An impactful legacy has been left in the community of Weyburn by the late Brent Allin, who passed away in Regina on Friday at the age of 59.
Allin spent his entire broadcasting career demonstrating a strong emphasis on community involvement. In 2022, Allin was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Nick Coroluick said he first met Allin after Bob King, a Weyburn Collegiate High School Teacher, had put out a call for volunteers for the first-ever Weyburn Communithon in 1981.
"We were looking for people to help with the sound and we needed people to help with everything, because it was just right from scratch. So he had a couple of high school kids come and do that, and Brent was one of them. And I'll tell you, just to watch, he worked harder than anybody, because of his mobility issues, and he was like a champion. I couldn't believe the equipment that he had, that was his own, I think. He and his buddy had a small business going with sound and they just put that together they communicated well and it was marvelous."
He said Allin was involved with the Communithon in some way for at least 25 years, possibly 30 years, and always on the technical side.
"Working the sound stage the first couple of years, he ended up working at Access Communications, and he said that it was through the Communithon that he got his career through Access," he noted. "He grew from that. He was interviewing people, like I remember running on Council, and after the elections he had everybody come down to City Hall or up to the station there and he would interview people and he took part in a lot."
"He was always involved with something. He was involved in politics and he was involved with other stuff, but it was through the Communithon that I got to know him well, and marvelous guy, a community thinker."
He said Allin loved to share his opinion on things.
"Not always did we agree, and that was the fun part of him because I never felt that there was disrespect, ever. But he could be fairly pointed in what he believed in too, which is good. And opposition is good, it really is, because the two sides can come together somewhere in the middle and you find you get the best deal, and your best ideas."
Coroluick shared the first time he went up to visit Allin after he'd moved to the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre in Regina.
"He says, 'you know, I wish I would have done this a year ago', because he realized some of the limitations that he was facing," he said. "I got there one time to see him and he was visiting with a couple of ladies there. They were certainly older than him, in fact, they might have been older than me, even that old! But he was visiting there and you could tell that he was part of the community at Wascana as well. So he didn't sit back and do nothing. I'm so very proud of him."
"He'll be missed the community. It's too bad that we lose somebody like that. But to me, his legacy was who he was, and the spirit that he shared."
"I believe he won a Junior Citizen of the Year Award through the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, and this is just out of high school or just in high school and his determination on things was second to none. And you end up striving to be like him, and that's a good thing."
Hear the full interview with Coroluick in the first of two audio files at the bottom of this article.
Access Communications Weyburn and Access Now TV Producer, Corey Morrissette, was hired by Brent Allin in April of 1999.
"Cable Regina had just purchased Weyburn and Estevan not that long ago, and so they just rebranded the Weyburn Office 'Cable Weyburn', and they were looking for some front office help and some community production help," he explained. "I went to film school back in the day for a couple of years, I had a little bit of experience with that, so I kind of applied for both jobs and Brent said, 'Why don't you come out and kind of see what we do?'"
The first event Morrissette attended to observe the job before being hired was the Young Fellows' TV auction.
"Which, at the time, was a massive event that we held at the Curling Rink, where all the Young Fellows would man all the cameras and we had a giant big board and they brought in a mobile production truck from Regina for that event. So I just pretty much sat in the truck and watched Brent direct the whole show."
When asked his impression of the job, Morrissette told Allin that it looked like fun.
"He said, 'great. You got the job', and I started as a playback operator," he shared, noting they manually played VHS tapes to ensure programming made it to air.
"We went from Super VHS tapes to digital High 8 tapes and now everything is done on SD card."
Allin's lifelong love of tech was notorious:
"He used to mix bands in high school. He used to love that kind of stuff. And as the technology kind of changed, he always tried to keep up with that. Like even after he had retired, but he was still in town here, he would always hit me up with, 'what you got for new equipment?' and he'd come by and check it out. He was always interested in how things were evolving."
Morrissette said Brent Allin's influence on his career has turned into more of a stewardship.
"The community channel was always really close to his heart. We did all sorts of shoots together. He used to host the live call-n shows once a month. He loved politics. So we always bring in our Member of Parliament or our MLA would come in for a live phone-in show. We had the health district come in for a live phone-in show. He'd love doing those."
"He was calling football every single year, and even after he retired from Access, if we could get him out, and the conditions were good, we did get him out there and calling football. We did that for decades. He loved calling football, and I remember in the Brenden LaBatt, Brett Jones years with the Weyburn Comprehensive School Eagles, when they were playing for championships up at Taylor Field, he and I would make the trek up. He always loved calling football games from the broadcast booth at Taylor Field. So I remember watching those games through camera lens with him calling the games at Taylor Field. That was pretty special."
He shared that Allin was filming everything else as well, including kids' dance recitals and Christmas concerts,
"The community meant the world to him."
Allin, he noted was part of the Weyburn Chamber of Commerce for many years, and was also a member of the Young Fellows Club of Weyburn.
"He got up there as much as he could so his legacy is pretty far-reaching throughout the community. I think everybody kind of knew who he was."
During COVID, Morrissette said they created the Brent Allin Show on Access TV.
"So he was able to shoot from his house. We just set him up with a decent webcam, and he just called his old friends, who could be all over the place right now, he talked to folks in Toronto, BC, people that had left the community, but still kind of miss it. They would just swap stories, and that's still one of my most favourite shows that I've done on this channel, because you've just got to see the joy it brought back in Brent, to talk to his old friends about the good old days."
He said that Allin liked to stay relevant, and since he loved politics and covering live election results throughout his career, he even expressed excitement to Morrissette during Weyburn's most recent municipal election.
"This was just a couple of weeks ago, we were just reminiscing about elections past, chatting about a couple of those elections and a couple of candidates, and having a good laugh."
"I'm in this job because of Brent, and I'm still doing it largely because of Brent, too, because he leaves a pretty big shadow. I kind of feel like now that he's gone, someone has to keep the channel going in a way, and doing it the way he would have liked to see it done," he commented. "He kind of started it all, and he's the one who trained me, and I'm just trying to do the best I can to live up to his lofty expectations."
"But at the end of the day, I'm still going to remember all the laughs. There was a ton of them..."
"There was the time we went to Taylor Field and we were digging around in the bowels of the old stadium there, found an unlocked door, and found a giant dismembered Gopher head. That kind of freaked him out until he realized that's the Gainer the Gopher costume, and he was still joking three weeks ago. He goes, 'You know what, man? We should have took that Gopher costume, just stole it and see what would have happened'. I'm like, yeah, we probably should have', but little things like that are what I'm always going to remember about Brent."
"His most proud moment, I think, was when he was able to supply video footage to CNN down in Atlanta, Georgia, of the Great Egg War that happened in Weyburn [in 1990]."
"He got rustled out of bed by some of his high school volunteers at the time, 'Brent, you're not gonna believe what's going on!' So they ran to the office, grabbed their cameras, and got footage of the Great Egg War. The next day, he was checking his messages, and there was one on there from CNN saying, 'We heard about this egg war happening in Saskatchewan, Canada. Do you have any footage for us?' and he was able to send them some footage for it. That was a pretty big deal for Brent. He loved the news."
Hear the full interview with Corey Morrissette in the second of two audio files at the bottom of the article.