"We used to climb just to see the community, how far we could go up and see what was happening," Ray Laneville told CTV News in 2021, remembering the tower above the television station on the hill in Timmins. Laneville, who went from changing the lights on that tower to running the station as its station and sales manager, died peacefully on September 20, 2026, in Timmins, Ontario, surrounded by the people he loved. He was 84.

The building at the top of Pine Street North went up in the late 1950s, the work of the broadcasting pioneer Conrad Lavigne, and over the decades it answered to a string of call letters: CKSO, CFCL, MCTV and finally CTV. Laneville's family wrote that he "found a home" there. CTV News reported that Lavigne first hired him as a camera operator more than fifty years before that 2021 interview, and his family's notice places him on the tower, changing its lights, in those early days. From there he worked his way up to station manager and sales manager, and his family described him as a respected employee, colleague and boss.

The station was far from his only workplace. Born on September 11, 1942, he cooked at Johnny's lunch bar, where, his family's obituary notes, he perfected the Popa hot dog. He made deliveries for Bucovetskys, worked for Green Giant and for David's Biscuits, and ran a business of his own, Ray's Smoke Shop.

Long before any of that, there were the Sea Cadets. He joined at 13 and kept rising until he became the commanding officer. At 19 he sailed around the world aboard HMCS Ottawa on a special training mission, one of only 24 cadets chosen from across Canada.

He met Charlotte when he was 18 and married her at 21. They loved to dance, the jive above all, and spent many weekends with close friends dancing late into the night and playing games. They camped while their children were small and travelled the world together. Later, his backyard pool became the gathering place, and he spent long hours swimming with his grandchildren and turning up for their activities.

The station on the hill became a family address, too. His son Jason told CTV News that he started there in 1988, in grade eight, cutting the grass and looking after the property, then worked as a camera operator and later as a sales manager, staying on the payroll for more than 30 years. "It’s all about the people. The people that you work with," he said of the building.

In Timmins, Laneville volunteered for many groups and preferred the work behind the scenes to the limelight. More than 35 years ago he helped develop the Timmins and District Hospital Foundation's Christmas Card Campaign, a fundraiser his family chose for donations in his memory. They summed him up in one line: a man "who would always do the right thing, even when nobody was watching."

Charlotte died before him. He is survived by his children Debbie Dupont, Kelly Woodward and Jason Laneville, eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, who called him Great Popa, and seven siblings: Florent, Fleurette, Vivianne, Colette, Jackie, Pierre and Paul.

What he built is still in Timmins. The Christmas Card Campaign he helped develop at the hospital foundation has run for more than three decades. The station on the hill, where his broadcasting life began more than half a century ago, also gave his son more than thirty years of work. A Sea Cadet corps once answered to him as its commanding officer, and a backyard pool, a jive step and a lunch-counter hot dog live on in the grandchildren who knew him as Popa.