Gary Mittelholtz, shown in this photo reporting for CBC News, died after suffering a heart attack on Saturday while cross-country skiing near Sussex. (CBC)

Long-time CBC radio personality Gary Mittelholtz died of a heart attack Saturday while cross-country skiing near Sussex, N.B. He was 55.

Mittelholtz, an outdoors enthusiast, was skiing with a friend.

He started his radio career at the CBC in Toronto in the summer of 1976, working as a technician. A decade later he moved to Saint John, where he worked the remainder of his 32-year career.

Mittelholtz hosted a number of New Brunswick programs, including, The Rolling Home Show and Mainstreet.

In 1987, he received the Atlantic Journalism Awards' gold prize for enterprising radio reporting.

Harvey MacLeod worked with Mittelholtz in the 1980s on The Rolling Home Show.

Bright and cheerful

"My first impression was that he was a very bright and cheerful guy," MacLeod said. "And Saint John was a pretty down-to-earth sort of town and Gary was a very down-to-earth kind of guy."

MacLeod said part of Mittelholtz's success in journalism was tied to that personality.

"He always knew a story when he saw one. When Gary would leave the studio in the morning he'd go out with a tape recorder and he'd come back at the end of the day with six different stories," he said.

"He kind of had a nose for it because he just had this way of people opening up to him and they'd just start to talk. It was wonderful."

Mittelholtz retired from the CBC in December 2008. Since retiring, he worked as publisher-editor of the River Valley News, a community newspaper in southern New Brunswick.

Liberal MLA Jack Keir, who represents Fundy-River Valley in the legislature, said he met Mittelholtz when his family moved to Grand Bay-Westfield in the 1980s.

"Everybody in Grand Bay-Westfield knows Gary Mittelholtz and are going to be impacted by this, all the organizations he's been involved with. And when he retired from CBC he didn't retire, he changed careers," Keir said.

"He took over the River Valley News, our local community newspaper, and did a super job on that. It's going to be awful for our whole community."