Many visitors to my website will be able to relate to this: remembering Saturday nights as being TV – Hockey night across Canada. My Polish immigrant dad loved watching Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday night. I was his faithful sidekick. We both finished up what we doing in time for the start of the broadcast and stayed glue to the TV right to the end which usually was shortly before the 11pm CBS news with Earl Cameron and Stanley Burke…remember them? Or even the more well-known Lloyd Robertson who later moved to CTV.
Hockey Night in Canada was a tradition, a Saturday night ritual across Canada following the radio broadcast legacy of Foster Hewitt for decades before. Every 75-90 year old “kid” remembers those Saturday nights and the glued-to-the-TV excitement the broadcasts brought to Canadians across the whole country.
Well time, changes, tastes fade and change and all things pass. It’s sad to see that tradition go by the wayside. Sadder still is the spirit or soul that is lost. Those Hockey Nights in Canada bonded families, joined them onto the couch to cheer and jeer the original NHL teams. We jeered the Habs in Toronto, and cheered the ‘Buds,’ Montrealers rooted the Habs and booed the Leafs but no matter your team loyalty, Saturday night was hockey NIGHT in Canada. We’ll miss it and even though we can stream the games form TSN and ESPN, it will never be the same. A sad demise of a great tradition.
