{"id":23749,"date":"2019-05-09T18:50:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T22:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23749"},"modified":"2019-05-09T18:50:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T22:50:41","slug":"late-canucks-beat-reporter-had-roots-in-aurora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/late-canucks-beat-reporter-had-roots-in-aurora\/","title":{"rendered":"Late Canucks beat reporter had roots in Aurora"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A familiar face among the Vancouver Canucks community, beat\nwriter Jason Botchford passed away suddenly of heart failure last weekend,\nleaving the hockey world in mourning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A writer with The Athletic Vancouver, and more popularly\npreviously with The Province newspaper in Vancouver, it was his upbringing in\nAurora that first brought Botchford to the offices of the Toronto Sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Aurora in 1971, Botchford\u2019s keen eye for detail and\naffinity for bipartisanism made him a star at Centennial College\u2019s advanced journalism\nprogram, earning a position at the Sun shortly after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He moved to Vancouver in 2005 as a news reporter for The\nProvince, quickly converting to the Canucks\nbeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Support for his family came\npouring out from the hockey world shortly after his passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am shattered,\u201d said Jeff\nPaterson, his partner on his weekly podcast, on Twitter. \u201cJust sitting here in\na daze. I have lost the best podcasting partner a guy could ask for. Botch was\nalso a friend, colleague, travelling companion & a driving force in Canucks\ncoverage. So many great memories. My sincerest sympathy to his family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJason was an incredibly\npassionate and dedicated reporter who connected with Canucks fans everywhere,\u201d said the\nCanucks organization in a press release. \u201cHis loss is heart-breaking for us\nall. The Botchford family is\nin our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though our time\ncollaborating was brief, I\u2019m thankful I had the chance to get to know Jason\nthis season,\u201d said James Mirtle, head of The Athletic. \u201cI\u2019ve been in this\nbusiness nearly 20 years, and I\u2019ve never worked with anyone quite like him. We\nbuilt a strong connection in a short period of time, in part because we\nrealized we both came up as outsiders \u2014 in our markets and in the business \u2014\nand found a way to do things a little differently and find success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One ray of light to appear from\nthe tragedy has been the community\u2019s ability to rally behind the Botchford\nfamily, which includes Botchford\u2019s wife Kathryn as well as two daughters and\none son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A GoFundMe page was set up the\nday after news broke of Botchford\u2019s passing, and has raised more than $90,000\nsince its inception, something Kathryn said had her \u201cdeeply touched\u201d in a\nstatement released by the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any Aurora residents looking to\ncontribute can find the page at\nwww.gofundme.com\/supporting-the-botchford-family.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A familiar face among the Vancouver Canucks community, beat writer Jason Botchford passed away suddenly of heart failure last weekend, leaving the hockey world in mourning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6b3","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 13:35:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}