Elwy Yost

Elwy Yost
Yost in 1993
Born
Elwy McMurran Yost

(1925-07-10)July 10, 1925
Weston, Ontario, Canada
DiedJuly 21, 2011(2011-07-21) (aged 86)
OccupationTelevision host
Years active1952–1999
Known forPassport to Adventure
Magic Shadows
Saturday Night at the Movies
SpouseLila Ragnhild Melby
ChildrenChristopher and Graham

Elwy McMurran Yost, CM (July 10, 1925 – July 21, 2011) was a Canadian television film historian, best known for hosting, for a quarter-century, Saturday Night at the Movies from 1974 to 1999. Earlier in his career, he hosted CBC Television's weekday Passport to Adventure series from 1965 to 1967, and TVOntario's weekday Magic Shadows, in the 1970s and early 1980s.

He was born in the Toronto suburb of Weston, Ontario and had an early exposure to cinema through his family sending him to see movies and report back on the plot. He served in World War II and after the war graduated from the University of Toronto. In the 1950s, he worked at Avro Canada, during the time that CF-105 Arrow program was being developed.

After the Arrow was cancelled, he transitioned to working as a Toronto-area public school teacher in the early 1960s, before switching over to working at CBC Television. He joined the nascent TV Ontario in the early 1970s, where he achieved his greatest fame. When he retired from broadcasting in 1999, he was awarded one of Canada's greatest civil honours, the Order of Canada. In the late 1980s, he and his wife moved to British Columbia, and that is where he died in late July 2011.