showbiz

Singer Celine Dion’s brother near death, says report

January 16, 2016

Canadian singer Celine Dion, who lost her husband Rene Angelil this week, could be on the verge of losing her brother as well. – Reuters pic, January 16, 2016.Canadian singer Celine Dion, whose husband died earlier this week, is facing another family crisis with a brother on the verge of death, a Montreal newspaper reported on Friday.

Daniel Dion, 59, one of her 13 siblings, has cancer and may have only a matter of days to live, sister Claudette Dion told the Journal of Montreal.

"It's very painful. It's a matter of days or hours," she told the paper after visiting her brother in the hospital.

Celine Dion, 47, asked for privacy after she announced on Thursday the death of her husband and long-time manager, Rene Angelil, at the age of 73 after a long battle with throat cancer.

"He will be remembered as a gentle man, generous and kind, an unprecedented visionary, a modern Pygmalion, a Renaissance man," she said in a Facebook post.

She has not made any recent comments on the site about her brother.

Angelil stepped down as Dion's manager in 2014, turning her career over to a friend of the couple but he remained involved in business decisions.

The Canadian entertainment manager, who discovered Dion when she was 12-years-old and drove her career to stardom, married her in 1994 at a lavish wedding in Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica.

The couple have three sons, Rene-Charles, 14, and five-year-old twins Nelson and Eddy.

Angelil's illness, first diagnosed in 1999, prompted Dion to put her career on hold in 2014, suspending her Las Vegas residency. Dion said he supported her later return to the stage. – Reuters, January 16, 2016.