Spence-Thomas founder and namesake Patrick Spence-Thomas passed away Sunday October 12 2008 at St Michael's hospital in Toronto. With family and close friends by his side, Patrick expressed that his body was “all used up”, and left us quietly without his usual fanfare. Few people who knew Patrick will ever forget him.

    Patrick started in this business in 1962 at Ottawa’s famed Crawley Films, after a failed career as an electronics salesman. Crawley’s was a hot bed of young talent and many alumni have gone on to prominent careers elsewhere. Soon however, the life of a junior sound technician became too mundane for Patrick and he set out on his own. With a small amount of money from his father, Patrick purchased a Nagra III recorder in 1964 and hung out his shingle as a freelance sound recordist. This is when Patrick really came in to his own. Working on programs such as “This Hour has Seven Day” and CBC’s News Magazine, Patrick was traveling the world, collecting many of his future stories. In the early to mid 60’s Patrick experienced many extraordinary events, he traveled with Martin Luther King to accept his Nobel Prize, he was in Mississippi when the Civil rights workers were found buried in a dam, he traveled to the Sinai and recorded Yasser Ararfat in a cave, and he spent 2 weeks on top of a mountain in Vietnam during the American military escalation. By 1967, and with a young family, Patrick felt it was time to come in from the cold. He purchased some aging film sound dubbers, cobbled together a home made mixing desk and opened for business at 290 Jarvis Street in Toronto. We like to call this Spence-Thomas version 1.0. Located just down the road from the CBC headquarters he concentrated on small news and documentary style mixing and with only 5 playback tracks available to him that was about all that could be reasonably expected. During these early studio years, partly due to his enthusiasm and partly to cost effective pricing, Patrick began to help foster the talents of young canadian film makers. Very many of this countries best directors and producers mixed their first films with Patrick Spence-Thomas.

    In 1971, with new client CTV booking more time in his studio, Patrick moved the company north by about 6 blocks, to 45 Charles Street across the street from CTV headquarters. With Spence-Thomas as the first tenant in the building this location would come to attract multitudes of film related businesses.  Owning a mixing studio however did not prevent Patrick from picking up one of his trusty Nagras and going back on the road. In the late 60 and throughout the 70’s Patrick recorded sound for numerous projects including Ivan Reitman’s Foxy Lady (1971), Paul Almond’s Journey (1972) with Genevieve Bujold, and 1973 film The Rainbow Boys directed by Gerald Potterton, starring Donald Pleasence, Kate Reid, and Don Calfa.

    By the early 1980’s Patrick’s old film mixing system from the 60’s was now very old indeed. With only a few externally crafted new additions to our inventory over the previous decade we were well overdue for an upgrade. Patrick was hesitant, mostly we believe, because he could not manufacture the equipment himself. Finally at the insistence of CTV’s Jack McGaw, Patrick approached the bank for a loan to upgrade, and we have never looked back. We had a whole 16 tracks to work with, what ever would Patrick do with that many.

    Around this same time he also splurged and purchased his first personal computer, a 128k Macintosh (the very first model). With almost no software available at the time, there was very little reason for the business to own such a machine, but Patrick loved its potential. The day that Patrick left home for the Hospital this last time, he was seated in front of his newest latest greatest most powerful Macintosh (he had very little use for a computer this powerful but how he wanted it).

    During the rest of the 80’s and 90’s the company continued to expand technically, never looking back to those early hand made days. Patrick was at the controls, continuously excited by every new gizmo. During the past decade and a half the studio moved twice more, acquired a second studio location and grew into the “Small Studio that Could”. Patrick was at the helm the entire time.

    Sometime in around 1990 Patrick withdrew from the mixing chair preferring to let those younger and with more energy work the late night sessions. He was never far away though, and even as his hours and days in studio dwindled, he would make an appearance regularly to regale clients and staff alike with one of his fantastic stories or tidbits of filmmaking wisdom.

    Patrick’s perpetual enthusiasm was the cornerstone of our little company, and we hope that we can carry on this legacy in the future. Besides who will every forget his jolly voice.