I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you grew up in an english speaking household in British Columbia any time over the past 35 years you know who Tony Parsons is. His three and a half decade stint as the anchor of The News Hour on BCTV/Global (which was once CHAN-TV, as you’ll learn in this book) made him the man that we all knew and loved to get our nightly news from.

Tony announced his retirement a few months ago and was planning on reporting through the Olympics and then slowly phasing out his work with Global but a couple of months ago he unexpectedly announced that he was leaving right away, that he wouldn’t be doing any Games broadcasting and that instead of retiring he was taking a position with another nightly news program on the island. Kind of a mystery, and perhaps the full details of what went down will come out in Tony’s next book but in the meantime you should really have a look at A Life In The News published by Harbour Publishing, which unveils a lot about Tony’s past that you didn’t even know you wanted to know.

His memoir takes the reader through his life from wartorn Europe as a child to his early days in radio to his early days in TV news (which were also the entire industry‘s early days) all the way through the 80′s, 90′s and 00′s to the present day. Even if you’re not interested in journalism and the inner workings of the media I think you’ll enjoy reading about his past as well as his thoughts on working with Pamela Martin, his take on where “the news” is going, his trusty canine pal that sat at his feet for more than a decade’s worth of broadcasts and even about Tony’s personal struggles with booze and coming to terms with his decision to leave the position he held for so long.

Best of luck, Tony, we’d love to share your Vancouver memories in an exit Most Awesome interview!