Langley actor, musician, playwright and song writer Ron May has died.
The 64-year-old telecommunications entrepreneur passed away on May 1 after a three-year battle with cancer, said his friend and fellow actor/musician Diane Gendron.
“It’s a real loss,” said Gendron, who performed with May both in theatre and as part of a small musical ensemble in which May played and sang.
“He was a real mentor, so creative and such a sense of humour.”
May’s artistic talents spanned genres, from singing and songwriting to playing multiple instruments, acting and writing original plays.
Over the years, he performed with several bands, but most recently he played his guitar, keyboard or bass guitar and sang lead and harmonies with Renaissance, a small group that performed at local gigs.
In 2006 and again in 2009 May won the top prize in the Langley Senior Idol competitions in 2006 and 2009, singing his own composition; he was a semi-finalist in the 2008 Red Robinson talent contest at the PNE singing a song he composed.
In 2011, May performed one of his original songs in the first annual Langley Has Talent competition, making it through to the finals.
May was a standout on the theatre stage and at the keyboard of his computer as well.
He won the Kiwanis Award for best actor in 2006 for senior theatre. Two years later, he won a gold medal for best director and a silver medal for best actor at the BC Seniors’ Games.
More recently, he wrote the original play Love, Lies and In Betweens, which received silver medals for both best production and best original script in the BC Seniors’ Games in 2012.
May was also a key actor and director with several local theatre groups – the Footlight Players, the Murrayville Performers and the Centre Stage Players — companies which produced many of the plays he wrote.
A line from May’s obituary sums it up: “Ron began performing on stage when he was 16 years old, and whether he was singing and playing his guitar, in a group or solo, or he was a character in a play on the stage, he was a real showman and loved entertaining an audience.”