Vancouver’s Dave Broadfoot, Early Star of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, Dead at 90

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courtesy CBC News    Posted: Nov 01, 2016 9:48 PM ET

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Dave Broadfoot, centre, is congratulated on Sept. 30, 2003 by fellow Royal Canadian Air Farce performers, the late Roger Abbott, right, and Don Ferguson, left, at a ceremony in Toronto after receiving the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award.

Dave Broadfoot, centre, is congratulated on Sept. 30, 2003 by fellow Royal Canadian Air Farce performers, the late Roger Abbott, right, and Don Ferguson, left, at a ceremony in Toronto after receiving the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)

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Canadian comedian and former Royal Canadian Air Farce actor Dave Broadfoot has died at age 90, his family confirmed to CBC News.

Born in Vancouver on Dec. 5, 1925, Broadfoot was an early member of the long-running comedy show on CBC. Starting in 1973, he appeared on radio and television versions of the show for 15 years.

Among his best-known characters were the Honourable Member for Kicking Horse Pass, Sgt. Renfrew of the RCMP and Big Bobby Clobber, a hockey player who had received too many pucks to the head.

Broadfoot was a fixture on the CBC shows long before his tenure on Air Farce, on television with the Big Revue and Wayne and Shuster Show beginning in the 1950s and on radio with Funny You Should Say That.

He was known for an act that blended genial satire, Canadiana-laced content and an extensive knowledge of political goings-on.

“You tell a Canadian he’s apathetic and he’ll answer, ‘Who cares?” the Honourable Member of Kicking Horse Pass said in one appearance on Peter Gzowski’s 90 Minutes Live in the late 1970s

Broadfoot began hitting stages soon after serving in the navy during the Second World War. He honed his act in an embryonic Canadian entertainment industry, playing all manner of gigs from coffee shops, restaurants and clubs, producing his own variety-style cabarets or appearing at established festivals like Stratford or the Spring Thaw, the annual revue of performers that ran in Toronto for a quarter century beginning in the late 1960s.

READ THE REST OF THIS CBC NEWS STORY  HERE

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