Nerene Virgin was born in 1946 in Hamilton, Ontario, and traces her roots to escaped Maryland slave Thomas John (Howard) Holland.
Virgin was a Canadian journalist, an actor, educator, creator and tv host, finest identified for her function on the kids’s tv collection At present’s Particular. She died final Thursday on the age of 77.
Within the mid-Nineties, Virgin anchored the Saturday Report on CBC-TV CBC Newsworld and Newsworld Worldwide. She later ran as a provincial Liberal candidate in Hamilton, and spent a few years as a author and educator of Canadian Black historical past, and as an anti-racism advocate.
Virgin utilized her academic background and journalism expertise to analysis, write and current tales of notable Blacks in Canadian and U.S. historical past. She printed biographies of Charles Victor Roman, Charles Lightfoot Roman and Rev. John Christie Holland with Historica Canada.
Regardless of a lifetime of a number of achievements, her function as Jodie on At present’s Particular, which ran from 1981 to 1987, was her most memorable of which she was the proudest.
“After I was doing At present’s Particular, I had no thought on the time how necessary that present could be,” she stated throughout a public speak. “That might be a very powerful work that I’d do, and to be continually informed by viewers … for his or her kids to see somebody such as you, the character Jodie, who was empathetic, she was good, she was succesful, she was gifted — for his or her kids to see that particular person was so motivating for these kids.”
“I keep in mind as soon as we have been signing albums, we recorded an album for At present’s Particular … and a [Brown] girl got here up together with her little lady, and he or she … took my hand and he or she put one thing in my hand, and after I checked out it, it was this gold ring that I put on.”
She was the daughter of the late Stanley George Sinclair Grizzle, a Canadian citizenship decide, soldier, political candidate and civil rights and labour union activist.
Nerene Virgin is survived by her husband, two daughters, her son and grandson, and her siblings.
