Jim Robson, right, called more than 2,000 National Hockey League games, never once missing an assignment owing to illness.Ralph Bower/ BC Sports Hall of Fame/Supplied
In the broadcast booth, Jim Robson enjoyed greater success than did the hockey team whose exploits he described.
The long-time voice of the Vancouver Canucks was a beloved figure in British Columbia.
The death of Mr. Robson at 91 has felt for hockey fans like the loss of a favourite uncle.
A generation of children grew up listening to his rich, warm voice, his play-by-play a lullaby for some as they surreptitiously defied parental bedtimes by listening on a transistor radio with an earpiece, or with the sound muffled by a pillow.
Mr. Robson’s voice was as much a part of the British Columbia soundscape as a foghorn, the squawk of a Steller’s jay, or the soothing pitter-patter of rainfall on a tree canopy.
While other broadcasters relied on stentorian pipes, or a scintillating vocabulary, or the excitability of a carny barker, Mr. Robson showed enviable restraint. It was said you could determine a game’s status if tuning in late just by the sound of his voice. He delivered a call with a rising tempo and occasional crescendo.
John Shorthouse, who succeeded him on radio, told Sportsnet’s Canucks Talk that “Jim possessed more gears in his engine than any other play-by-play guy I’ve ever heard.”
For long-suffering fans of the Canucks, a team which has yet to win a Stanley Cup championship through 56 agonizing seasons, the consolation was that Mr. Robson was the one to deliver the bad news.
Jim Robson, centre, poses for a photo with Harold Snepsts, left, and Bobby Orr.BC Sports Hall of Fame/Supplied
He called more than 2,000 National Hockey League games, never once missing an assignment owing to illness. He called the Canucks’ first-ever NHL game in 1970 (a 3-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings), the Canucks’ first trip to the Stanley Cup finals (swept in four games by the New York Islanders in 1982) and their return in 1994 (defeated in seven games by the New York Rangers).
He also handled play-by-play for Hockey Night in Canada games on the West Coast, as well as calling the 1975, 1980 and 1983 finals, plus four NHL all-star games.
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Some fans can repeat Robson calls from memory as though citing scripture, including two from the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs. On May 24, the Canucks needed one more victory to eliminate the Toronto Maple Leafs. The score was 3-3 after the first overtime period.
As the fifth period began, Mr. Robson’s voice rose with the action. “Back to the line to [Dave] Babych. Long shot! [Felix] Potvin had trouble with it!” A Canucks player pounced on the loose puck to fire a low backhand. “Adams! He scorrrrres! Greg Adams! Greg Adams! Adams gets the winner! Fourteen seconds into the second overtime.” Then, in a voice filled with wonderment and a hint of disbelief, he said, “The Vancouver Canucks are going to the Stanley Cup final!”
Eighteen days later, as the clock wound down on a Game 6 victory over the Rangers at home, Mr. Robson focused on the Vancouver captain’s tribulations.
“[Trevor] Linden has been chopped down. He’s crawling toward the bench. Linden’s been injured. Now he’s hit again by [Mark] Messier going to the bench. Messier hit Linden when he was down on his knees. … But there is going to be that seventh game. We’ll hope they can patch Linden up and get him in that one. He will play. You know he’ll play! He’ll play on crutches!”
By coincidence, Mr. Linden had listened to Mr. Robson on the radio as a hockey-mad boy growing up in Medicine Hat.
For all the memorable calls, Mr. Robson was best known for a folksy trademark: “A special hello to hospital patients and shut-ins, the pensioners, the blind and all those people who can’t get out to games.”
After the announcement of his death, the singer Michael Bublé purchased a full-page newspaper advertisement in tribute. Radio, television and social-media outlets filled with eulogies and favourite memories of a humble and self-deprecating figure. They can be summed up by a post by CBC journalist Justin McElroy, who wrote: “Those who say ‘never meet your heroes’ never met Jim Robson.”
James Alexander Robson was born on Jan. 17, 1935, in Prince Albert, Sask. He was the youngest of four children born to the former Myfanwy Roberts, a Welsh immigrant, and William James Robson, a guard at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary.
As a boy, he joined his family listening to Foster Hewitt’s radio broadcasts from Maple Leaf Gardens, becoming a fan of the wartime Boston Bruins.
The family moved to British Columbia to join an uncle when Jim was aged 8. They farmed at first on Barnston Island in the Fraser River before getting a farm near the community of Haney in Maple Ridge. Young Jim sold eggs at a stand and to neighbours, while his father also worked in a mill and his mother in a factory making wooden boxes. He played basketball for his high school and suited up for local softball and baseball teams, facing such famed local athletes as Larry Walker, whose namesake son would later become a Baseball Hall of Famer.
As a high-school student, he was paid a dime for every column inch of sports copy he sold to the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Gazette. One day, he bicycled 40 kilometres from his home to Capilano (now Nat Bailey) Stadium to coax a press pass from Bob Brown, manager of the minor-league Vancouver Capilanos.
He was in Grade 11 when hired by radio station CJAV, serving the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. He began what would be a 47-year broadcasting career by writing announcements, advertising copy and promotional trailers, as well as handling sports broadcasts and delivering play-by-play of the Alberni Athletics, the local men’s senior basketball team. Later, he would do play-by-play of the semi-professional Timbermen lacrosse team for CHUB in Nanaimo, about 80 kilometres east of Port Alberni.
Jim Robson worked for Vancouver’s CKWX radio, calling baseball, football and hockey games.BC Sports Hall of Fame/Supplied
In 1956, his growing reputation led to his being poached by Vancouver station CKWX. He spent a dozen seasons calling games of the minor professional baseball Vancouver Mounties, five seasons calling games of the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League and 10 seasons calling games of the original Vancouver Canucks, a professional minor-league team.
In 1961 alone, he called an estimated 230 games of those three sports, as well as covering the B.C. Open golf tournament and high-school track and basketball meets.
He was among the last broadcasters to offer simulated recreations in studio of baseball games played on the road. With Ron Robinson providing crowd sounds and the smack of bat on ball, Mr. Robson conjured the play from detailed teletype reports, turning such code as “B1h,” meaning ball one, high, he would share what he saw in his mind’s eye.
Keen to cover a major-league sport, Mr. Robson applied to be the play-by-play man for a new American League baseball franchise in Seattle. He was rejected, and fortunately so. The Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee after one season. Had he taken the job he might have missed out on the Canucks assignment, which lasted from 1970 until 1999.
The NHL finally granted Vancouver a franchise for the start of the 1970-71 season. Radio station CKNW got the broadcast rights, and soon after lured Mr. Robson away from rival CKWX.
A farewell was organized for Mr. Robson at the downtown Georgia Hotel. A white Cadillac convertible arrived at the Robson home to drive him to the celebration, only to pull away as he got to the curb. A garbage truck then pulled into the spot.
Mr. Robson got his revenge from a telephone at the hotel. He called the home of one of the suspected pranksters and asked for him. The wife who answered was surprised, since she had been told by her husband he was attending a party for Mr. Robson. Where are you calling from, she asked. I’m at home, he replied casually, chuckling quietly to himself about the grief his friend would face when he finally returned home.
The announcer worked a gruelling schedule for years, beginning with breakfast at 3:30 a.m. so he could be in studio to host a show at 6 a.m. This was followed by hourly sports newscasts, then home for a nap, followed by pregame, game and postgame broadcasts.
As well as the Canucks, Mr. Robson handled other assignments, including calling basketball for the CBC during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
It was in that same city the following year in which Mr. Robson encountered a young fan at the Los Angeles Forum.
“Say, you’re Jim Robson, aren’t you?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Mr. Robson replied. “How do you know me?”
“I’m from Burnaby.”
“Are you going to school here?” Mr. Robson asked.
The man said he was an actor, and Mr. Robson wished him the best of luck.
When the Canucks players later learned of this exchange, they marvelled that Mr. Robson did not recognize Michael J. Fox from television’s Family Ties and the smash movie Back to the Future, yet the actor knew him.
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A famously soft touch for charities, Mr. Robson appeared as an emcee or guest speaker for countless events. In 2017, he recorded a medley of Little Drummer Boy and Peace on Earth with a son, a reprise of the earlier David Bowie and Bing Crosby collaboration, as a fundraiser for the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.
One of those song titles, from Luke 2:14, also inspired a memorable Robson call. On Dec. 29, 1972, the thuggish Philadelphia Flyers, known as the Broad Street Bullies, brawled with Canucks players and fans at the Pacific Coliseum. After breathlessly describing the wild scenes before him, Mr. Robson paused and, in recognition of the yuletide, said, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”
Mr. Robson received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award in 1992 for outstanding contributions to hockey broadcasting, an honour which includes placement of a glass plaque at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
He has also been inducted into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame (1998), the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame (2000) and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame (2002), as well as being named a Hometown Hero by Maple Ridge in 1998. The broadcaster was invested in the Order of B.C. in 2011.
The broadcast gondola at Rogers Arena is named for him, as is the street leading to a hockey rink in Maple Ridge.
Mr. Robson died on Feb. 9 in Vancouver. He had been undergoing cancer treatment. He leaves two sons, two daughters and four grandchildren. He was predeceased in September by the former Beatrice Louise Wastell, known as Bea, a nurse he met in Port Alberni who was his wife of 68 years. He was also predeceased by siblings Mary Jane Chayko, Robert James Robson and John Donald Robson.
According to long-time friend Greg Douglas, who was the Canucks’ first publicist, the announcer’s call out to shut-ins once generated an appreciative letter from an unexpected listener, a prison inmate.
“Thank you for remembering us,” it read. “We wait for your hello and bang our tin cups on the bars.”
The handwritten note was signed by Thomas Scallen, a former owner of the Canucks, who did time in the B.C. Penitentiary after being convicted of theft and issuing a false prospectus, but was later pardoned.
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