{"id":8940,"date":"2011-03-28T10:23:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T15:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=8940"},"modified":"2011-03-28T10:30:23","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T15:30:23","slug":"honorary-degree-holder-roger-abbott-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/03\/honorary-degree-holder-roger-abbott-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Honorary degree holder Roger Abbott dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8942\" style=\"width: 280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8942\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8942 \" title=\"Roger Abbott, Royal Canadian Air Farce co-founder and recipient of an honorary degree from Brock University, has died\" src=\"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/rogerabbott.jpg\" alt=\"Roger Abbott\" width=\"270\" height=\"359\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8942\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Roger Abbott<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A venerable Canadian comedian and honorary degree holder from Brock has died.<\/p>\n<p>Roger Abbott, who received an honorary doctor of laws from Brock in 1993, died on March 26 after a 14-year battle with leukemia.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott co-founded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airfarce.com\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Royal Canadian Air Farce<\/em><\/a>, which began as a weekly broadcast on <em>CBC Radio<\/em> in 1973. It ran as a weekly TV show on CBC from 1993 to 2008. His famous impersonations included Jean Chretien, Leonard Cohen and Peter Mansbridge.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott received the honorary degree with <em>Air Farce<\/em> co-stars Don Ferguson, Luba Goy and John Morgan.<\/p>\n<p>His other honours included the Gemini Humanitarian Award, the Governor General\u2019s Performing Arts Award, a Juno and a star on Canada\u2019s Walk of Fame.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019m heartbroken to tell you that our beloved friend, Roger Abbott, died last night at Toronto General Hospital, 14 years after being diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a progressive disease that he kept secret from all but a few close friends and family until a week ago,&#8221; Ferguson said on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airfarce.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Air Farce<\/em> website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related links:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/arts\/story\/2011\/03\/27\/roger-abbott.html\" target=\"_blank\">Air Farce actor Roger Abbott dies \u2014 <em>CBC News<\/em><\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/entertainment\/television\/article\/962447--air-farce-founder-roger-abbott-dies-at-age-64?bn=1\" target=\"_blank\">Air Farce founder Roger Abbott dies at 64 \u2014 thestar.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A video tribute from his friends and colleagues:<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"400\" height=\"330\" data=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Zmk8iH76ckY?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Zmk8iH76ckY?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A venerable Canadian comedian and honorary degree holder from Brock has died.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[54],"tags":[169],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8940"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8944,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8940\/revisions\/8944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}