WEDNESDAY,NOVEMBER6,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO OBITUARIES B21
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race Canada’s current
golden age of basketball
back to its roots and the
name Eli Pasquale will
keep coming up.
Mr. Pasquale, a two-time
Olympian who played at four
world championships over his
career, died Monday of cancer at
the age of 59. The Canadian Bas-
ketball Hall of Famer from Sud-
bury, Ont., reached national
prominence as the point guard
for the University of Victoria
Vikes, where he inspired a new
generation of players.
“If you asked Steve Nash who
the best point guard was in Cana-
da, he would say Eli,” said Ken
Shields, who was head coach of
the Vikes when Mr. Pasquale led
them to five straight Canadian
university titles. “He had a huge
impact on Steve. Had Eli been
playing today, he would have
been in the NBA. There’s no
question.”
Mr. Pasquale led Canada to a
fourth-place finish at the 1984
Summer Olympics in Los An-
geles. He returned to the Games
four years later in Seoul and
helped Canada to a sixth-place
showing. According to Mr.
Shields, who also coached Cana-
da’s national team from 1990 to
1994, Mr. Pasquale was on track
to return to a third Olympics
when he was sidelined by an in-
jury.
But Mr. Pasquale’s involve-
ment in Canada’s basketball
didn’t end there. He became a
coach himself, running basket-
ball camps in Victoria.
“He’s inspired and influenced
youth basketball, hundreds of
youth players in the city,” Mr.
Shields said. “There’s no other
player in Canada’s that has had
the impact that Eli had in Victo-
ria.”
Mr. Pasquale’s passing tou-
ched many other prominent
names in Canadian basketball as
word of his death spread Tues-
day.
“It’s a sad day for basketball in
our country,” Charlotte Hornets
assistant coach and former Cana-
dian national team coach/player
Jay Triano said.
Mr. Pasquale’s Vikes won their
five consecutive national cham-
pionships from 1980-84.
He was one of the stars of Can-
ada’s 1983 World University
Games team that upset the Unit-
ed States in the tournament’s
semi-final, defeating an Ameri-
can squad led by future NBA leg-
ends Charles Barkley and Karl
Malone. Mr. Pasquale was then
instrumental in shutting down
Yugoslavia’s Drazen Petrovic in
the final to help Canada win gold.
Mr. Pasquale was selected by
the Seattle SuperSonics in the
fifth round of the 1984 NBA Draft
and played three preseason
games for the team before being
released. He later played pro bas-
ketball in Argentina, West Ger-
many and Switzerland.
“Canada has lost one of its
greatest athletes,” former team-
mate Dwight Walton said on
Twitter.
Mr. Pasquale, who represented
Canada at the Pan Am Games on
two occasions, was inducted into
the Canadian Basketball Hall of
Fame in 2003. He leaves his wife,
Karen; sons Isiah and Manny; a
brother, Vito; a sister, Luciana
and his mother, Adriana.THE CANADIAN PRESSBasketball
HallofFamer
inspirednew
generation
ofplayers
JOHNCHIDLEY-HILLELIPASQUALE
ATHLETE,59EliPasqualeplaysinEdmonton
in1983.THECANADIANPRESSR
udy Boesch, who had a distin-
guished military career that in-
cluded being one of the first Navy
SEALs, then attained an entirely
different distinction in his 70s when he be-
came a contestant and audience favourite
on the popular CBS reality showSurvivor,
died Friday in Virginia Beach, Va. He was 91.
Jeff Probst, the host ofSurvivor, an-
nounced his death on Twitter, calling him
“one of the most iconic and adored players
of all time.” Steve Gonzalez, director of op-
erations for the SEAL Veterans Foundation,
told the Associated Press that the cause was
Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Boesch was known to millions of tel-
evision viewers fromSurvivor: Borneo, the
first season of CBS’sSurvivorfranchise. It
premiered on May 31, 2000, and became a
phenomenon over the next three months.
The show, which was something new for
American viewers, put strangers together
in a remote location, with the field progres-
sively narrowing as contestants chose to
send someone home each week – “voting
them off the island” in the show’s catch-
phrase, which entered the American lexi-
con.
Mr. Boesch was one of 16 castaways that
season and the oldest. After almost being
sent packing early on, he became a durable
if cranky member of the cast, capable of
adapting to and allying with a wide range of
fellow castaways, including Richard Hatch,
the cocky, scheming eventual winner.
Mr. Boesch was given to a plain-spoken-
ness that was sometimes endearing, occa-
sionally borderline offensive. “The homo-
sexual, he’s one of the nicest guys I ever
met, and he’s good at what he does,” he said
of Mr. Hatch, who is gay.
“We got to be pretty good friends,” he
added, but “not in a homosexual way, that’s
for sure.”
Mr. Boesch was one of the last four con-
testants, and he was surprised to find him-
self a celebrity even after Season 1 ended
that August.
“I thought this would die out after a cou-
ple months, and they’d say, ‘Rudy who?’
and I’d be back to normal,” he told Bryant
Gumbel in an interview with CBS in Janu-
ary, 2001. “But it didn’t.”
Long before his reality-show fame,
though, Mr. Boesch was famous to a few:
other SEALs, the informal name for mem-
bers of the navy’s specially trained sea, air
and land units. In the 1960s, he was chief of
SEAL Team 2, one of the first two SEAL units
formed.
“Putting it as simply as I can,” James Wat-
son wrote in his 1997 book,Walking Point,
about his experiences as a member of that
team, “I don’t think anyone will ever be
able to fill the shoes of Rudy Boesch.”
Rudolph Boesch was born on Jan. 20,
1928, in Rochester, N.Y. He joined the mer-
chant marine in 1944 and enlisted in the na-
vy the next year, training in underwater
demolition and serving on ships over the
next 17 years.
In 1962, he was among the first SEALs,
given charge of setting physical fitness and
other standards for Team 2.
“Rudy Boesch had a special understand-
ing of his men,” Mr. Watson wrote, “what
they did, and why they did it. That is very
rare. There was never a man more devoted
to the Navy and the SEALs.”
Mr. Boesch served two tours in Vietnam,
though he never talked much about what
specifically he did in the service. Between
the tours he worked and competed with
the navy bobsleigh team. He retired from
the navy in 1990 as a master chief petty offi-
cer.
“If you want to see the benefits of regular
exercise,” Mr. Watson wrote, “take a look at
retired Master Chief Rudy Boesch.” He
mentioned photographs of Mr. Boesch
bobsledding in 1970.
“Except for his hair color being a bit
lighter, there is no difference between a pic-
ture of Rudy today and one taken way back
then,” he wrote. “Even the haircut hasn’t
changed.”
Mr. Boesch was apparently still in excel-
lent shape a few years later when he audi-
tioned for the producers ofSurvivor, ac-
cording to a 2000 article in The Virginian-
Pilot.
“He impressed them by doing 70 push-
ups and almost as many situps with a 35-
pound weight on his chest,” the paper re-
ported.
Mr. Boesch, interviewed by the paper af-
ter the first season ofSurvivorhad been
filmed on the island of Pulau Tiga but be-fore it was broadcast, was typically blunt
about his feelings regarding the other con-
testants.
“I was with much nicer people in the Na-
vy,” he said. “On Tiga, you had a lesbian, a
hippie, a homosexual and this neurologist
who shaved his whole body every third day.
Some of the people there earned my re-
spect. But I had a hard time getting along
with the younger ones. We don’t speak the
same language. Our morals are different.
I’m from another generation.”
Mr. Boesch returned to the show in 2004
forSurvivor: All-Stars, but was voted off
early. He was the oldest contestant ever to
appear on the show, which is in its 39th sea-
son.
Mr. Boesch capitalized on hisSurvivor
fame by giving speeches and writing, with
Jeff Herman,The Book of Rudy: The Wit and
Wisdom of Rudy Boesch(2001).
His wife, Marge, died in 2008. He leaves
three daughters.
In November, 2000, Mr. Boesch, freshly
riding the fame of that initialSurvivorsea-
son, appeared at a SEAL event in Fort
Pierce, Fla., where he had trained more
than a half-century earlier.
“I was at the Emmys,” he told The Stuart
News of Florida, “and someone told me
that I’d gotten more applause than Brad
Pitt. I said, ‘Who’s he?’ ”NEWYORKTIMESNEWSSERVICERUDYBOESCH
MILITARYMAN,TVPERSONALITY,91NAVYSEALBECAMEAN
‘ADORED’REALITYTVSTAR
SurvivorfinalistRudyBoeschisconsoledbycontestantKellyWiglesworthduringameeting
at CBS Studios in 2000. Mr. Boesch was the oldest of the 16 Survivor: Borneo castaways.
KEVORKDJANSEZIAN/ASSOCIATEDPRESSThechiefofoneofthefirst
twoSEALunitsbecame
knowntomillionsoftelevision
viewersasacontestanton
thefirstseasonofSurvivor
NEILGENZLINGER
G
ert Boyle, the colourful chairwo-
man of Oregon-based Columbia
Sportswear Co. who starred in ads
proclaiming her as “One Tough
Mother,” died Sunday. She was 95.
Company spokeswoman Mary Ellen
Glynn did not disclose the cause of death.
Ms. Boyle, who was chairwoman of the
company board of directors, died at a Por-
tland, Ore., assisted-living facility, Ms.
Glynn said.
Ms. Boyle took over the small outdoor
clothing company in 1970 after her hus-
band died from a heart attack. At the time,
she was a 46-year-old housewife and
mother of three with no real business ex-
perience. But she helped build the strug-
gling company into a national brand and
retailer. “Early to bed, early to rise, work
like hell and advertise,” Ms. Boyle often
said, among other pet phrases.
It was her role in an advertising cam-
paign in the 1980s that gave her national
exposure. The ads showed Ms. Boyle put-
ting her son, Tim, president of the compa-
ny, through treacherous outdoor feats to
ensure the products met her standards. An
iconic photo from the campaign, which
has her flexing her arm emblazoned with a
“Born to Nag” tattoo, still hangs in the
company’s Beaverton headquarters.
Ms. Boyle’s father founded Columbia af-
ter the family fled Nazi Germany and set-
tled in Portland. Her husband took over
the business in 1964. When he died, the
business took many calls wondering if Co-
lumbia would close and the bank urged
her to sell the company. Always plucky, she
entertained an offer for its sale at the time,but told a prospective buyer that for the
price they were offering, she’d rather run it
into the ground herself. But Columbia
flourished under her leadership and that
of her son. While Tim ran the operations as
president, Ms. Boyle continued to put in
40-hour workweeks well into her 80s and
signed every company cheque. Columbia
grew and over the years acquired key
brands such as Mountain Hardwear, Pacif-
ic Trail and Sorel. The company now sells
products in more than 100 countries.
Ms. Boyle was the first woman inducted
into the National Sporting Goods Hall of
Fame and often recognized for her work as
a female business leader.
She had three children with her hus-
band, Neil, who was her college sweet-
heart. She had five grandchildren.ASSOCIATEDPRESSGERTBOYLE
BUSINESSWOMAN,95ColumbiaSportswearchairturnedcompanyintoanationalbrand
PORTLAND