Mark Dailey, a long-time reporter and anchor with a deep voice known to millions in the GTA, died Monday after losing his battle with cancer. He was 57.
Dailey's signature was the often-heard, continually mimicked but never duplicated station slogan: “CITY-TV. Everywhere.”
“We have lost one of the true originals,” CITY-TV news anchor Gord Martineau said. “I’m taking it really hard. We worked together for 31 years and we talked every day.”
He remembers the first time he saw Dailey — tall and thin, with glasses and a notepad.
“My first reaction was who was this beanpole?” Martineau recalled. “It took me a day to realize his true value. You could rely on him in any situation.”
Viewers who only got to know Dailey through their TV screen may not have been aware of his quick wit, often relieving the tension of the newsroom with his one-liners, he said.
Dailey was born in Youngstown, Ohio and worked as a police officer before eventually moving north and pursuing his career on television.
He successfully fought prostate cancer six years ago before announcing in September the cancer had spread to his kidneys. After an operation, the disease had spread to his lungs.
Toronto Sun crime reporter Rob Lamberti was good friends with Dailey.
“My heart sank when he died,” said Lamberti, who first met Dailey in the early 1980s . “He filled a unique role in Toronto media, as a crime reporter, as a news reader and as the voice of CITY-TV.”
Former OPP commissioner Julian Fantino said he was saddened by the news.
“It is such a loss because Mark was the consummate professional who tried his utmost to be fair and balanced and had a special way of explaining the human side of the streets of Toronto,” Fantino said, adding Dailey was a unique talent who knew reporting and policing. “He was with you in bad times as well as good times and he leaves a huge legacy.”
Former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman said he wishes he had used Dailey for his Bad Boy store commercials.
“He was a sweet man all the way through — and that voice — I never ever heard a voice better than that,” said Lastman, who praised the “classy” Dailey as a “great Torontonian” who was proud of his city.
Broadcast legend Ted Woloshyn said Dailey had the voice that everyone in the business wished they had.
“He was a nice man, a giving man,” Woloshyn recalled. “He did so much for this community. He was a good one who, had he not been taken so early, was on his way to being one of the great ones.”
Dailey won numerous awards for journalism and was a spokesman for the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada.
He received Toronto’s Award of Merit and a Letter of Appreciation from the governor general of Canada for community service.
He died in Sunnybrook hospital with family at his side.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2010/12/06/16449766.html
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