Ashbridge was ‘one of the best guys you could work with’
Colleagues pay tribute to longtime Canucks announcer and radio voice
When Al Murdoch was 18 and fresh out of high school, his parents made a suggestion: Why not head down to CKNW and see if he can land a job? After all, young Al had been passionate about broadcasting since he was six.
And so Murdoch did, trekking to the station — in those days at 8th and McBride in New Westminster — for two weeks. His persistence paid off. He landed a job as a board operator. It was a thrilling place to be.
“The radio in the kitchen was literally rusted on 980,” he said. And now he was working around some names whose voices were legendary. The encounters with those names quickly began. Murdoch found himself running the board for Rick Honey, the well-known afternoon host at NW.
John Ashbridge, whose voice Murdoch knew well as a newsreader, walked into the control room.
“‘Hey, you’re new, what’s your story?’” Murdoch recalled the man he would learn was nicknamed Ash saying.
“Yes, I’m new. A story? I’m 18. I don’t have one. I’m just here to learn,” Murdoch replied.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you ... and don’t eff it up,” Ashbridge told him.
And so began a mentorship and friendship that lasted more than three decades.
Murdoch spent a restless night after news was broadcast Tuesday evening that Ashbridge, 71, the longtime public address voice of the Canucks and newsman at CKNW, had passed on to the great radio station in the sky.
Ashbridge was born in England in 1946, but his family left postwar Britain a year later, first for Ontario and eventually settling in Nanaimo, and then Victoria.
Aged 13, Ashbridge took to hanging around CJVI’s radio rooms. He was officially hired part-time to work at the venerable station — on the air since 1922, it ceased broadcasting in 2000 — at the age of 16, though he quickly moved over to CFAX, where he stayed while he finished high school.
Just 18 and out of high school, Ashbridge was scooped up by CJOR, the Vancouver-based rival to CKNW. A year later, NW hired him and so began a 40-year association with the station that was top of the local airwaves.
In his 20s, he moved away from NW a couple times: once for a three-month stint across town at CFUN in 1967, then three years up in Prince George beginning in 1970. (He also spent 1980-81 in Australia.)
During his brief CFUN stint, he was colleagues with Red Robinson.
“It’s a shock,” Robinson said of learning Ashbridge had died. “He was one of the best guys you could work with.”
His humility and kindness stood out.
“He wasn’t putting on any airs. A dedicated community man.”
Ashbridge was known for his community work with the Canucks’ Alumni and with the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation.
“He just loved giving back, it was in his nature,” Murdoch said. “My mom probably saw him more than I did,” he said. “She was on the Royal Columbian auxiliary for 40 years.”
When Murdoch went to visit him last week, he made sure to bring his mother along.
“He was in rough shape, but he still had that glimmer in his eye.”
Ashbridge retired from NW in 2005 and a health scare in 2011 saw him dial back on his Canucks PA duties, a job he’d held since 1987. Murdoch, who had been the PA announcer for the Vancouver Grizzlies and had been doing voiceover work full time since 2000, stepped in to work the games that his friend wasn’t at.
“As he eased out of doing the games, I made sure that when John was doing a game and I was doing the next game I made sure I wasn’t completely different,” he said. “I still keep a little bit of John in what I do.”
When it came to announcing at Canucks games, Murdoch said he had a simple lesson: you aren’t the show, though that didn’t mean be dull.
“You are there to inform the people in the building what’s going on on the ice. Now, there’s a certain style, everyone has a little bit of style. John said ‘You have to bring your own style.’
“I looked at his delivery as his piece de resistance, he’d hit all the right notes.”
Murdoch said that when announcing goals and assists, Ashbridge would often switch his mike off between names and throw in quick quips, just for the production crew.
“That eased the pressure of putting a show on all the time.”
The early impression Ashbridge made on him is a big reason he has the career he does today, he acknowledged. “There’s no question of that whatsoever.”