Familiar voice John Ashbridge’s dulcet tones have been heard for decades
The voice of GM Place, John Ashbridge, just can't seem to get away from arenas, even in the summertime.
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Updated: July 04, 2009 9:10 AM
There are lots of things for John Ashbridge to be proud of—despite his many self-deprecating remarks—including blowing the horn at the right time.
No, no, no, this is not about him blowing his own horn, although blowing this particular one is his responsibility. It’s the horn that blares at GM Place every time the Vancouver Canucks score a goal. It can be a tad embarrassing if he pushes the button when the puck doesn’t go in.
“I take pride in the fact I have now completed a second year without screwing up,” says Ashbridge, a New Westminster resident. “I usually give myself one opportunity a year to inadvertently hit the horn.”
Ashbridge is well known for many things. These days it’s mostly as the public address announcer at Canucks and Vancouver Giants games. He also does narration for many of the NHL team’s production pieces, television shows and advertisements.
Others know him as a familiar voice reading the news on CKNW for nearly 40 years. When Ashbridge was a teenager in Victoria he hung out at radio stations.” By the time he finished high school he had a job lined up at CJOR in Vancouver, and about a year later, before he’d even turned 19, he was on the move to New West to work for NW.
“They had fits of apoplexy when they discovered there was a young kid driving one of their news cruisers because back in those days it was all private insurance so the fleet insurance rates would have gone through the roof,” he says.
When Ashbridge finished running NW’s bureau at Expo 86, he flipped his evening shift for Jon McComb’s morning one. McComb had been moonlighting as the Canucks PA announcer but since he couldn’t do it any more Ashbridge got the gig.
He’s still having fun more than 20 years later.The only not-so-fun thing about it was the alarm clock going off at 3:30 the next morning. Like the players, he would take a pre-game nap. It was a struggle, though, if the Canucks played three home games between Sunday and Thursday.
“By the time the weekend rolled around I was really dragging my butt. You learn to pace yourself.”
Ashbridge, 63, has a wonderful way of utilizing intonation to evoke responses from the crowd without going overboard.
“I approach it almost as a schizophrenic existence. I am half cheerleader, half off-ice official,” says Ashbridge, who also works with the Canucks alumni. “You try not to be blatant, and show some respect, and some impartiality as well.”
As the Crime Stoppers spokesman, Ashbridge gets raw material on a suspect and turns it “from cop-speak to something normal people can understand.” He also gets a mug shot that he invariably comments on.
“You take the calculated risk that if I can make that interesting on radio maybe people will actually go to the site and have a look, have a chuckle along with me, but at the same time maybe it will stick with them so that if they see this person with the quarter-inch stove bolt sticking out of their nose walking down the street they just might go, ‘I’ve seen that face before. That’s a bad guy. I should phone that Crime Stoppers thing,’ ” says Ashbridge, who is on Crime Stoppers board.
“What’s the guy with the stove-bolt sticking out of his nose going to do if he doesn’t like the way I berate him over the radio? Is he going to go to the police? Let’s hope so. Like the old saying goes, they never arrest the smart ones.”
On top of all that, Ashbridge is vice chair of the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation and works with the City of New Westminster’s emergency preparedness committee.
Just two of the many examples of why the roof at GM Place would come off if a horn was blasted for everything he’s accomplished.
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