If you’ve ever tuned into 560 CFOS, you’ve likely heard his voice. If you’ve ever glanced up at the J.D. McArthur Arena announcer’s booth during an Owen Sound Attack game, or attended any other local sporting event in the Grey Bruce Area over the years, chances are you’ve seen Fred Wallace hard at work.
Dale DeGray, the longtime general manager of the OHL’s small-yet-storied franchise, sums it up like this: “Fred is Owen Sound.”
Wallace has been the voice of the Attack for more than three decades while working at Bayshore Broadcasting.
“He’ll know more about the players stats than I will,” DeGray joked, “He’ll be able to tell you anything as far as that goes, but it’s also not uncommon for me to call him up and he’s recently interviewed a rower or a speed walker or anything like that in the area, so Fred knows all the sports people, anybody that’s passed through Owen Sound, I wanna say, in the last 20 years.”
With this year’s Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada festivities taking place in Owen Sound, it’s no surprise Wallace has been covering and assisting with various community events all week in the lead-up to Saturday’s day-long celebration of the game.
Sportsnet spoke with the Attack announcer to get his perspective on more than three decades doing Ontario Hockey League play-by-play, what it’s like getting to make a Game 7 overtime call in a championship series, what makes Owen Sound one of Canada’s tightest-knit hockey communities, and much more.
[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.]
SPORTSNET: When did you begin calling games for Owen Sound?
WALLACE: The Platers’ first game, so September of 1989 is when I started, and I did it every road game [as well] up until last February. Then I had a heart issue, so I missed the end of that season and I'm taking this season off, but I'm doing very well and still doing the in-arena public address during Attack home games. I'm not sure that I'll go back to road games, but over the 31-plus years, there was nothing wrong with the hockey. It was my heart that gave up for a little bit.
Well, glad to hear you’re doing better and still going to the rink. Had you always wanted to get into play-by-play from a young age?
Yeah, probably from late high school onward. My best friend then and my best friend now, he was on cable TV as a high schooler, and so naturally I hooked up with him and went off to Ryerson [to study] and have always enjoyed that aspect of it.
You mentioned 31 years calling games. How many times do you figure you've been inside J.D. McArthur Arena in your life?
Alright, if you count hockey and lacrosse, that's probably a minimum of more than 2,000 with just those two activities.
Any game day rituals?
Be prepared. That was my ritual in terms of superstitions or stuff like that. I like to get to the rink two hours beforehand. I like to talk to people on both sides of the equation for the game. I like to have my sponsor sheets all listed out. Also, my stat sheet has to be prepared in a certain way. So I'm not sure that those are rituals, but that's just part of preparation and being ready to go. In some cases the background information that you have, I would always say that I had more information and more avenues to travel than I would ever come close to using. The game and the puck were always the thing, and in those idle moments it was great to fill in notes. So my style was to be prepared and be ready.
You know Dale DeGray well. He said you can always have a stat ready for him at a moment’s notice.
It's interesting, just this week, someone wanted to know if 2022-23 was the best Attack season in the last five years, and I could look it up very, very quickly in terms of my own documentation. And I'm not saying that I'm 100,000-per cent accurate, but just about any time something happens, people will turn to me and ask, ‘Is that a record?’ Earlier this week Ethan Burroughs scored twice in 11 seconds against the Barrie Colts and naturally, people wanted to know, ‘Is that our record for the fastest two goals?’ He missed by four seconds. That record belongs to Joseph Blandisi who did it to Sault Ste. Marie, and I distinctly remember being there and doing that game.
You gotta keep your receipts. They come in handy.
They really do. Colby Barlow bypassed the 100-point mark in his career this week, and the guy in the sound booth with me in Owen Sound said, 'How did you know that?' I just kept notes on all these guys and what they've done and the important stuff, overtime goals and hat tricks and those sort of things, shutouts, goaltender wins, coaching wins, those sort of things.
Do you have a favourite aspect of being in the arena itself?
Oh yeah. I think what I like is when the game is at full tilt and you know you're part of it, you're feeling it. From that standpoint, whether it's Owen Sound or one of the locations around the Ontario Hockey League, if the game is going well and you're happy with your broadcast, I don't think it gets any better than that.
Over the years, you've obviously been privy to some great young talents early in their careers. Who stands out to you, players you enjoyed watching on the ice and then develop as young men off the ice?
Well, the first answer or the earliest answer would be Andrew Brunette. He was a seventh-round draft pick of the Platers and was slow afoot and he was quote unquote “heavy,” according to NHL scouts. Here he went on and he played 1,000 games in the NHL and over the course of three years in Owen Sound nobody's ever put up more points than Andrew, and I doubt that anybody will.
Another name would be Dan Snyder in terms of the way Dan performed on the ice but also Dan was very inclusive. Dan had friends that were 95 years of age and five years of age, and I was somewhere in between. Seeing him play and knowing him was very important.
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You mentioned Andrew Brunette. He obviously had a great NHL career and he's coaching with the Devils this year. When you see guys like Andrew and other Attack alumni having success at the NHL level what goes through your mind?
Well, just listening to you talk there you get a tingle and I’ll give two quick examples: A friend and I went to see the Buffalo Sabres play one night at home against Boston and Andrej Sekera scored the overtime game winner. It was such a thrill and it wasn't like I was a young man then — I must've been in my mid-50s and thought to myself, 'Boy, you're not an adult, you're not a grown up right now, you’re a fan.’ I could still see Andrej going up the middle and shooting the puck like he did in Owen Sound.
Even watching on television. When Andrew Shaw scored the triple-overtime goal for the Chicago Blackhawks against Boston for the Stanley Cup, that's unbelievable and the circle continues in that Andrew will be taking the Stanley Cup in a firetruck from Scotiabank parking lot on Saturday down to Harrison Park. You get a buzz and you get a tingle when one of your guys achieves.
Even the World Junior Hockey Championship this year. Andy Brown, our athletic therapist, was on the training staff for Team Canada and you're so happy for him just having that connection, knowing him and knowing what they've done both professionally but knowing them personally, it gives you a great deal of joy.
Like you mentioned, there are countless standout moments, but I also imagine there's probably none that top the 2010-11 season when the Attack won it all. What are your memories of that playoff run and getting to make a championship overtime call in a Game 7 like that?
The season itself was so good. It was the most regular-season points the team had put up to that point and then the playoff run. I remember running into Dale Hunter afterwards at Hanover Raceway and I said to him that with each passing game and series it just got better and better and better, and he knew exactly what I meant because he's been through it a number of times.
In terms of the playoff series with Mississauga, I don't know that I'll ever be involved in anything quite as dramatic as that. The Game 7 moment when the puck crossed the ice for the goal by Jarrod Maidens, I don't think life could be any better from a hockey standpoint or an Owen Sound standpoint or from my broadcast standpoint. And with the winning goal, what I'm most proud of is that me and my partner, Manny Paiva, got just about everything that you could get right, right. [The stoppage] before the goal was Dylan DeMelo shooting the puck out of play, and Manny and I were all over that. We watched the referees have the conference and thought, 'Is Owen Sound going to a power play? Should they go to a power play?' And it turned out that they went. That's the better part of 12 years ago now but if I watch that goal or listen to the audio it gives you a chill.
That game was at the Hershey Centre, right? Mississauga was the top team in the OHL that season and it was a back-and-forth series.
It was a fabulous series. Owen Sound would tie the series at three, winning 3-2 on home ice, and I remember after Game 6 lots of people in town – and it's a small city, so your visibility is sky high – but lots of people were coming up to me saying, 'I'm getting tickets for Game 7. I'm going to Game 7,' and I was thinking, 'Yeah, yeah, sure you are,’ and then when we got to Mississauga, an hour before game time, they fired up their video board and just about everybody coming into the door I went, ‘I know him, I know her, I know them.’ Way more than half the crowd was from Owen Sound and so it was a great afternoon.
I read that you're a cancer survivor and you and the Attack have raised money for research over the years. How did those initiatives come together and what do they say about the Owen Sound hockey community?
That's a good one. It might take me a while here, but when the Attack won the OHL championship and got back from the Memorial Cup, I would say a month later I got a call from the urologist, and they told me that my PSA level [during a screening for prostate cancer] was higher than it should be for somebody who was turning 51 years of age. I had the biopsy in November and it turned out that, yes, it was cancerous and then in June of 2012 I had the surgery.
Now, the guy that put me under was Dr. Bob Severs, who is one of four owners currently of the Attack, and when I was going in Bob came in to wish me well and he wanted to know if my mother and my sister were going to pick me up afterwards. My sister was in Ireland and my mother was in her late 80s and I hadn't told her that I was undergoing this operation because I didn't want to upset her or make her worry. Bob looked at me like I had 15 heads and so after the operation, Bob and his wife, Barb, took me home and for the next 10 days, I recovered in the home of the chief of staff of the Owen Sound hospital.
I remember thinking, ‘You can’t get much more small town and you can’t get much better help than what I’m getting right here, right now.’ A couple of weeks went by, maybe a couple of months, and Bob approached me and said, ‘We're having something called the Hospital Campaign and our goal is to raise $8.1 million. Would you serve as the co-chair?’ After what Bob and Barb had done for me, there was no way that I could say no. And thanks to the people on that committee who generated the money, I think they blew [past] $8.1 million and, if I'm not mistaken, they ended up raising $11 million-plus for that hospital campaign.
Wow. That's incredible.
It just typifies it's one of the big reasons why Owen Sound is Owen Sound and there might be similar stories right around Ontario and Canada, but that's mine for Owen Sound. You couldn't have any better luck or better fortune than that.
Overall, how should fans from across the country think of Owen Sound as a hockey community?
Small town, small hockey operations, small community, but very big aspirations and extremely dedicated to doing our best and then trying to do better. I think capable of hanging in there with the heavyweights that are certainly in our division when you look at London and you look at Kitchener, in particular, and the assets and the resources they have. Owen Sound is an extremely tough out. I think there's something to be said there. From a hockey standpoint. I think you would say it's the consistency. I think there's only two or three teams in the entire Canadian Hockey League that have put up 30 wins a year since 2010-2011 and Owen Sound has done it year after year. So there's a lot of things to think about Owen Sound but I think small city, small hockey team with big aspirations. That's us.
