07/03/2026
Rest peacefully Tommy Hunter London Music Hall of Fame inductee 2012. Forest City London Music Awards
"Canada's Country Gentleman" Tommy Hunter, the celebrated musician whose professional career spanned from the 1950s into the early 2010s, has died.
The singer and guitarist died Thursday of natural causes, entertainment promoter and manager Brian Edwards confirmed to CBC News.
Hunter was 89. Source CBC
Tommy Hunter was inducted into the London Music Hall of Fame the same night as his farewell concert at the RBC Theatre at the John Labatt Centre. Canada’s Country Gentleman was visibly moved by the cheers from the home-town crowd following the on-stage induction. Hunter ended his final Canadian tour in London, on his 75th birthday. The management team invited the Jack Richardson Music Awards steering committee to make the induction a part of the night. We are honoured to have been able to do so. Hunter was a CBC-TV star, first with Country Hoedown, then with his own show, for 36 years. Hunter brought many of the biggest names in the business to the forefront early in their careers. He was always surrounded by fine musicians from fiddler Al Cherny to guitarist Red Shea and so many others. He made dozens of recordings, published a best-selling autobiography and is a member of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour. He is in the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and has been honoured many other times in the U.S. and Canada. As anyone who was at the final show will tell you, he has continued to excel in live performance as a singer, musician, storyteller and standup comic. Tommy Hunter left London in the 1950s as the demands of his career made him a national and then international star. London has honoured him by naming a street for him near Brisbin Street, where he grew up. Through it all, Tommy Hunter has never forgotten his London roots. At that final concert, he picked his way sweetly through his acoustic guitar spot on” Wildwood Flower.” It was a song taught to him by Edith Hill Adams, the East London music teacher who helped the young Hunter turn his love of country music into a 60-year-plus career. Hunter praised her from the stage and there was applause. “I picked the right night to get it right,” Hunter beamed after finishing the last difficult flourish on Wildwood Flower.
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