The unique voices that were quieted this year

From folksinger Kate McGarrigle to Dame Joan Sutherland and actors Tony Curtis and Leslie Nielsen, the world lost some unique voices in 2010.

At least three divas, who took their respective stages by storm, were finally stilled: the Australian-born Sutherland, one of the most celebrated sopranos of all times, died at her Geneva home in October at 83; Canada's powerful contralto, Maureen Forrester, passed away in June after a long bout with dementia; and the elegant Lena Horne, who broke racial barriers as a singer and actress, died May 9 at 92.

The written word was hit just as hard. Though he had lived as an ultra-recluse for most of his adult life, J.D. Salinger's death in January at 91 shook the literary world for weeks.

For their own, more specialized audiences, so did the passings of the Boston-based mystery writer Robert Parker (the Spenser novels) at 77; Portugal's Nobel Prize-winning author Jos Saramago in June at 87; Toronto's Paul Quarrington, 56 [see slideshow]; and Alan Sillitoe, one of Britain's celebrated "angry young men" of the 1950s.

Prominent Canadians who passed away in 2010

The world of sports bid adieu to many of its heroes in 2010, including NHL coach Pat Burns, the former policeman who became one of the hockey world's most successful bench bosses of the past 20 years. He was 58 and had been fighting cancer for years.

Former CFL star Tony Proudfoot, a Grey Cup winning defensive back with the Montreal Alouettes died Dec. 30, at 61, after a tortuous three-year fight with Lou Gehrig's disease.

Less well-sung but equally courageous, Saskatchewan wheelchair athlete Clayton Gerein, a seven-time Paralympian, died from a brain tumour in January, at 45, just weeks after carrying the torch in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Lest we forget

On Dec. 18, Cpl. Steve Martin, from St-Cyrille-de-Wendover, Que., becamethe 16th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan this past year.A total of 154 Canadian soldiers have been killed since the military mission began in 2002.

Baseball tipped its cap to Cleveland fireballer Bob Feller, among several other former players, as well as to the blustery former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, the only helmsman to win the World Series with teams from both major leagues.

Basketball said goodbye to UCLA coaching legend John Wooden and to Sudanese-born Manute Bol, the 7-foot-7 giant whose height was only exceeded by his exceptional aid work in the developing world after he left the game.

Speaking of giants, the cinematic world lost three larger-than-life figures: Hollywood legend Tony Curtis, 85, whose career spanned nearly six decades; comic director Blake Edwards, 88 (Breakfast at Tiffany's, the Pink Panther series) and, at 74, Dennis Hopper, who brought counterculture to more than the big screen.

Also gone: Jill Clayburgh, 66, the feisty American actress who helped redefine Hollywood's view of women, and Lynn Redgrave, the free-thinking British Georgy Girl to 1960s moviegoers, whose troubled life later became the grist for a one-woman stage show.

TV lost one of its favourite dads, Tom Bosley, 83, who played Ritchie Cunningham's father on the long-running Happy Days; and TVOntario watchers said goodbye to a favourite children's-show actor, Toronto's versatile Denis Simpson, 59, one of the founders of the singing group The Nylons and a long-serving host of Polka Dot Door.

For a generation raised on Walt Disney's Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, actor Fess Parker passed away in March at his California winery. He was 85.

On history's broad stage, there were many notable passings. Among them: Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. fixer and diplomat extraordinaire; Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia's prime minister in the turbulent 1990s; Nestor Kirchner, the former president of Argentina and husband of the country's current leader; Chief Billy Diamond, at 61, who gave voice and an historic land claims deal to the James Bay Cree; Elizabeth Edwards, the tabloid-suffering wife of former U.S. presidential candidate and senator John Edwards; Alexander Haig, the former general who tried to run Richard Nixon's chaotic White House in the wake of Watergate; and Michael Foot, the fiery orator and long-serving British Labour Party stalwart who was soundly trounced by the Conservatives' Margaret Thatcher when it was his turn as leader.

December took one of the world's great builders the Hungarian-born, Toronto-based engineer George Vari, 87 whose international triumphs, such as the Tour Montparnesse in Paris, were overshadowed only by his unflagging philanthropy.

We also lost a couple of those who tried valiantly to make sense of it all, including Theodore Sorensen, 82, the studious JFK aide who wrote most of the speeches and poetic phrases that came to define the United States's brief Camelot in the 1960s; Howard Zinn, the feisty left-wing American historian, 87; and Tony Judt, 62, the sharply polemical, British-born historian who was one of the acknowledged experts on postwar Europe.