You Can No Longer Do That On Television

Just saw on Twitter that Canadian actor Les Lye has died. Here's the CTV article about that. Who am I talking about, you may ask?

Canadians who grew up during the 80s probably know exactly who I'm talking about, or will when I tell you his most famous role. He was the main male adult role on the Canadian kids series, You Can't Do That On Television, and we Americans watched it on Nikelodeon. It was one of my favourite shows in my early to mid-teen years. I was in lust with Christine McGrath, the sarcastic brunette lead actress on the show. But Les was always wonderful in his role as either "Barth", the extremely unhygenic cook at the diner or as the production head of the "show within a show," or many others. I always liked him.

I lost touch with the show when I moved on to high school and college, never even seeing the last year or two (including those episodes with Alannis Morrissette), but occasionally would look back (through Wikipedia or something like that), so I had no idea he was even still kicking around. But now that he's died, I'm sad.

I never kept up with him after that show, didn't follow his career at all. But I still feel like a part of my childhood I never even thought about until now has just died with him.

RIP Les.