Jean Currivan Trebek

George Alexander Trebek (July 22, 1940 – November 8, 2020) was a Canadian-American game show host and television personality.

Trebek was born on July 22, 1940, in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, the son of George Edward Trebek (born Terebeychuk, Теребейчу́к), a chef who had emigrated from Ukraine as a child, and Lucille Marie Lagacé (April 14, 1921 – 2016), a Franco-Ontarian.

Trebek had roots in Renfrew County, Ontario, where his maternal grandmother was born in Mount St. Patrick near Renfrew.

Trebek grew up in a bilingual French-English household.

He was almost expelled from the boarding school that his parents sent him to.

Shortly after, Trebek attended a military college but dropped out when he was asked to cut his hair.

Trebek's first job at age 13 was as a bellhop at the hotel where his father worked as a chef.

Trebek attended Sudbury High School (now Sudbury Secondary School) and then attended the University of Ottawa.

He graduated from the University of Ottawa with a degree in philosophy in 1961.

While a university student, Trebek was a member of the English Debating Society.

At the time, he was interested in a broadcast news career.

Before completing his degree, Trebek began his career in 1961 working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

According to Trebek, "I went to school in the mornings and worked at nights; I did everything, at one time replacing every announcer in every possible job."

He would eventually read the CBC national radio news and cover a wide range of special events for CBC Radio and CBC Television, including curling and horse racing.

Trebek's first hosting job was on a Canadian music program called Music Hop in 1963.

In 1966, he hosted a high school quiz show called Reach for the Top.

From 1967 to 1970, Trebek was a host for the CBC, introducing classical music programs including performances by Glenn Gould.

For one or two seasons, he hosted a weekly skating program.

Starting on April 1, 1969, Trebek also hosted Strategy, a weekday afternoon game show.

From 1971 until the end of 1972, he hosted I'm Here Til 9, the local morning drive radio show on CBC Toronto.

In 1971, Trebek was one of several to have been shortlisted to succeed Ward Cornell as host of Hockey Night in Canada.

In 1973, Trebek moved to the United States and worked for NBC as host of a new game show, The Wizard of Odds. A year later Trebek hosted the popular Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley game show High Rollers, which had two incarnations on NBC (1974–76 and 1978–80) and an accompanying syndicated season (1975–76).

Trebek also appeared as a celebrity teammate on the NBC game show The Magnificent Marble Machine in 1975, and the Tom Kennedy-hosted NBC word game To Say the Least in 1978.

Both of those shows were produced by Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley Productions, which also produced High Rollers, the show Trebek was hosting during both of those guest appearances.

Since the second incarnation of High Rollers premiered while The $128,000 Question was still airing and taping episodes, Trebek became one of two hosts to emcee shows in both the United States and Canada, joining Jim Perry, who was hosting Definition and Headline Hunters in Canada and Card Sharks, which coincidentally premiered the same day as High Rollers in 1978 in the United States.

Trebek's francophone side was put on display in 1978, in a special bilingual edition of Reach for the Top and its Radio-Canada equivalent, Génies en herbe. In this show, Trebek alternated smoothly between French and English throughout.

Like other hosts of the day, Trebek made several guest appearances as a panelist or player on other shows.

One of his guest appearances was on a special week of NBC's Card Sharks in 1980.

Trebek and several other game show hosts (Allen Ludden, Bill Cullen, Wink Martindale, Jack Clark, Tom Kennedy, Gene Rayburn, and Jim Lange) competed in a week-long round-robin tournament for charity.

Trebek won the tournament, defeating Cullen in the finals.

He is best known for hosting the syndicated general knowledge quiz game show Jeopardy! for 37 seasons from its revival in 1984 until his death in 2020.

Trebek also hosted a number of other game shows, including The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration, and To Tell the Truth.

He also made appearances, usually as himself, in numerous films and television series.

In between stints as host of High Rollers, Trebek hosted the short-lived CBS game show Double Dare (not to be confused with the 1986 Nickelodeon game show of the same name).

Double Dare turned out to be Trebek's only game show with the CBS network (he returned there in 1994 to host the Pillsbury Bake-Off until 1998), and the first show he hosted for what was then Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, as well as the second season of the syndicated series The $128,000 Question, which was recorded in Toronto.

A native of Canada, Trebek became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1998.

For his work on Jeopardy!, Trebek received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host eight times.

He died on November 8, 2020, at the age of 80, after a 20-month battle with stage IV pancreatic cancer.

At the time of his death, Trebek had been contracted to host Jeopardy! until 2022.

Although Trebek was the preferred choice of executive producer Ralph Mellanby, based on his audition and other CBC roles, Mellanby stated in 2020 that he ultimately chose Dave Hodge instead, because his boss did not want someone with a mustache to host Hockey Night.