(Harbour Publishing)
courtesy TrailTimes.ca May. 24, 2019
Radio news reporter George Garrett earned a reputation as the best in the business during his long career with powerhouse Vancouver stations CKNW and CFMI. But in 1976, he left to become general manager of CJAT Trail, then owned by Lloyd and David Hoole.
“They must have given Garrett a large chunk of the action because he’s so good at his trade that the next guy comes third,” Vancouver Sun social columnist Jack Wasserman wrote at the time. “George started out chasing fire engines for NW’s news department. He was one of the best and the classiest of the legion of radio reporters. He stayed classy, even as a salesman.”
His appointment, which took effect June 1, 1976, was announced in an item in the Trail Daily Times, which spoke of his long experience in broadcasting and indicated his wife Joan and daughters would move to Trail at the end of the school year.
In his new autobiography, Intrepid Reporter, Garrett summarizes his time in Trail in one paragraph: “I lasted just five months there and was fired. Ownership of CJAT felt I was not doing a good job.”
At least some of his co-workers disagreed.
“The months working with him in Trail ended far too soon,” former announcer Ken McKim wrote in an online post in 2015. “The amazing job he did putting together a radiothon for Italian disaster relief in what seemed to be mere hours still echoes.”
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