I personally met Mark in 1983, and can honestly say that my time with CKCU would not have happened without the enthusiasm and energy he instilled upon me. He taught me all of my production skills and I often think of him to this day asking myself if he would approve. He was CKCU’s Production Manager at the time, and we spent many hours working together on so many Live Remotes, Live concerts in Porter Hall, Roosters and Oliver’s, the renewed Ottawa Folk Festival, Mad Ad’s, Award’s Night, CKCU major anniversaries, and his personal show at the time “No Wasted Words”. Larger projects were “Henry’s Garage”, “Shed Sessions” and of course “Barnstorm”. We always spent time after the shows decompressing, and were often the last ones awake when the sun was rising. We had legendary camping trips, but I never did fish with him. He was famous for some of his play on words such as Gladstone being called “Happy Rock”, and Bell Street being “Ding Dong Street”. And, never, ever put the wrong em-phasis on the wrong syl-lable. You would always know what time to meet Mark somewhere if you applied the VST factor (Valcour Standard Time) by just adding an hour to the agreed upon time. And, count yourself lucky if you never heard his stories about the Prescott Hotel. I can confidently say that Mark has probably recorded every band that has ever existed in every venue that the city of Ottawa has had to offer and beyond for more than thirty years. He will be sorely missed by a huge community at CKCU-FM, Algonquin College, the Carleton School of Journalism, and pretty much every club and band that has ever worked with him.

I will have that last one “for the ditch”, but not in “Studio J”.

RIP, Mark Valcour, 1954-2015

Further links:
Carleton School of Journalism;
http://www.carleton.ca/journalism/2015/mark-valcour-1954-2015/
Muckrack
http://muckrack.com/link/oNYAz/mark-valcour-1954-2015