Hello!
I must admit that the article on Mr. Lombardi was very well done. I in fact, had the honour & pleasure of personally knowing him from the time of my childhood. And in my view, very few people had the zest & love for life that he in fact had.
Now,while I am happy that Mr. Lombardi has been very-deservedly mentioned here on Wikipedia, I am rather saddened and angered to notice that the Late Lali Vij has not been acknowledged here on this site.
I'm sure that a lot of people, especially from within the South Asian community in Toronto still remember and hold a special place in their hearts for this gentleman.
Mr. Vij was a very popular South Asian TV/Radio personality in the region for 23 years & in fact, he had been a pioneer in the field for our community.
Lali began his broadcast career in 1968 with his most celebrated "Voice Of India" programs on CHIN Radio (which we all know was owned by Mr. Lombardi).
Naturally as the community grew, so did Lali's popularity..and eventually, he became as big a fixture to the station as Mr. Lombardi. In 1979, CHIN approached Lali with a time slot to produce a weekly hour-long TV program for the South Asian community on Global Television. So teaming up with Mr. Sherali Thaver & broadcast legend, SGP Jafry, Lali introduced Sounds of Asia which was North America's first South Asian TV program to air on a network, to a captive Saturday morning audience.
As time went by, Sounds Of Asia had been regarded by viewers, talent (both from here and abroad) & business as being THE place to be with all types of locally produced entertainment from throughout the diverse South Asian spectrum of Toronto.
The program also went on to interview a sizeable handful of great names in Ontario politics as well such as Former Attorney General & Retd. Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, The Late Larry Grossman, Former Premiers Frank Miller, David Peterson & Bob Rae, Robert Elgie & Former Toronto Mayor, Art Eggleton to name a few.
In August 1982, Thaver & Jafry elected to pull out of the program, giving total control and ownership to Mr. Vij. From that point, the program began it's explosive noteriety with Bollywood. With each passing week, Lali's library of celebrity interviews grew at an alarming rate. Celebrities such as Raj Babbar, Bappi Lahiri, Kalpana Iyer, Shabana Azmi, Basu Bhattachariya & others are among those who have been featured guests of the program.
September 15th 1984, saw the move of Sounds Of Asia and other CHIN Television programming from Global to it's current home of Citytv. 1984 also saw the time expansion of the program from a one-hour to a 90 minute weekly broadcast as well. With the expansion in his time, Lali was able to serve specific linguistic groups, musical preferences and other needs in a much better way and so he introduced programming for the Pakistani & eventually the Punjabi speaking communties which later lead to the explosion of punjabi media we see today.
Sadly, on the night of Tuesday May 28th 1991, Mr. Vij's journey came to a halt when he had been assasinated outside his Downtown Toronto studios while he was preparing to go home for the evening. Today, the case still remains unsolved and eventhough he is no longer with us in body, his spirit & legacy will continue to live in the hearts of those who preserve their mother tongues and remain proud of being Canadians of South Asian origin.
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