Tom DEACON

1941 - 2023

TOM DEACON On September 6, 1941, at 6:45 in the morning, Tom Deacon began this miraculous thing we call life. On Sunday, February 5, 2023, that came to end. It is for us now to bear witness to that life and rejoice in the memories of a life well lived. How do you describe someone like Tom Deacon? A force of nature. Larger than life. If you look at what he left behind - 25,000 LPs, 15,000 CDs, 3,500 bottles of wine, boxes of recipes and receipts from Michelin three star restaurants and friends, lots of friends and colleagues who looked to him as a mentor, a collaborator and a sparing partner - you see a seeker. All his life he sought out the best. The best performance, the best recording, the best meal, the best Burgundy and the best in people. He loved the hunt. Tom attended Lakefield Preparatory School and Upper Canada College. He went on to study French at Trinity College, Toronto, continuing his studies at the University of Illinois before writing his Ph.D comprehensives at University College, Toronto. In 1967, he left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne and research his never to be completed thesis. It was here he found and explored his first of many loves, France: the country, the food, the wine and its music. In 1971, he returned to Canada to take up a teaching position at the University of Manitoba. He was well respected by his colleagues and liked by his students, although they found him a little intimidating because he had a witty but sharp sense of humour. He can be remembered saying at the end of one especially trying day, "If I have to teach the verb 'to be' one more time..." Teaching was perhaps not one of his great loves. But Tom loved to cook and it was in Winnipeg that he started his tradition of lavish dinner parties often with wine and cocktails leaving the guests with little memory of the previous evening. One year inexplicably a few of his classes were cancelled. Tom was practicing madly for a piano recital. Yes, his first love was music and he found his way into making that his life through the CBC. In 1975, while still at the university, he started working freelance, writing concert reviews from Winnipeg. It blossomed quickly. In 1977, he put teaching behind him and left Manitoba. He took up residence in the idyllic family cottage on Hay Island, off Gananoque, Ontario and continued to work freelance for CBC, travelling to Leeds and Moscow to cover the international piano competitions until he was hired as a producer on the new morning program Stereo Morning. He always talked about how much he learned there, both in tradecraft and management. Tom often told the story of being handed an envelope by his mentor and executive producer with numerous tiny pieces of magnetic tape. These were the edits (editing was done with a razor blade in those days) of intrusive pauses he had made in an interview; a mistake he never made again. It was also at this time that he met the person he called the love of his life, his partner, Stuart. Their first vacation was, of course, to France. Fifteen Michelin starred restaurants in ten days, with copious notes of everything eaten and all the wines. He wanted to share the best of everything, the fruits of his hunt. In 1982, he became the producer of his own programme, Live from Roy Thomson Hall. Two glorious seasons broadcasting across the country everything from Anna Russell to Leontyne Price to Emil Gilels to Claudio Arrau. He revelled in being able to share his musical idols, his musical bests, with the rest of Canada. In 1984, with Roy Thomson Hall's budget exhausted, the CBC moved Tom to Vancouver. There he hired Jurgen Gothe as host of his concert programme but something else happened. The synergy of passions and creativity gave birth to DiscDrive, the CBC's afternoon drive programme that dominated the airwaves for more than two decades. In 1989 as DiscDrive moved into maturity, Tom looked south for a new challenge as Program Director at KUSC, a classical music station in Los Angeles. Ever restless for new challenges, in 1992 he moved to the Netherlands and began his career with Polygram. At Polygram, his life long hunt for the musical best paid off. Here he put his encyclopedic knowledge of classical music repertoire and recordings into creating legendary CD compilations of legendary artists. Since his great musical love was the piano, the realization of his life long hunt for the best was as the Executive Producer of Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century Edition, 250 hours of music on 200 discs - the largest CD edition ever released and he got to release it to the world. The New York Times said "It would be hard to imagine a more representative example of the piano in the 20th century." In 1998, Polygram was acquired by Universal Music and Tom became Vice-President Catalogue Development. In 2001, he returned to Canada but remained working for Universal Music, until he retired in 2005. He served on a number of international piano juries and continued to follow the development of the young generation of pianists very closely. He will be greatly missed by his much loved and inseparable older brother, John (Evie); his younger brother, Bob (Janice); and Stuart Henderson, his partner, lost in a sea of CDs with Nelson and Martha, his two cats. In lieu of a memorial or flowers, have a nice meal and raise a glass to Tom.