John Furlong, a veteran journalist with CBC Newfoundland and Labrador, has died just weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. He was 63.
After four decades as a journalist, Furlong hosted his last episode of Radio Noon on March 3.
“He knew what a good story was [and] he was not intimidated by anything or anybody,” retired CBC producer Bob Wakeham told the CBC in an article published on the network’s website Wednesday morning.
“It seems so unfair. It just seems so cruel to me …. It just seems to me that he deserved to live longer than 63 years.”
Furlong hosted the Fisheries Broadcast from 2005 until last year, when he moved to Radio Noon as host. Last October he generated controversy after publishing a column about the Labrador Innu Nation that prompted a flood of accusations of racism. The CBC later issued an apology.
Azzo Rezori, a former colleague of Furlong, described him as “a journalist’s journalist – sharp-minded, quick-witted and acidly funny,” the CBC reported Wednesday. “He was never afraid to ask the most politically incorrect questions if it meant pushing past blather and baloney.”
In 2011 The Independent featured Furlong in our “The Most Interesting People in Newfoundland” series:
For more visit CBC.ca/NL.
