It is with heavy hearts, we are sad­dened to announce the pass­ing of one of our radio fam­i­ly today. Chris Jacques was a vol­un­teer in our music depart­ment and was the host of Dub Ditch Pic­nic Radio for a cou­ple of years before health issues began to inter­fere with his life. Pri­or to that, he was a devot­ed vol­un­teer at CKUW, mak­ing some seri­ous­ly excel­lent late night radio on Blast Off Space­man and Out­law Super­star. To the greater Win­nipeg music and arts scene, Chris rep­re­sent­ed so much more, touch­ing the lives of so many local bands and pret­ty much every­one whose path he crossed. He was a fierce cham­pi­on of under­ground music of all sorts and start­ed three imprints, Dub Ditch Pic­nic, Sun­down­ing Sound and Prairie Fire Tapes to release and pro­mote the music that he loved, or that he felt need­ed a larg­er audience.

Chris was an excel­lent writer, putting in years of numer­ous reviews and sub­mis­sions in at Sty­lus, Uptown and many oth­er inde­pen­dent ​‘zines. He was also an excel­lent musi­cian in his own right, releas­ing music as White Dog, as well as in F‑Troop and The Incin­er­a­tors, and was always orga­niz­ing events to bring folks togeth­er — from Record Sun­daze to inno­v­a­tive lis­ten­ing par­ties. If you’ve been inter­est­ed or involved in Win­nipeg’s rich musi­cal com­mu­ni­ty at any point over the last 30 years, chances are Chris crossed your path.

Most of all, his proud­est moments were as a lov­ing hus­band to Jenn and as a lov­ing father to Mag­nus and Maisy — our sin­cer­est con­do­lences, thoughts and prayers go out to them dur­ing this sad time.

Rest easy Crizwell, you will be deeply missed, but we will strive to car­ry on your lega­cy for years to come.