Greg Millen, 67, on April 7. Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Canada colour commentator Greg Millen, who played 14 seasons in the NHL, passed away early Monday. The former goaltender, who most recently had been part of the Calgary Flames broadcast team, was first drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1977. The Toronto native went on to stints with the Hartford Whalers, St. Louis Blues, Quebec Nordiques, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers and Detroit Red Wings. After ending his hockey career in the early ’90s, Millen became the television colour commentator for the Ottawa Senators for 11 seasons. Millen and Don Chevrier went on to lead CTV’s 1994 Winter Olympics hockey coverage. Millen joined CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada in 1995, going on to handle colour for the network’s secondary broadcast team, initially with Chris Cuthbert and then Jim Hughson. He joined the lead team, alongside Bob Cole, in 2007. That same year, he became the Toronto Maple Leafs lead TV colour commentator on Sportsnet Ontario, alongside Joe Bowen. Since 2014, he had worked across Rogers Sports & Media’s hockey television broadcasts, primarily with the Flames. Over his 30+-year career, Millen covered three Olympics, 12 Stanley Cup Finals, a dozen NHL All-Star Games, and two World Cups of Hockey. Read more here.
John Meisel, 101, on March 30. Born in Vienna to Jewish Czech parents, the Meisel family was sent abroad by the Bata Shoe Company, where Meisel’s father worked, as the Nazi occupation loomed. Dispatching its Jewish employees to other Bata facilities, Meisel lived in the Netherlands, Morocco and Haiti before arriving in Canada in 1942. Meisel attended Ottershaw College in the UK, Pickering College in Newmarket, ON, the University of Toronto, and eventually earned a PhD at the London School of Economics. He went on to teach political science at Queen’s University for five decades, starting in 1949, and was a co-founder of The Canadian Journal of Political Science and The International Political Science Review. A strong supporter of Canadian culture and the arts, Meisel was appointed Chair of the CRTC in 1979 by Joe Clark’s government, serving through Oct. of 1983. Among the notable developments during his term, was the introduction of pay-TV in Canada. The regulator also turned down a proposal from the public broadcaster to launch a “CBC-2” cable offering and grappled with the issue of how to regulate programming content as satellite dishes beaming in foreign content became more affordable. Meisel was named an Officer in the Order of Canada in 1989 and was promoted to Companion status in 1999. Read more here.
