“He loved having a good time and he wanted around him to feel that they could sit down and have a coffee with him and just be their authentic selves.”
Palmer said his personality and professionalism meant she was always comfortable asking to be on the show, whether it was a high-ranking politician or an average citizen with no experience being on the radio.
“I felt completely comfortable telling them, ‘Look, you’re going to be OK, you’re going to sit down with Rick Cluff and he’s going to make you feel like that five minutes is the fastest five minutes of your life.’ really felt like they knew they were going to get a fair shake,” she said.
Palmer said Cluff was always happy to be at the office, meticulously dressed — even at 4 a.m. — and interested in the lives of his colleagues.
“If he knew you, he would (really) know you, know your family, if you were having a baby, or you were going through a divorce, or your father had died, or really anything. He would talk to you it.”
A biography posted by the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum, where Cluff was inducted in 1999, says he began his career with the CBC in 1976 and worked in the national sports department for 20 years, before moving to Vancouver.
Palmer said that while sports were an important part of Cluff’s career, he wanted to know that he had other interests.
“He also wanted to know that he had studied and theology and he was really interested in religion, and there was just a lot more to him than being the sports guy,” she said.
The Radio Television Digital News Association of Canada gave him its lifetime achievement award for the West region in 2018.
The association said at the time that Cluff’s greatest contributions were in local radio, through the impact he had on audiences, decades of quiet mentorship and his community leadership.
