1923–1931 onward · CFCA Toronto, then the General Motors Hockey Broadcast

The Hockey Broadcast

Foster Hewitt, a telephone booth over the ice, and a country that learned to listen on Saturday

The most important thing on Canadian radio before the CBC existed was a hockey game, and it was carried by a newspaper. CFCA belonged to the Toronto Star; the first game went out in February 1923; Foster Hewitt worked from a glassed-in booth and gave the language a sentence it has never given back. When General Motors took the national sponsorship in 1931 the broadcast became the first genuinely coast-to-coast Canadian programme — assembled from private stations, paid for by a car company, years before there was a public network to carry it.

1 recording · Toronto and Montreal

Documentary assembly with archival play-by-play, tracing the CFCA broadcast of 1923 and the General Motors Hockey Broadcast from 1931. Recording held by the Internet Archive.