13 replies to this topic

[AllseeingEye]

Well this sucks balls: unless you were somehow "News Averse" or not from BC, everyone over a certain age knows who Debora Hope was: she retired from the TV news biz @ Global TV six years ago at age 59. And now we know why. I have a couple of well known Vancouver radio biz guys on my FB feed and one of them forwarded this along. Very sad - 

 

https://globalnews.c...eimers-disease/

[Rob Randall]

Very sad. Just awful. If you watched the news here in the 80s you knew her as Deborah Van Der Gracht. 

 

Another sad tale: Richard Gwyn, another familiar news personality died a couple of months ago from the same terrible disease.

 

https://www.tvo.org/...with-alzheimers

 

Richard continued to lose his faculties. He told Carol, “It’s not my fault. It’s nothing I did.” Carol, who’d lost her father to ALS at 86, tried to soothe him. “Of course, it’s not your fault,” she told her husband. “It’s no one’s fault.” But Richard was getting increasingly furious, because he knew that he was losing the thing he needed most in life: his ability to think.

 

“Richard isn’t a golfer,” Carol tells me. “He never had kids. He lives in his head. And, now, he couldn’t. He’d have nothing to do. He’d pretend to read.”

 

[Victoria Watcher]

that’s quite sad.

[AllseeingEye]

Its an awful fate as our family knows all too well. Nothing worse than watching a loved one being taken from you piece by piece, day by day. Typically onset happens later in life but not always; she's only 65 but apparently her condition played a role in her retirement even in her 50's. I remember thinking at the time it was a bit odd as she was exceptionally popular with viewers and no reason for her departure, which was quite sudden, was given publicly. Clearly she is going downhill with some rapidity, which will be heartbreaking for her husband and daughters. 

[Linear Thinker]

Watched that tonight. Even though she is still alive, I'm kind of glad the story "remembered her" at her best.

[mbjj]

So sad. Have known a few people who suffered Alzheimers at an early age, just tragic. Always loved watching Deb.

[AllseeingEye]

Sadly as I speculated Deb Hope indeed has early onset/genetic Alzheimer's, which mercifully ends much sooner than typically does garden variety dementia. A hint of the terrible toll this variation of the disease takes is seen in this  pic taken a little over a year ago, where she is barely recognizable hardly five years after the symptoms became apparent - 

 

http://www.kelownada...15a6082ccc.html

Edited by AllseeingEye, 12 October 2020 - 01:11 PM.

[AllseeingEye]

Ah so sad but not at all surprising; after a decade-long battle with early onset Alzheimer's ex-Global anchor Deb Hope, who was forced to retire prematurely as a result of the condition in 2014, has passed away aged 67 - 

 

https://globalnews.c...3Z8Pmhf1d_Fa2oQ

[Victoria Watcher]

Ah so sad but not at all surprising; after a decade-long battle with early onset Alzheimer's ex-Global anchor Deb Hope, who was forced to retire prematurely as a result of the condition in 2014, has passed away aged 67 - 

 

https://globalnews.c...3Z8Pmhf1d_Fa2oQ

 

 

[AllseeingEye]

/\ Indeed. Deb was an uber-cool person with a belly laugh that would wake the dead. Our own mother is now in her 16th year of the disease so our family knows all too well how s**** it is.

 

Deb initially masked her condition by telling her producer she was having trouble reading the on-air cue/teleprompter due to needing new glasses. The reality of course was that she was having problems reading and speaking the lines. Early onset means cognitive abilities decline at a greatly accelerated rate compared to 'regular' Alzheimer's.

Edited by AllseeingEye, 15 May 2023 - 01:32 PM.

[DavidSchell]

I remember her well from my days working their in the early nineties. Was a very nice person who always had a smile on her face.

[Victoria Watcher]

VANCOUVER, August 18, 2023 – A familiar face to British Columbians is coming to Global BC. Today the station announced that Jason Pires is joining BC’s #1 morning show, Global News Morning, starting this fall.

 

“We are very excited to have Jason join Sonia Sunger, Mark Madryga and Katelin Owsianski on Global News Morning,” said Bhupinder Hundal, News Director and Station Manager, Global BC. “Jason brings a wealth of journalism experience, a deep passion for our community, and telling its stories. His humility and authenticity will be great for our team and the Global BC audience.”

 

A multiple Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) and Edward R. Murrow Award-winner, Pires began his broadcast career at CHEK TV, and then moved to CTV Vancouver Island to be the station’s sports director and anchor/reporter, making his way to metro Vancouver. He was the co-host of CTV Vancouver’s CTV Morning Live for seven years, and most recently was the anchor of CTV News at Noon.

 

Born and raised in Victoria, BC, Jason developed a passion for broadcast news as a young child watching Global BC’s News Hour at 6 with his family. During a trip to Expo ‘86 when he was 12 years old, he visited the BCTV, now Global BC, pavilion and was in awe as he watched the station’s anchors Tony Parsons, Pamela Martin, and Bernie Pascall deliver the news.

 

 

https://www.corusent...l-news-morning/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 19 August 2023 - 05:21 AM.

[UDeMan]

they must have cleared this with Jason Pires ex-wife Sophie Lui who is one on the top anchors for global news.

Edited by UDeMan, 19 August 2023 - 09:15 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Ex-wife?  You sure?

 

ah ya.

 

Married in 2005.

 

Married someone else in 2019:

 

https://bc.ctvnews.c...?clipId=1646410

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 19 August 2023 - 09:26 AM.