Hal Wake worked both on the air and behind the scenes at CBC Radio before applying his skills and passion to a job as head of the Vancouver Writers Fest.courtesy of his family
With his shock of white hair and Santa Claus beard wafting in the Vancouver wind, Hal Wake cut a venerable figure every October, his 6-foot-2 frame gliding through the streets of Granville Island on an electric scooter, long before the mode of transportation became ubiquitous. For him, the wheels were a solution. As artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Fest, Mr. Wake wanted to check on the many events he had meticulously curated, even with multiple sessions happening simultaneously. It wasn’t just his job, but his joy.
“There’s no way to describe the profound emotions and pleasure that can come from a well-crafted event with extraordinary writers at its heart,” Mr. Wake told The Globe and Mail in 2016.
A former CBC broadcaster, Mr. Wake took his radio skills and applied them to the festival he was hired to run in 2005, taking over from its founder, Alma Lee. He stayed until 2017, growing the festival and further solidifying his own influence on Canadian literature, following years working as the book producer for the influential CBC Radio program Morningside, hosted by Peter Gzowski.
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“Hal was a crucial figure in Canadian books for many years,” author Margaret Atwood says.
Mr. Wake took festival curation very seriously and wanted to ensure things were sparkling – for authors and audiences.
“I think that was a gift he had,” author Elizabeth Hay says. “To always remember that the audience mattered.”
She – like so many authors – had the good fortune of personally experiencing a Hal Wake interview, which he elevated from job requirement to art form with meticulous preparation, genuine curiosity and warmth that radiated from the stage.
“He was an excellent reader and he would formulate really perceptive questions,” she recalls. “He cared about you, cared about the book you’d written and wanted to bring out the best in you and the best of the book.”
Mr. Wake also carefully prepared his moderators and authors – even teaching formal classes on the art of the onstage interview – because while he, the consummate pro, may have made it look easy, he knew it wasn’t.
Bestselling author John Vaillant recalls Mr. Wake interviewing him for his first book, The Golden Spruce. “[I] realized, wow, this is what it’s like to be in the hands of a master interviewer. And I felt held and elevated and challenged. It was electrifying.”
Mr. Wake immersed himself in the festival’s near-24/7 frenzy with delight – not enduring the grind, but enjoying every minute.
“At festivals he seemed to really be in his element,” Ms. Hay says. “He was a terrific interviewer and a great schmoozer into the wee hours. And he came across as a genial ringmaster, gathering everyone and everything together with his ease and bonhomie.”
Mr. Wake was skilled at asking questions not just because of his CBC experience, but because he had a true love of literature and a natural curiosity. You could tell in conversation with Mr. Wake: He wanted to talk about the person he was speaking to (or other people; he did love to gossip). He never wanted to make it about himself – whether in life, onstage, or afterward in the hospitality suite, where he clocked many hours.
He worked very hard, but never lost sight of what a thrill it was – and he never forgot to play. There was a now-legendary late-night swim with a group of authors among the phosphorescence during the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.
He travelled widely to attend festivals elsewhere, both learning from those events and sharing his ideas.
When Jane Davidson left her position as the VWF’s general manager to run the Sunshine Coast festival and experienced a disaster in her first year – with two last-minute cancellations – it was Mr. Wake who saved the day, coming up with an idea for its opening night with less than 24 hours to go.
He was a former board member of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and an honorary member of the Writers’ Union of Canada – honorary because while he had many stories to tell, he didn’t publish them.
His close friend Isabel Huggan encouraged him to write his own memoir, but it wasn’t in his nature, she says. “He wasn’t a show-off. It wasn’t about him.”
Every life could be a book. Mr. Wake’s life was very much about books. He carried this vocation in his soul – and his house.
After a long career on the radio and at the festival, books filled his home – “every nook and cranny,” recalls Kathryn Gretsinger, who worked with Mr. Wake at the CBC and became a close family friend. His family, fed up with volumes taking over their home – and lives – planned an operation. When Mr. Wake was on a trip, family and friends swooped in, built enormous custom bookcases, gathered all the books, and shelved them. He was thrilled.
He cared about you, cared about the book you’d written and wanted to bring out the best in you and the best of the book
— Author Elizabeth Hay
He loved watching baseball – whether it was a local men’s league playing in the park or the Toronto Blue Jays almost winning the World Series last fall. He was also a big fan of basketball’s Toronto Raptors.
He was fiercely loyal – some would say to a fault. He was interested and intense and did not suffer fools. He was creative (and prolific) with swear words; he could be grumpy and thin-skinned. But he was fun. He loved his community. Once he got to know you, he would sign his e-mails “your pal, Hal.”
He was also very much a family man. “He cherished that home base,” Ms. Davidson says. “That’s what fed him.”
His health declining, Mr. Wake, who had moved to Vancouver Island, was too ill to visit Ms. Lee in person before her death in March, 2025. On speaker phone, “he thanked her for everything she had done, for laying the pathway for him,” says former VWF marketing and development director Ann McDonell. “And then he said: ‘I won’t be long behind you.’”
Mr. Wake died at his Cowichan Bay home on Jan. 7, surrounded by his family. He was 73.
“I like to think that Hal and Alma are somewhere reading Emily Dickinson and James Joyce,” says author Kevin Chong, an old friend of Mr. Wake’s. “That would be a really fitting afterlife for them.”
Harold Robert Wake was born on June 5, 1952 in Montreal to Robert and Kathryn (née Soles). The family moved to Ottawa when he was very young, where he later attended Carleton University.
After doing some work for Vancouver Co-op Radio, Mr. Wake was hired for Morningside.
“[I] remember him spending a lot of time talking with Gzowski about books – and the Blue Jays,” recalls former colleague Jim Handman. “Gzowski was notoriously aloof from us – except for Hal. They had a bond.”
In 1994, Mr. Wake became host of Vancouver’s local CBC morning show, The Early Edition. “He was an exacting colleague,” says Prof. Gretsinger, who worked on the show and now teaches journalism at UBC. “He had very, very specific ideas about how stories should be done,” she recalls. “He wasn’t totally comfortable just letting anything go, even small things. He actually sweated the small stuff.”
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Along the way, Mr. Wake joined the festival board, stepping down ahead of Ms. Lee’s departure so he could apply for his dream job.
In the role, he carried on Ms. Lee’s vision and elevated the festival with crafted curation and international ambitions “and put Vancouver on the map as being one of the best literary festivals in the world,” says his successor, current VWF artistic director Leslie Hurtig.
He shortened the festival’s name to the Vancouver Writers Fest and expanded to year-round programming.
At the end of each festival, Mr. Wake gathered everyone involved in running it – employees, crew members, seasonal box office, etc. – and over food and drink, each person was invited to share a story about their festival experience.
“It was just so special, the fact that he would prioritize that personally after having been up probably later than was sensible most of those nights in the hospitality suite,” says Camilla Tibbs, former VWF executive director.
Mr. Wake’s influence transcended the presentation of books, even rubbing off on their content. Ms. Hay grilled him about working in broadcasting for her novel Late Nights on Air, which won the 2007 Giller Prize. “We talked about the travails of being shy and yet being on the radio,” recalls Ms. Hay, who also worked for CBC. He told her a story about hiding in a closet the first time he had to record himself, so nobody would hear him.
When he retired from the festival, he was presented with a book of “Letters to Hal” from a long list of authors and others in the publishing community (including this writer). Ms. Atwood wrote him a poem and drew a funny picture; there were raves from the likes of Anne Michaels, Lorna Crozier and Yann Martel. “The energy of the festival came from Hal’s extraordinary warmth and passion,” Mr. Martel wrote.
After retirement, he and his wife, Jennifer Arlidge, moved to Vancouver Island. Private about his declining health, he lost touch with many people. Rifts also developed over his support of his friend Steven Galloway, who had been fired as chair of the UBC creative writing program.
“[Mr. Wake] was a principled advocate for due process, and got trashed for it,” shared Ms. Atwood, who has also been vocal about the issue.
“His good qualities of loyalty and courage are those same qualities that seem to have been responsible for a very sad turn of events, in terms of his career,” says Ms. Huggan, an author whose friendship with Mr. Wake stretched back to his days at Morningside. She remained close to him until the end of his life.
Author Angie Abdou says in her last conversation with Mr. Wake, a few days before he died, he told her: “’I just really thought I’d live to see the end of this,’” – meaning the Galloway case; a defamation trial is scheduled for this fall. “He was devoted to his friend.”
Trent University’s Melanie Buddle stocks new bookshelves with titles donated by Hal Wake.Courtesy of Trent University
In Mr. Wake’s final chapter, he tended to his books. That enormous collection was valuable, and he wanted to keep it together – and ensure it would serve the public. He spent his last months cataloguing them – they are mostly signed first editions, from his time at the CBC and the festival – and arranged to donate them to the library at Trent University’s Peter Gzowski College. The collection features rare, first-edition books including Ms. Atwood’s MaddAddam and Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater.
Mr. Wake packed them up before Christmas – more than 1,600 books, weighing some 1,000 kilograms. They arrived at the university Jan. 6, the day before he died.
“I wish I’d had time to send him a picture of me holding a book,” says college principal Melanie Buddle, who worked long-distance with Mr. Wake planning the donation for months.
His family describes this as his legacy project. Mr. Wake’s greater literary bequest reaches far beyond those Peterborough bookshelves – to writers and book lovers across the country and around the world. He inspired and informed so many readers, introducing them to countless books – but also the deep pleasure of listening to an excellent conversation about them.
Mr. Wake leaves his wife, Jen; their children, Liam, Caitlin and Kieran; three grandchildren and his brother and sister.
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