Inspired by Foster Hewitt, Cole called hockey games for 5 decades for CBC

Bob Cole, whose voice and lively language were the Saturday night soundtrack to hockey games over a broadcasting career that spanned more than half a century, has died.

Cole, who was 90, died Wednesday night in St. John’s surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, said.

“Thank you for decades of love for his work, love of Newfoundland and love of hockey,” Megan Cole told CBC News on Thursday.

Cole said her father had been healthy “up until the very end.”

Cole’s trademark call — “Oh, baby!” — was one of many signposts he brought to play-by-play commentaries that earned him the love of fans and even players themselves.

Cole, who said he still got goosebumps in his mid-80s when he stepped into an arena broadcasting booth, called one of the most famous plays in Canadian sports history: Paul Henderson’s Summit Series goal in 1972, against the Soviet Union.

Bob Cole on 1972 Paul Henderson goal  1:06

“His voice is iconic. It’s all I associated with watching hockey growing up. He has a close spot in a lot of Canadians’ hearts over the years,” Steven Stamkos, captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning captain, said in 2019, when Cole called his final game — a classic Original Six matchup between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens.

“That was the guy you grew up listening to,” Leafs captain John Tavares said at the time.

As Cole wound down his career that season, players would pay tributes, such as entire teams skating with their sticks raised high in the air.

“Well, well, well — Ottawa, pretty classy. Thanks very much,” an emotional Cole said as he commented on a Senators play made just for him.

Already a prominent figure in St. John’s broadcasting, Cole leapt to national broadcasts in 1969 when he started calling NHL games for CBC Radio.

He moved to television in 1973 and was a staple of Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts for decades to come. He called many Stanley Cup final series over the years, and gave sports fans thrills with on-the-spot comments, some which have resonated for generations.

“They’re going home,” he repeatedly said on Jan. 11, 1976, when Russia’s Red Army hockey team temporarily headed to the changing room during a heated match with the Philadelphia Flyers, then the reigning Stanley Cup champs.

The incident occurred during the first period, when Flyers defenceman Ed Van Impe, who had just finished serving a penalty, delivered a hard check on Valeri Kharlamov. The Russian star lay prone on the ice for several minutes, prompting Red Army coach Konstantin Loktev to pull his team off the ice in protest when no penalty was called. The Russian team would eventually return to finish the game.

Rooted in radio, Cole knew that what hockey fans heard could add to their enjoyment of the game.

“I get a great charge out of making exciting sound, if you want to call it that,” he told The Canadian Press in a 2022 interview, after he received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

“It’s the feel of the game that got me started and I managed to hang onto that, I think, or tried to for so long.”

For guidance on how to call a hockey game, Cole once went straight to the top with an audition tape: legendary broadcaster Foster Hewitt.

Inspired by Hewitt in his childhood — “radio was my everything,” he told Ian Hanomansing in a 2019 interview — Cole in his early 20s tracked down Hewitt in Toronto.

Hewitt not only agreed to listen to the tape but took Cole into the studio to give him feedback on the spot.

“It was a dream you would never imagine could happen — Foster Hewitt is talking to me about how he does, how he thinks about a hockey game,” Cole said in 2016 interview with CBC to promote Now I’m Catching On: My Life On and Off the Air, a memoir he wrote with sportswriter Stephen Brunt.

Hockey was not the only sport Cole loved. He curled for many years, twice skipping teams that represented Newfoundland and Labrador at the Brier in the 1970s.

During his lengthy broadcasting career, he was also quiz master on CBC’s Reach for the Top in Newfoundland and Labrador.

His voice appeared outside sports, too. Actor and producer Allan Hawco asked Cole to voice the recap intro heard at the beginning of most episodes of the series Republic of Doyle.