Bernie Pascall (1940-)

Bernie Pascall

Year Born: 1940

Year of Induction: 2004

Member of CAB Hall of Fame

Pascall, Bernie (1940- )

Bernie Pascall started his award-winning sports broadcasting career in 1957 at CFAR radio in Flin Flon, Manitoba as a play by play broadcaster of the Flin Flon Junior Bombers and went on to do play by play of 6 Olympics on CTV, television play by play of the Vancouver Canucks, World Hockey Championships and numerous major Canadian Sports Championships.

Along the way, in 1960 he moved from Flin Flon to CHAT-TV Medicine Hat where he voiced one of the first televised baseball games. Moving to CJAY-TV Winnipeg in 1964, he again was involved in all kinds of sport broadcasts, in which he introduced the Winnipeg fans to his special brand of commentary.

Bernie was then lured to CFTO-TV in Toronto in 1967, where he was sports anchor/reporter and coordinating producer of mid-week Maple Leaf Hockey broadcasts.

In 1969, BCTV Vancouver was searching for a sports anchor, and at the top of their wish list was Bernie Pascall.  He was ready for a move, and spent the next 30 years covering sports world wide for BCTV and CTV.  He was the voice of the Vancouver Canucks and reported on all sports from ski jumping to boxing to figure skating.

While in Vancouver, he was on the CTV Team covering the Olympics – 1976 Innsbruck,  1976 Montreal, 1980 Lake Placid, 1984 Sarajevo, 1984 Los Angeles, and 1988 Calgary – and as an observer at Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin 2006.

Bernie’s 40 plus years in sports broadcasting have included valuable service as Chairman of the selection committee of the BC Hockey Hall of Fame and member of the selection committee of the BC Sports Hall of Fame and Sport BC Athlete Awards.

TV Week selected him as Sportscaster of the Year and he was selected six times as ACTRA Sportscaster of the Year in Western Canada, and finalist in the National category.

In 2004, Bernie Pascall was recognized by his peers when he was inducted into the CAB’s Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2006.

Written by Ross McCreath – September, 2007