Western remembers Alan Thicke, BA'67

By Jason Winders, MES'10, PhD'16

Iconic Canadian actor Alan Thicke, BA’67, best known for playing Jason Seaver on 1980s sitcom Growing Pains, died from a heart attack on December 13, 2016 in Los Angeles. He was 69. Thicke was playing hockey with his youngest son, Carter, when he suffered the fatal attack.

Having skipped Grades 4 and 6, Thicke arrived at Western at age 16. Fresh from his small-town life, the 1965 Elliot Lake Secondary School homecoming king admitted to boxing up dirty clothes and mailing them home for his mom to wash and return to his dorm. “I had no skills,” he laughed.

The veteran television star reflected fondly on those initial awkward days. “My time at Western, in retrospect, was a great time, and instrumental in everything I have managed to do in my life,” said Thicke, a Delta Upsilon fraternity member. “But by today’s standards, I would consider it to be simple, protected, naive, simple old Canadian values.”

Visit Western News to read more about Thicke's time at Western, and to listen to an audio interview with the Western Alumni Gazette from 2011.