Bob Harvie - Montreal radio pioneer leaped to his death from a hotel

Bob Harvie

     Bob Harvie's enthusiastic voice was one of the first-ever to emerge from Montreal radio station CJAD when it hit airwaves on December 8, 1945.
   The 22-year-old Toronto-born dynamo apprenticed in Ontario before moving to Westmount to take on the four-to-five p.m. afternoon slot.
  He dedicated his Club 800 show to the growing postwar teen demographic.
   The strategy was an innovation, as teens and other young people hadn't been seen as a separate consumer demographic until that time.
  Harvie did his best to encourage youth towards wholesome causes, urging young Montrealers to visit veterans in hospitals.
   In 1950 he used the airwaves to quickly raise $4,000 for victims of a fire in Chinatown.
   Meanwhile Harvie penned a column in the Montreal Heraldnewspaper and would frequently emcee at local movie premieres and remote radio broadcasts from places such as Belmont Park and Phillips Square for a March of Dimes fundraiser.
   He organized essay contests which saw winners grab a $10 prize to "slick chicks" and "hep juveniles" who submitted essays on such subjects like "Why I like Frank Sinatra."
   In April 1951, aged 28, he put a ring on the finger of his 17-year-old fiancee Monique Demers.

Monique Demers was 17 when engaged

   Both, it was reported, were from well-to-do families. In around August 1952, Bob and his teenage bride became parents of baby Michele Harvie.
   Things couldn't have looked brighter for the outgoing and well-liked Harvie, who by 1952, earned a hefty $6,000 a year from CJAD, for being one the most popular radio hosts in Canada.
   But thing were not quite as hunky dory as they appeared.
   Harvie's life started unraveling after his baby was born and rumours spread concerning his instability.
   When a driver drove a car into the St. Lawrence River from the Victoria Pier on Dec. 1, 1952, many insiders whispered that Harvie was the driver, although another man was later believed to have been at the wheel.
   Around that time Harvie quit, or was fired from CJAD, a station representative later vaguely said that he was let go in mid-November due to "a combination of circumstances."
   Harvie quarreled with his wife and then went alone to New York City before going south to downtown Miami where he checked into the Ocean Ranch Hotel.
   Harvie wrote a letter to friend and fellow Montreal newspaper columnist Al Palmer reporting that he was both broke and desperate. Palmer immediately went to Miami to help Harvie out.
   Harvie had, by this point, been evicted from his hotel for non-payment and scrounged a bit of money selling a ring at a local pawn shop.

Harvie, second from right

   On January 3, 1953, Harvie entered the downtown Everglades Hotel at 244 Biscayne Ave. and went up to the 16th floor.
   He leaped out to his death.
   His body lay 10 hours on the ground before anybody noticed it.
   In his pocket was the sum of 68 cents, notes written to CJAD radio and a postcard from New York City addressed to his wife Monique, referencing their child.
    "Monique, tell Michele in the US on their Thanksgiving Day I lit a candle for her in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Merry Christmas."
   Al Palmer and another former Herald colleague Harold Gardner, now living in Miami, had both been actively searching Miami in their attempt to help Harvie, who they knew "needed some cheering up."
   Al Palmer died in 1971. The Everglades Hotel was demolished in 2005 and another hotel built in its place. No news on what become of Bob's widow Monique Harvie or daughter Michele Harvie.

Everglades Hotel in 2005 as it was demolished