Rod Coneybeare, whose voice was heard by countless Canadian kids over parts of four decades as Jerome the giraffe and Rusty the rooster on The Friendly Giant, died at Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay, Ont., on Thursday. He was 89.

In a tribute posted by his son Wilson on his website over the weekend, Coneybeare is remembered as a titan of Canadian broadcasting, whose career may have been highlighted by the popular children’s show, but who had a career in radio that started back in the 1940s.

Coneybeare, who was born in Belleville, Ont., supplied the voice and words of Jerome and Rusty on The Friendly Giant from 1958 to 1985, but Wilson said his father’s career actually started on radio when Rod was just 15.

“Back then he played bit parts on CBC radio dramas and serials, standing alongside greats such as John Drainie, or Bud Knapp … he was there, in the halcyon days when CBC was on Jarvis St. and everyone said — even Orson Welles — that the ‘Corp’ produced the best drama.”

Wilson said even though his father would gain notice as a serious dramatist during the early days of CBC live TV drama, it was radio where his heart lay.

“Here he created, wrote, and acted out the fantasies of Out of This World (pre-Rod Serling Twilight Zone), amazed a generation of Canadians with the ingenuity of The Rod and Charles Show, or made the country laugh with the eccentric and almost Pythonesque comedy of Coneybeare & Company (my personal favourite). He would win his two ACTRA awards for radio, one in documentary and one for original dramatic writing, and that’s quite a feat.”

Wilson said his father was both idiosyncratic and strange for his time. “He had a beard 10 years before it became fashionable, and rode a bike daily before grown-ups even considered such an activity. He drove a VW camper bus 20 years before the minivan and he played movies at home on a 16-millimetre projector before the VHS was invented.”

Wilson says his father’s oldest friend was TVO’s Elwy Yost. “They met on a streetcar when dad was 15. Elwy and Lila Yost were witnesses at my parents’ marriage ceremony in a registry office in 1952. He and Elwy made amateur home movies and invented a board game about big business that probably would have made them money had they just managed to focus on — you guessed it — the business side of things for 20 seconds.”

Rod Coneybeare leaves behind his wife of almost 40 years, Moira, as well as four children and seven grandchildren.

His obituary states he was cared for compassionately by the nurses at Ross Memorial Hospital. There will be a private family service, with a public memorial to be announced.

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