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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Ex-Jewish Post editor set 'hard-to-match' standard

By: Morley Walker

16/04/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Matt Bellan (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

THE city's Jewish community has lost one of its most prominent chroniclers.

Matt Bellan, who had stepped down in November as editor of the Jewish Post & News, was found dead Tuesday morning in the swimming pool of his East Kildonan apartment, his brother Bernie said. Matt was 58.

The cause of death has not been confirmed, Bernie said, but was probably drowning, the result of either a heart attack or a diabetic coma. Matt had gone swimming Monday night, and his body was not discovered until the next morning.

"He struggled with diabetes for a long time," said Bernie, 55, who co-owned the newspaper with his brother and another partner. "It was juvenile diabetes, the worst kind."

Bernie, who earned headlines for leading and winning a class-action lawsuit against principals of the failed Crocus Investment Fund, said his brother loved to write.

"He told a high school teacher that he wanted to achieve immortality through creativity," Bernie said. "He set a standard for the paper that is going to be hard to match."

Matt Bellan, who was born in Winnipeg and grew up in West Kildonan, worked for the Regina Leader-Post before taking over the editorship of the Jewish Post in 1982.

Openly gay, he leaves behind his partner of almost 20 years, Guy Frobisher. "He was a loving, caring person," Frobisher said. "He loved being a journalist."

The funeral is slated for Sunday at the Chesed Shel Emes Chapel at 1023 Main St. with interment at the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery. "Matt wrote farewell stories about so many of the greats in our community," Bernie said. "But, typically, he paid no attention to himself and what would follow his own demise."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 16, 2009 B2

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