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Well, he was, more than once, as host for Vancouver Children’s Choir concerts at Christ Church Cathedral. Before his first appearance, he said to me, “Pretend I’m Johnny Hodges and you’re Duke Ellington, and tell me what to wear.”

Jurgen Gothe, longtime CBC star (Disc Drive) also acted as compere at the Cathedral for many of Rupert Lang’s late-night “Summer in the City” presentations, introducing such friends from the music community as the quartet Viveza.

He once hoped to mount a series of concerts presenting various settings of the Mass—Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Stravinsky, et al. Archbishop David Somerville and Dean Herbert O’Driscoll found the idea more than interesting, but it would have been a costly venture, and it didn’t happen.

Jurgen died April 9, a week after his seventy-first birthday. He had been unwell for several years, but he remained quick-witted and entertaining to the end. His last hurrah had been at a seventieth birthday party, surrounded by dozens of friends and colleagues from the somewhat raffish worlds of radio, advertising, food and wine.

Over the past months, three original and often brilliant broadcasters have signed off—Jack Kyle, Fred Latremouille, Jurgen Gothe. We’re reminded of an Oscar Peterson/Milt Jackson number: “Ain’t But a Few of Us Left.”