Pam Pollack - Who Was Alex Trebek?

It was nearly seven oclock in the evening on January 8, 2021. All over the East Coast of the United States, people turned on their televisions. It was time for Jeopardy!a game show that tests the players knowledge in all sorts of areas from geography to history to pop culture to words that begin and end in a vowel.

Many Jeopardy! fans didnt just watch the contestants on the show; they also played along at home. Sometimes they played against each other. If they were watching alone, they just shouted out the answers to themselves.

Tonights episode was very special. For thirty-seven years, the show had been hosted by Alex Trebek. This episode was his last. Alex had taped this final show months earlier, on October 29, 2020. He was very sick with cancer and could no longer work. Just a week after that, on November 8, 2020, Alex died. So, his fans were watching his last episode, knowing that they would never see him again.

The shows familiar theme music started. A spinning globe filled the screen. Then Johnny Gilbert, the shows announcer, declared, This is Jeopardy!

Johnny introduced the days contestants. One was an assistant professor of English education from New York named Jim Gilligan. The next was a software engineering manager from Illinois named Cliff Chang. The third contestant was the returning champion. She had won the previous two days games. She was an executive assistant from California. Her name was Yoshie Hill. In the two days she had been on the show she had won $31,600.

When he finished introducing the contestants, Johnny said, And now, here is the host of Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek!

On this evening, the applause was even longer than usual. At the start of the episode, Alex asked everyone watching at home to be generous with each other. Were trying to build a gentler, kinder society, he said. If we all pitch in just a little bit, were going to get there. Over the years, the audience had grown to love how Alex was always kind to contestants, making them feel good even when they lost the game. Everyone sitting in the audience and watching at home was going to miss seeing Alex on TV every evening. He was more than a television host; he had become part of their lives.

On July 22, 1940, George Alexander Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Since he had the same first name as his father, his family called him Sonny. As he grew up, he preferred to use his middle name, Alex. Alexs father was born in Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe. When he moved to Canada, he changed his name from Terebeychuck to Trebek because it was easier for English-speakers to pronounce. Alexs mother, Lucille, was from Canada. Like many Canadians, her first language was French. Alexs father spoke several Eastern European languages, including Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, so Alex grew up hearing different languages all around him, and he learned to speak two of themEnglish and Frenchfluently.

The town of Sudbury is in the Sudbury Basin, the third-largest crater on Earth. It was created when a comet hit Ontario 1 billion 850 million years ago. The comet scattered valuable metals like copper and gold all throughout the basin. People came from all over, especially Eastern Europe, to work in the mines there. Sudbury became known as the nickel capital of the world.

Workers at the Podolsky Mine in the Sudbury Basin

Alexs father worked as a cook at the Nickel Range Hotel. Alex often got to sit in the hotels kitchen while his father cooked. Sometimes he was given little jobs to do, like cutting slices out of the big sheet cakes they served in the dining room.

Although many people think of Canada as an English-speaking country, according to the 2016 census, French is the native language of around 7.2 million Canadiansthats about 20 percent of all Canadians.

In 1534, a French explorer named Jacques Cartier arrived at the shores of Newfoundland, in what is now northeastern Canada. He was looking for a more direct route to Asia. He claimed the country for France, and the French made settlements there throughout the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, the country came under British rule, but there are still French speaking areas there today, especially in the province of Quebec, where French is the official language.

French explorer Jacques Cartier

When Alex was two, his sister, Barbara, was born. Alex took being a big brother seriously. One day when Alex was seven, he saw his five-year-old sister playing with some friends on the frozen river near their house. He scolded them for playing on the ice. If the river was not completely frozen, they could fall into the freezing water. To make sure it was safe, Alex tested the ice himself. He took a few steps. The ice beneath him cracked. Alex fell into the water. He splashed around desperately, trying to swim back to shore, but he couldnt even tell where the shore was. The water carried him away across the river! He was pulled out by a passing railway worker who walked him back home, soaking wet.