Former Petes goalie calls horse races in Fort Erie
Frank Salive has had a 48-year career in sports broadcasting and announcing since his Peterborough days in early 1970s
Frank Salive has a voice made for radio.
His vocal skills and engaging personality is anything but a fluke. It reflects a 48-year career in sports broadcasting and announcing, a journey that began while playing for the Petes.
Originally from Leamington, Salive was invited by the Petes to a fall tryout in 1972. Although he wasn’t asked to suit up for the team that season, Roger Neilson saw enough promise in the goalie to send him to the Pembroke Lumber Kings. In December of the same year Salive was invited to join the maroon and white and remained with the Petes for another two seasons.
Salive dressed alongside some of the club’s most reputable figures including Doug Jarvis, Doug Halward and Stan Jonathan, a right winger who was issued a unique nickname.
“In (Jonathan’s) years with the Petes he would pull up to practice in this fastback Mustang from the late 1960s and he would blare eight-track tapes of the country artist Merle Haggard. To an era of ex-Petes, he was not Stan Jonathan, he was known as Merle because of the singer.”
Salive claims it was Neilson who shaped his understanding of work ethic and the importance of teamwork.
“There were so many ingenious ways Roger motivated us to be better individually and certainly to be better than collectively he just made everyone better than they should have been.”
Salive’s journey in sports media began on radio at CKPT thanks to the legendary Petes play-by-play announcer Bill Bennett and working on CHEX-TV on small projects passed along to him by Gary Dalliday.
“One of my first assignments from Gary Dalliday was in the summer of 1974. I already had keen interest in media, whether it was as a writer or announcer, so he assigned me to Kawartha Downs and I interviewed a young driver at the time named Devon Brown.”
Following his playing career with the Petes, Salive went on to a radio job in St. Catharines as sports director with CKTB and radio sportscasting for the morning and afternoon drive shows. Not long after, Salive was presented a full-time opportunity at CTV Sudbury from 1976 to 1978.
He remained in the Nickel City until an interview with the L.A. Kings’ Dale McCourt landed him a full-time role on radio and television on CBC Windsor. At this time he was also doing assignments for TSN covering stock car races at Checkered Flag Speedway.
“I got a lot of the recognition for being Roger’s goalie in those years. Along with the Petes, those legendary past figures from Peterborough media helped me a lot to set the course for my career and I really owe a debt of thanks I can never repay for how great an impact they had on my life and subsequent careers. I was the lucky guy to be on duty for all those developments in racing.”
In 1990, Salive auditioned for a vacancy at the Ontario Jockey Club at Woodbine Racetrack and following a couple of tryouts he locked in the role of announcer at Canada’s largest horse racetrack.
“It was a very transitional time in racing and I was lucky to be the right guy in the right place for those years. It is when racing moved into off-track betting and then the internet arrived and the exposure was suddenly worldwide.”
In 2005, Salive left Woodbine to scale back the pace of his life and worked for four years at Western Fair in London. He was then recruited to work in Pompano, Fla. where he called races for another four years until he made an attempt at retirement that was shortlived.
In 2016 he was hired to call races for the Fort Erie Race Track, which hosts the annual Prince of Wales Stakes, the second jewel of Canada’s Triple Crown of horse racing.
“I will be starting my fifth year being the lead race announcer and television host for the racetrack,” Salive said.
Although Salive admits to being on the long side of 65 years old, he is firm that his passion and love for racing is “still as strong as ever.”
His home in Florida is two kilometres from the home rink of the Florida Panthers which he admits is his NHL team of choice.
“I am very, very fortunate to still have a hand in horse racing, a hand in broadcasting and being close to the NHL.”
As Salive recalls his journey from his first tryout with the Petes to the racetracks, he reflects on each milestone with overwhelming thankfulness and is quick to identify the people who lay the foundation to his success, many of whom are from Peterborough.
“Once you have been with the Petes, it’s a great, wonderful thing that stays with you for the rest of your life. I am living proof of that even if I didn’t go on to play in the NHL.”