This morning, sad news. Canada's inveterate broadcaster and voice of all the late evenings of my childhood has passed, at the age of 85 years. Lister Sinclair died early this morning in a Toronto hospital and as I listened to the story on the news, I could not help but cry. IDEAS was the programme that came on jsut as my bedtime approached in my early childhood, and later in my teen years became to programme I stayed up to listen to. The tone was quiet, contemplative. The stories beautiful, profound and wide-ranging. And burnt into my memory, like a smell of home, Lister's colonial British accent opening each programme with "I'm Lister Sinclair, and this is IDEAS". That voice, and that phrase, brings me back to childhood everytime I hear it.

Perhaps this is why his death has saddened me so much. It is not just his mortality that has been proven, but my own as well. The memories of sitting in my kitchen as a child of 5, hearing Lister's voice without true understanding of the words, take me back to a safer, more innocent time. I time when I was less cynical, and believed in more. And Lister's death reminds me that that past is gone, that time marches on, that we move forward and progress, but maybe in all that we lose something. We have certainly lost Lister Sinclair.

Lister was a math student - did graduate work at U of T in the faculty of math - and yet still managed to put together some of the most thought-provoking arts and humanities programmes that the nation of Canada has ever heard. Longtime friend and Ideas co-producer Bernie Lucht said: