I hate to make the 1,000 topic on the new SOWNY Board an obit, but that's the way it worked out. I was sad to read of the passing of Jack Lowe. He wasn't a household name but anyone and everyone who passed through the doors of the various incarnations of CKFH and CJCL will instantly know who he was.

It's not often you'll see an homage to an engineer here, but Jack was a very special one. In the short time I was at what was by then CJCL, I never saw Jack get angry or upset. While all hell was breaking loose because something wasn't working, Jack would walk in, calmly survey the problem and in what seemed like a matter of seconds, fix whatever was wrong. He then shuffled out as quickly as he came and somehow everything was all right again. 

 Jack was a fixture at both 1430 and 590, and when he passed away on January 2, he left behind a link to the station that very few can boast. 

Bud Riley is a former FH newscaster, who has a wonderful website that includes a page devoted to former CKFH personnel. I'm sure he won't mind if I reproduce the tribute he posted to Jack on his site. 

"Jack Lowe was the assistant engineer and he was man most responsible for keeping CKFH on the air, day in and day out. If there was a problem with a piece of equipment, Jack could fix it in a jiffy and he jokingly once said that some mechanical and electronic problems can often be solved with a spit and a kick but with his encyclopedic technical knowledge it was a strategy he would never have to use. He became chief engineer when Gerry Wilson died. Jack oversaw the changes from CKFH to The Fan and stayed with the new owners until his retirement in 2005. During his long radio career, Jack was the most loved and admired by a legion of friends in and out of the business

Jack immigrated to Canada from Barbados when he was in his teens, graduating from Toronto’s Central Tech High School. He started working as an engineer for . CKFH in 1959 where he spent many a hockey game lugging 1940s equipment up to the ‘gondula’ in Maple Leaf Gardens to broadcast Leafs games with Foster Hewitt. He remained with the station through three ownership changes and one frequency change, moving into semi-retirement in 2002.Jack Lowe, 82, passed away on Jan. 2, 2017."

A wonderful man and a great engineer, I never heard anyone say a single negative word about him. And anyone who's ever been in radio will know how rare that is.

Toronto Star Obit