Foster Hewitt
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Foster William Hewitt, OC (November 21, 1902 – April 21, 1985) was a Canadian radio pioneer.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Hewitt attended Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto. He was a champion boxer in his student years, winning the intercollegiate title at 112 pounds. Hewitt developed an early interest in radio and as a teenager accompanied his father, W. A. Hewitt, on a trip to Detroit, Michigan to see a demonstration of radio technology sponsored by General Electric.
He took a job with Independent Telephone Company, which manufactured radios, and left that job and university when his father—the sports editor of the Toronto Daily Star—told him that the Star was going to start its own radio station. Hewitt became a reporter at the paper, and was ready to go on the air when CFCA was launched. CFCA's first hockey broadcast was on February 8, 1923, although it was not reported who performed the play-by-play. On May 24, 1925, Hewitt and his father made what was said to be the world's first broadcast of a horse race. In 1927, he was invited as guest announcer to broadcast the first game from the new Detroit Olympia. Hewitt was part of the opening night ceremonies for Maple Leaf Gardens in November 1931, and the broadcast gondola where Hewitt would broadcast from was brought into the plans with his input, and the blessings of then Leafs owner Conn Smythe.
For forty years, Hewitt was Canada's premier hockey play-by-play broadcaster on Hockey Night in Canada, the first radio program widely listened to in Canada. He coined the phrase "he shoots, he scores!" and was also well known for his sign-on at the beginning of each broadcast, "Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland." (Newfoundland was a British Colony, before joining Canada in 1949.)
Hewitt had offers to go over to television to continue the broadcasts that he initiated, but he decided to stay with radio, handing over the television broadcasts to his son, Bill Hewitt. In 1951, he started his own radio station in Toronto, CKFH, initially at AM 1400 kHz, until moving to 1430 in 1959. The station carried Leafs games until losing the rights in 1978. In 1981, the station was sold to Telemedia and was renamed CJCL (AM).
Hewitt retired from television in 1963, but came out of retirement to broadcast the 1972 Summit Series (with colour commentator Brian Conacher). Hewitt was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder in 1965. In 1972 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. The Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame is named after him, as is the media gondola at the nearby Air Canada Centre. Hewitt's original gondola from Maple Leaf Gardens was dismantled, then dumped into an incinerator in August 1979 to make room for private boxes, under the MLG leadership of Harold Ballard.
Hewitt died at age 82.
