Shell Busey, the legendary media per­son­al­ity who made enter­tain­ment out of home improve­ment, is being remembered by friends and former col­leagues as a vis­ion­ary who didn't just see the DIY revolu­tion com­ing, he also built a place for it.

Shel­don Busey died peace­fully in the early hours of Oct. 27 at age 83.

Born in Owen Sound, Ont., on Nov. 25, 1942, to a tool-and-die-maker, Busey had a nat­ural affin­ity for car­pentry, fig­ur­ing things out and fix­ing things. Busey got a job at age 18 with the Beaver Lum­ber Co., and worked his way to senior man­age­ment before mov­ing to B.C., where he opened a suc­cess­ful Wind­sor Ply­wood fran­chise in Delta.

In 1983, Busey turned the skills he had developed in the build­ing sup­ply busi­ness to help­ing reg­u­lar people when he picked up a slow Sunday morn­ing timeslot for a home improve­ment call-in pro­gram, The Build-It Show on CJOR, a talk radio sta­tion in Van­couver.

His deep, res­on­ant voice was a per­fect fit for radio. Busey was folksy, warm and know­ledge­able, the hon­est guy next door who could fix any­thing or show you how to do it.

“Please give me a call,” he would say. Whether you wanted to know how to get the bounce out of your floors, seal your drive­way, refin­ish your cab­in­etry or kill ants, he was the guy who knew everything about everything. Once the calls star­ted com­ing, they didn't stop. From 1983 to 2011 his Home Dis­cov­ery Show and B.C. Hydro Home Ideas Show on CKNW were a hit.

“He really was a pion­eer,” said Janet Brown, a former journ­al­ist who worked with Busey at CKNW.

“Nobody in the coun­try was doing a home improve­ment radio call-in show. Long before social media or cell­phones. Long before DIY became a trend. He knew how to do stuff.”

Busey's show was picked up and broad­cast throughout the Corus net­work, but for Brown, it was one par­tic­u­lar seg­ment that showed her just how pop­u­lar Busey was, something that may have had to do with his folksy relat­ab­il­ity. One Sunday morn­ing they were both at work and Brown was ask­ing Busey how to do something, and quipped: “My hus­band is com­pletely use­less. How can I fix it myself?”

Busey promptly went on the air and relayed that con­ver­sa­tion to his listen­ers.

“Friends star­ted call­ing from across the province,” said Brown.

Not only did the whole province know that her hus­band wasn't handy, the big sur­prise was just how many people were listen­ing.

“Every­body listened to him on Sunday morn­ing,” said Brown.

Shell Busey is sur­vived by his wife Frankie of 61 years, his daugh­ters Kyna Busey and Mon­ica Bal­lard, and his two grand­sons Dawson (Julia) and Pre­ston Bal­lard.

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