Joe Bowen reflects on legendary career, looks forward to final season
When Joe Bowen turns off his microphone for good, it'll end one of the most celebrated sports broadcasting careers in Canadian history. The Sudbury-born legend, who turned 74 in April, recently announced that next season will be his last as the radio voice of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
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An icon in the industry, Bowen is not only the best-known play-by-play announcer in Wolves history, but also a proud Nickel City native.
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'I'm bread and butter from Sudbury,' said Bowen with pride recently, while juggling a phone interview and dinner from a bar in Harrisburg, Penn. 'My dad was a general surgeon, worked for INCO and delivered 3,000 Sudburians so a lot of your readers, if it's not their parents, it's maybe their grandparents were delivered by my dad.'
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While his big break with the Leafs came in 1982, Bowen's first play-by-play calls were courtside for the University of Windsor's basketball team in the early 1970s, while he was pursuing a degree in communication arts. After graduating, he returned to the Nickel City to cut his teeth in the broadcast industry, thanks to support from CKSO owner Bill Plante, who was a longtime friend of Joe Sr.
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'My dad died when I was just coming into high school, so Mr. Plante was a very big influence on my career,' Bowen recalled of his early days behind a microphone in Sudbury in the mid- to late '70s, at a time when the Wolves had some highly competitive teams. 'He gave me the opportunity to start (in radio) and do the games with the Wolves, and we had some pretty good runs.
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'Didn't win it, but we were as close as damn is to swearing at times.'
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Interestingly enough, swearing, or a lack of it, is what gave Bowen his signature catchphrase as a broadcaster. His now-famous 'Holy Mackinaw' saying, to describe big moments in games like only Bowen can, was borrowed from his dad, who used it in place of swear words.
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Joe's final Holy Mackinaw on air will come next spring — hopefully, a little later than usual.
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'I've been at it for 44 years almost, so it's probably about time,' Bowen said with a chuckle regarding his retirement announcement. 'It's not the same as it used to be, there are lots of changes in the industry and I just felt it's time, and we'll step aside and have one more kick at the cat.
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How amazing would that be? A Stanley Cup victory in Joe Bowen's final season would be something to behold, which isn't lost on current Sudbury Wolves play-by-play announcer David Bowen, who left the crease in 2022 to take the same steep climb up to the press box at Sudbury Community Arena that his dad had done many years earlier.
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