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STUART MCLEAN (1948-2017)

Stuart McLean was a best selling author, award-winning journalist and humorist, and host of CBC Radio program, The Vinyl Cafe. Stuart began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program's coverage of the Jonestown massacre. 

Following Sunday Morning, Stuart spent seven years as a regular columnist and guest host on CBC's Morningside. His book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean, was a Canadian bestseller and a finalist in the 1990 City of Toronto Book Awards.

Stuart also wrote Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were YoungWelcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors' Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993.

Stuart’s ten Vinyl Cafe books have all been Canadian bestsellers. Vinyl Cafe Diaries was awarded the Canadian Authors’ Association Jubilee Award in 2004, and Stuart was also a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Home from the Vinyl CafeVinyl Cafe Unplugged and Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe.

Vinyl Cafe books have also been published in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

In December 2011 Stuart McLean was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.  He was a professor emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto and former director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. In 1993 Trent University named him the first Rooke Fellow for Teaching, Writing and Research. He was also honoured by Nipissing University (H. Ed.D.), University of Windsor (LL.D.), Trent University (D.Litt.), Saint Mary's University (D.C.L.), University of Calgary (LL.D.), Concordia University (LL.D.), and McMaster University (LL.D.).  Stuart served as Honorary Colonel of the 8th Air Maintenance Squadron at 8 Wing, Trenton from 2005 to 2008.

Since 1998 Stuart toured with The Vinyl Cafe to theatres across Canada and the United States, playing towns from St. John's, Newfoundland to Whitehorse in the Yukon; from Bangor, Maine to Seattle, Washington.

Stuart McLean passed away February 15th, 2017, at age 68.

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CAMP KANAWANA

Stuart worked at Camp Kanawana for five summers, and he often said that it changed his life. This fund will help children and teens without the financial means to attend Camp YMCA Kanawana, a community where they learn to care for themselves, each other and the environment.

Click here to donate to the Stuart McLean Camp Kanawana Fund.

 
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THE STUART MCLEAN ARCHIVES AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

McMaster University is the home of Stuart McLean’s extensive personal and literary archive.  

The archive is 100 boxes, or 16 metres!  It includes manuscripts of his stories and books, correspondence, photographs, fan mail, sound recordings, and even set pieces from live Vinyl Cafe performances.

Stuart donated boxes filled with all kinds of things: dozens of notepads used to scribble down story ideas; personal correspondence with Margaret Atwood, Farley Mowat, Timothy Findley, Ken Dryden, former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and cartoonist Lynne Johnston, among many others; hundreds of original manuscripts, such as “Dave Cooks the Turkey,” along with hand-written notes.

Anyone is welcome to come in and view the material. If you are interested, please contact McMaster University Library’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections by email at archives@mcmaster.ca