Foster Hewitt

Foster William Hewitt was born in Toronto on November 21, 1902, and died on April 21, 1985. He is best known as the voice of *Hockey Night in Canada*. His father, W. A. Hewitt, was a sports editor, and his son, Bill Hewitt, followed him into broadcasting. Hewitt attended Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto, where he was a member of the Toronto chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. As a student, he became a champion boxer, winning the intercollegiate title at 112 pounds. His interest in radio began as a teenager, when he accompanied his father to Detroit to see a General Electric demonstration of the technology. He worked for the Independent Telephone Company, a radio manufacturer, but left both that job and university after his father told him the *Toronto Daily Star* was starting its own station. Hewitt became a reporter for the paper and was ready to broadcast when CFCA launched. The station’s first hockey broadcast, on February 8, 1923, was handled by colleague Norman Albert. Hewitt’s own first broadcast likely covered a February 16 game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Kitchener Greenshirts. In his book, he recalled the date as March 22, though no game was scheduled that night at Arena Gardens. He also wrote that his first broadcast featured Parkdale versus Kitchener—the Argonaut Club was based in Parkdale—and mentioned the game went into overtime, which the Argonaut-Kitchener match did. On May 24, 1925, Hewitt and his father made what is considered the world’s first horse-race broadcast. In 1927, he was a guest announcer for the first game at the new Detroit Olympia. He helped design the broadcast gondola for Maple Leaf Gardens and was part of its opening night on November 12, 1931. For forty years, Hewitt was Canada’s leading hockey play-by-play voice on Saturday nights, sponsored first by General Motors Canada and later by Imperial Oil. He became famous for the call “He shoots, he scores!” and for his sign-on: “Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland.” The Toronto broadcasts aired on CFRB and later on CNR Radio, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, and CBC Radio. From 1952 to 1963, they were simulcast on CBC Television, with Hewitt handling play-by-play until October 11, 1958, when his son Bill took over.