The news was surprising, considering he was just in Toronto recently during Grey Cup week. Don Chevrier passed away earlier today and the country has lost one of its best announcers.
Most of the obits lead with the fact that Chevy was the original play-by-play man with the Blue Jays, but curlers will always know him as the voice of CBC curling for many, many years.
Chevy partnered with Don Duguid in the years before the all-encompassing coverage the Brier and the Scott. Back in the day, Chevy and Dugy would provide 15-minute daily highlight packages that aired after the late news – about 11:45 as I recall – and then show the final game of the round robin. Later that evolved into the semi-finals and finals. He also did the CBC Curling Classic from 1972 to 1981.
After he left Canada to work in the United States, Chevy got the call to work on the Olympic curling for NBC. He did that in 2002 and 2006.
One of my great memories of Chevy wasn’t of him calling curling, but playing it. As a teen-ager growing up in Toronto, I used to watch Chevy curl at Humber Highland. He played on a team with the late Doug Maxwell and CFL legend Russ Jackson. I have a vivid memory of him wearing a pair of those old Bauer shoes that had the little heal, white ones. He had a sort of wobbly delivery but generally, he was pretty good.
I had the chance to meet him once or twice, but never to pick his brain on his great career. You can find obits here and here that go into detail about his great work.
Welcome to the world of blogging. No doubt you'll be a hell of alot more proficent than I'll ever be at this. But what the heck, I do have alot of fun doing my blog on CZ. Like your post on the CCoC and yes they'll have to fix alot of the format and point awards. As for Chevy, my best recollection has to do with the calling of the Worlds in '72 (Canada-Meleschuk vs USA-Labonte) and the final rock in the 10th end. He called it perfectly with Duggie at his side. He was truly a great broadcaster in this country, may he RIP.
ReplyDelete