, and play an eclectic array of obscure musical selections. Other sounds included imaginary chickens. Referring to himself as "your delightful host" and "the old musicologist," he would address his audience as "all those out there in vacuumland". He would often refer to the CBC as the "

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", the name of the precursor to the CBC that only existed for about four years in the 1930s. He took pride in his status as an employee without a contract, and, aware of his popularity, made his feelings about CBC's management known. CBC staffers passed on a legend that when a particularly pompous management memo was posted on the bulletin board, he used the opportunity to ostentatiously read it aloud, word for word, and then set it on fire. He was married to Oonah McFee, a writer who won the

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for her sole published novel, ''Sandbars''.

References

1913 births 2000 deaths Canadian television personalities People from Belleville, Ontario CBC Radio hosts {{Canada-tv-bio-stub