Larry Solway

Larry Solway’s life spanned various interests including making his mark as a talk-radio announcer, TV personality, author, occasional actor and a candidate for political office. His radio career began in Northern Ontario working in Timmins then North Bay before landing to Oshawa, a bedroom community east of Toronto and known as the home for GM Canada. He moved to Toronto and CHUM radio where he handled a variety of jobs but it was his evening call-in show, Speak Your Mind, that made Solway a legend. He left the station in 1970 due to a dispute with management over a series of shows on sex and turned that into a book about the controversy titled The Day I Invented Sex. Radio gave him the foundation he needed to move in a number of different directions including being at one time or another, a reporter for CBC-TV, a panelist on the TV show This is the Law, a columnist for the Sunday Star and an occasional dabbler in film. He made documentaries, including the eight-part Our Fellow Americans for the U.S. bicentennial and landed the occasional acting gig including a small role in Meatballs. He died at Toronto General Hospital of complications arising from his bladder cancer.