TV personality and children's entertainer Nerene Virgin is shown in this undated handout image.HO/The Canadian Press
To a generation of Canadian children and their parents, Nerene Virgin was known as Jodie, the character she played on the popular TVOntario program Today’s Special. Ms. Virgin, who died on Jan. 15 in Burlington, Ont., at 77, excelled in a variety of roles. A trained teacher, she began acting in Canadian television series and some commercials before moving to broadcast journalism, where she hosted a weekly program on CTV and then became an anchor for CBC Newsworld and Newsworld International.
Ms. Virgin’s character on Today’s Special was a display designer who worked in a department store when it had closed for the night. She shared the program with two puppet characters, night watchman Sam Crenshaw and Muffy the Mouse, as well as a mannequin, Jeff, who magically came to life when Jodie put a hat on him and said some magical words.
“The point of Today’s Special was to be entertaining and educational for young children in the age range of four to nine. There were four characters, and Nerene represented the big sister or the mother character, who was very stable and calm and worked out problems for everybody. Jeff was the mannequin, who was the most innocent and naive,” said Nina Keogh, the puppeteer and voice for Muffy.
The program was a ratings success and also well-received by critics. A Globe and Mail headline said Today’s Special “combats mindless TV.” The review pointed out that Ms. Virgin turned down a job as news anchor to work on Today’s Special.
“In other shows, I’ve really just been a hostess. But here, I get the opportunity to sing and dance and act all on the same show. I’m also very impressed with the scripts. I taught school for years and ran a nursery school and I really feel that Today’s Special stepped out of the usual realm of children’s shows. It’s not condescending or insulting to kids the way a lot of other stuff is,” Ms. Virgin told The Globe.
“The other thing is that as a Black actress, I just know a chance like this isn’t likely to come around again. For Blacks in this country, most of the roles are secondary – they add you as an ethnic in some rinky-dink role. But with Today’s Special I have a good, strong role and a character who runs the whole gamut of emotions. I’m really proud of what we’ve done so far.”
One of the things her fellow actors appreciated was Ms. Virgin’s ability to memorize scripts quickly and make adjustments on the fly,
“Nerene was very professional and had a photographic memory so she could learn lines incredibly quickly or if there was a change she could pick it up right away,” said Bob Dermer, the puppeteer who played Sam Crenshaw.
Ms. Keogh remembers them both working while they were pregnant. “Each of us had our little quirks, and she loved to knit. She was always knitting, even at our table reads,” she recalled. “I think it calmed her down.”
To a generation of Canadian children and their parents, Nerene Virgin was known as Jodie, the character she played on the popular TVOntario program Today’s Special.Alan Smith/Supplied
Today’s Special was produced by TVOntario (now TVO) and seen by Canadians on border stations when it was broadcast on PBS in the United States. It also played on Alberta Educational Television and the Nickelodeon cable network, as well as stations in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia and elsewhere.
“The show really exploded and we were all shocked at the reception [it] got,” Ms. Virgin said in an interview played at Toronto’s Myseum, in an exhibition on children’s television.
She added that she was most proud of the fact that the show aired in Bophuthatswana, a Black-ruled enclave of South Africa in the early 1980s, when anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was still in prison. “This is a show that shows a Black woman with a white man as co-star, singing and dancing together, sharing laughter, being sad together. And [the fact that] the Bop Television Network in South Africa … bought this show knowing that Black children and white children and adults were having this example showed to them of what the world could be, was really gratifying.”
Nerene Grizzle was born in Hamilton on Dec. 27, 1946. Her father was a citizenship court judge; her mother, Kathleen Victoria Toliver, was descended from Lewis Toliver, an enslaved man who escaped from Virgina and made it to Southern Ontario via the Underground Railroad, which shepherded escaped slaves to freedom in Canada. Her family was active in the Black community in Hamilton through the Stewart Memorial Church, where Lincoln Alexander, Ontario’s first Black Lieutenant-Governor was a parishioner.
Ms. Virgin’s great-uncle, John Holland, was a pastor at the church.
After finishing high school in the East York area of Toronto, Ms. Virgin went to Toronto Teachers’ College, where she had he second-highest academic mark and the highest practical score, according to her husband, Alan Smith. Ms. Virgin was married twice and kept her first husband’s family name.
After a stint of teaching early in her career Ms. Virgin decided to back away from the profession when, as the only Black teacher, she wasn’t invited to group get-togethers. An attractive woman and a natural performer, she drifted into television work, first working in a beer commercial, then landing a part of the dispatcher on Police Surgeon, an American series shot in Canada.
“During that period, she met a lot of co-stars such as Leslie Nielsen and William Shatner,” Mr. Smith said.
She returned to teaching but was tempted back to television when invited to appear on the children’s show Polka Dot Door and then Today’s Special, from 1981 to 1987.
Ms. Virgin was subsequently recruited to be one of the original hosts on CBC Newsworld. But it would have meant moving to Calgary, and her mother was in poor health in Hamilton, so she decided to work at Eye on Toronto, a public affairs show on CFTO, the Toronto CTV affiliate. For the show, she interviewed a wide variety of people passing through town, from the singer Harry Belafonte to the Toronto-born actor John Candy,
“We’re conscious of the content of the show, of variety. There’s a lot of cultural, economic and ethnic diversity in this city. It’s important that we cover all the bases,” Ms. Virgin told an interviewer doing a profile of her.
Ms. Virgin added that she thought of herself as a survivor.
“I have been divorced, I have been a single mom, I’ve been the breadwinner. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom; I’ve lived in a small town,” said Ms. Virgin, who always seemed to put a positive spin on things. “I’ve been fortunate. I’ve experienced a lot of ups and downs, and I’ve been in a lot of different places. Perhaps that’s given me the ability to tap into something for our audiences. I think that’s one of the biggest assets I can bring to the show.”
Following that program, Ms. Virgin did move to the CBC. She broadcast news programs on Newsworld and was prominent on Newsworld International, which went to parts of the United States and the Caribbean.
In 2007, Ms. Virgin ran as a Liberal candidate for the Ontario Legislature. During the campaign a local reporter tarred her with a nasty racial slur. She sued the publication, and won, but she narrowly lost the election to the NDP candidate.
She later wrote biographies of Black North Americans for Historica Canada’s online Canadian Encyclopedia, according to a family notice published after her death. “She successfully sought Ontario Trillium Foundation grants to preserve the history of Stewart Memorial Church, a Black Church and Heritage site, established in the 1830s in Hamilton, Ont. She worked alongside the distinguished staff at the Dundas Museum and Archives to promote the incredible history of talented Black Canadians who lived in that picturesque valley town,” the notice said.
Ms. Virgin leaves her husband, Mr. Smith; their son, Thomas Toliver Smith; her two daughters, Yvette Virgin and Nicole Virgin; and her grandson, Jackson Virgin.
You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.
To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.