Only this year Christopher Doig was made Companion to the New Zealand Oder of Merit for services to the arts & sport. I didn't really know a lot about him, except as an international opera singer who won the 1972 Mobil Song Quest (as it was then), graduated with top honours from the Vienna Music Academy, & performed for years at, among other international venues, the Vienna State Opera.
So I was somewhat surprised when he was made CEO at New Zealand Cricket in 1995; he was also involved with the NZRU, NZ Rowing & Sparc.
I already knew he was involved in Arts administration.
" He was director of the International Festival of the Arts from 1992 to 1995, a chairman of Creative New Zealand in 2006, and on the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Foundation board.
As Southern Opera Trust chairman, he was responsible for bringing international opera star Placido Domingo to Christchurch last week " (3News - more).
Today we lost a great New Zealander (NZ Herald). He died at Nurse Maude Hospice in Christchurch after a two-year battle with bowel cancer.
RIP.
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I can't feel even vaguely sympathetic to another of this year's CNZMs - Roger Kerr. His diatribe in the Otago Daily Times recently about the "insupportable burden of student loans" reeked of the kind of hypocrisy that gets baby boomers like me a bad name - he got his MA(Hons 1st class) back in the days when tertiary education was largely free-to-user, & I'll bet he wasn't complaining then! The taxpayer got a return via the higher taxes paid by most graduates, in a society where the well-off more nearly paid their fair share. Not like today.
Yes, I understand Kerr is also fighting cancer, & yes, I hate the disease for taking my friends & relatives, but I can't feel for him in the least.
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