For years, George Dobie was known as Deadline Dobie — a perpetually upbeat, sharp critical thinker who wrote political columns until the end. Dobie, a reporter and editor with The Vancouver Sun for 28 years, died in Vernon October 24 at age 86. Family and friends spread George Dobie's ashes on Okanagan Lake Sunday morning, hours before they gathered for a ceremony to celebrate his life. Vancouver Sun copy editor Scott Neufeld, who edited Dobie's political columns for the Vernon Daily Courier in 2006, said running the small paper often required long days of hard work. "It was a tough paper to run, but his line was always, 'We have fun, don't we kid?' He was a hilarious guy."
During his years at the Vancouver Sun he earned the nickname Deadline Dobie for his habit of waiting until the last minute to file his story. Apparently that late start would help get his copy onto the newspaper's front page. But the minute he left the office, his focus was on his children, according to Phil Dobie, George's son and the eldest of his four children. Every day after work at the Vancouver Sun, George would head off to Allen Park at Alma and 41st Ave. to play baseball with his three sons. "He loved baseball. He put all three boys in baseball when we were five years old," said Phil Dobie. His passion for sports turned to curling in his later years. "He'd call me [at the newspaper] and say, 'I got a hot one for you!' and he'd reel off a story about curling," said Neufeld.
He launched his career with the British United Press in Western Canada before he moved to The Vancouver Sun in 1953. He worked at The Vancouver Sun for 28 years, concentrating mostly on labour reporting. "In terms of his career, I asked him what part he was proudest of, and he always said it was his labour-reporting days. He covered the stories and reported them openly, recognizing both sides of every issue," said Phil Dobie. He then left the newspaper industry and worked as a media liaison in the provincial government, retiring five years later.
After retirement, Dobie wrote columns for The Vernon Daily News before the newspaper closed in 1996. He went on to write columns for the Vernon edition of The Daily Courier, until January 2009 under a succession of editors including Neufeld. Until this year he wrote on political issues in an online blog he called Counterpoint.
Dobie's struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease forced him to sell the family home and move to a smaller Vernon apartment close to a senior's residence where many of his friends lived. His family was getting ready to place him in a residence where he could get more medical attention when he succumbed to his pulmonary problems, said Phil Dobie. "His passing was sudden, but he was always independent." Dobie and his wife raised three boys and a daughter and enjoyed the company of eight grandchildren.
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Another article about the "Sage of Vernon" can be found at the Globe and Mail:
excerpt:
Recalling a great one
There are days when, as someone who spent years as a labour reporter, I feel like the blacksmiths of yore watching the big bad automobile replace the worthy horse. When I joined the Vancouver Sun about the time Amelia Earhart disappeared, labour was such big news in B.C. that the paper had not one but two full-time reporters on the beat, a day guy and a night guy (me). The day guy was veteran scribe George Dobie, known to everyone simply as Dobie. I learned more from him about the real world of writing for newspapers than any academic journalism school could possibly impart, no matter how many learned theses its students churn out.
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