Church Street anchor sadly missed
by Steven Bereznai

To most of Canada, he was one of the original anchors when CBC Newsworld launched in 1989, but for the denizens of Church Street, Lorne Saxberg was more colourfully known for wearing a multi-hued snakeskin jacket and leather pants at Toronto gay bars and events. He died on May 6 in a snorkelling accident in Phuket, Thailand. He was 47 years old.

“I met Lorne in the summer of 1996,” recalls CBC anchor Andrew Nichols. Back then, Nichols rolled Saxberg’s teleprompter and delivered his scripts. “He took his job very seriously but he never took himself too seriously. That was so refreshing.”

Nichols recounts one incident that almost gave Naked News a run for its money.

“One of Lorne’s proudest moments…was after Naked News started up in Russia, before it came to Canada.” Newsworld ran a story on the fledgling phenomenon. It was the kicker in the newscast, and coming out of it, as Saxberg started signing off, he began stripping off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt on air.

“That was the only time he saw an entire newsroom rise to their feet and give a standing ovation as he walked out of the studio,” says Nichols.

On a more serious journalistic note, Saxberg recently won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for his documentary on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

He will also be remembered and missed for his dogged union work at the CBC, his good nature and his sense of flair.

“He had some of the most beautiful ties I’d ever seen,” recalls Paul Beggs, owner of sleek Church Street martini bar and restaurant Byzantium. “He was beyond a customer,” says Beggs. “He was friends with everybody who worked there.” And this “consummate gentleman” also left his mark on the bar’s martini menu. “We didn’t have to ask. When Lorne came in, we automatically made a Big Blue,” says Beggs. “It’s a drink we made specifically for him…our other customers caught on and it went on the official list.”

And of course, among the Byzantium crowd, the big debate was over Saxberg’s leather pants.

“One of the most frequently asked questions at Byz was do you wear those pants at work, under the anchor desk?” recalls Saxberg’s long-time friend David Kelley.

But beyond tanned hides, his trademark hair and voice (“Makes you melt,” says Beggs), Saxberg’s greatest commitment was to his family. His family bought and restored the 135-year-old general store in the former mining town of Silver Islet, outside of Thunder Bay, where Saxberg grew up.

The Silver Islet General Store serves visitors to the Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, summer residents and many tourists. For the past two years, Saxberg had been on leave from the CBC working at broadcaster NHK Japan, but he returned during summers to work at the store, which includes a tearoom. His mother’s pies, tea biscuits and cinnamon buns are known all around Lake Superior.

“Lorne was a totally different person when back up in northwestern Ontario” says Kelley. “It was about denim, flannel and baseball caps. There were many days when he used no hair product at all! Instead, you would find him behind the counter selling bug repellent, renting out bikes, retelling the story of the silver mines or just working on the store with his dad. This was the real Lorne Saxberg.”

Saxberg’s funeral will be held May 18 in Thunder Bay. The friends and family of Lorne Saxberg are holding a memorial service on June 6 at 5pm at the Glenn Gould Studio in the CBC Broadcasting Centre in Toronto. This will be a special occasion for Saxberg’s wide circle of friends and CBC colleagues to come together in honouring his life.

Steven Bereznai is fab’s Editor-in-Chief