Leo Fought to Final Whistle
By DUKE McLEOD

Leo Nicholson was a sports reporter to the end. Yesterday, before he passed away, Vancouver’s best-known sportscaster told his wife , Margie, to be sure and tell the sports writing and broadcasting fraternity that his last thoughts were of sportdom, the people who played the game, and the people who watched and listened to them.
Leo fought the good fight down to the last nickel, as we who knew him that he would. Only a few days ago he told his physician, Dr. Rolf Manson, that’d be back on the air soon. Yesterday he read his papers then suddenly lapsed into a coma. All efforts to revive him failed.
Leo held on much longer than his closest friends thought that he would, because the man was a fighter. He never stopped believing that his illness was strictly of a temporary nature. Nick’s career transcends that of any similar sports luminary in the history of Vancouver.

It was he who first coined the words “The fastest game on two feet” in connection with box lacrosse, which he first broadcast when the game moved indoor from its typical outdoor open field.

He ‘Sold’ Boxla to Reluctant Fans. At first his broadcasts held little sway with hard-bitten lacrosse fans, but soon they began to throng the old Arena, so glowing were Nicholson’s tributes to the new game. But lacrosse was only one of the sports that Leo brought to thousands over the airlanes. Hs range even extended from curling to table tennis which he broadcast as he put it, “just to find out what it was like.” Nicholson’s sports career reached its height about five years ago when he was selected to go to Montreal to broadcast National League hockey. However, Vancouver’s urge was too strong. Likeable Leo threw aside his great possibilities in the east and came back to Vancouver. When he was stricken – much to his surprise and wonderment – about eight months ago, Nicholson went to his bed grimly determined to get up and resume his broadcasts just as soon as his ailment was licked. It was at this time that his friends and followers hereabouts decided that a Leo Nicholson Testimonial Fund was in order. Over $8000 was raised toward the fund in a tribute which, for its originality, has not been equalled in the city’s history. Even before all this, Leo was a colorful figure. He didn’t need a sports broadcasting background to become well known. During the years of World War I he flew a plane for what was then called the Royal Flying Corps. In Hollywood he became a movie director. In Vancouver, in earlier years, he was “Big Brother Bill,” a kindly man who conducted a children’s program even before he thought of sports.

‘Brother Bill’ to Theatrical Children

Many of Vancouver’s children today, some of them well known in the theatrical world, remember “Big Brother Bill,” his counsel and his gentleness. Leo Nicholson broadcast so many different events that to pick any one of them is to reach out into a kaleidoscope.

One of the outstanding was the annual Vancouver Sun Golden Gloves which he aired each year, becoming identified with the project from its inception. His broadcasts to raise funds for The Sun’s Santa Claus Fund were famous everywhere.

When they told Leo Nicholson in early May that he couldn’t broadcast lacrosse he was hard put to understand why.
So were his many fiends who found the airlines vacant without him. Today, the airlines are without Leo, whose voice now belongs to those who remember it and the many discs which recorded it. The remembrance carries with it the fact that Leo’s comments were always kind or they weren’t made at all.
His funeral, which will probably be one of the largest accorded a sports luminary in Vancouver’s history, will be held from Center and Hann’s Chapel on West Georgia next Thursday at 11, We’ll be there, and, we’re sure, so will you.

- Vancouver Sun, Oct. 29, 1947

DEATH STILLS VOICE OF SPORTSCASTER

Death came to Leo Nicholson Tuesday afternoon following an illness that struck down the dean of western sportscasters earlier this summer. He was 52. Funeral services will be held from the Georgia Chapel of Center and Hannah at 11 o’clock Thursday morning with the Rev. E.D. Braden, D.D., officiating.
Leo was known and liked by thousands of athletes and sport followers, and by untold thousands who listened to his graphic and colorful descriptions over the air.

GREAT RESPONSE

The popularity of the veteran announcer, who listed such tough broadcasts as table tennis and badminton doubles among his accomplishments, was well proved this summer when sport writers and athletes, in a casual manner, started a Leo Nicholson Testimonial Fund. The public response was a great tribute to “Nick.”
Just as his sport broadcasts had variety, his life, too, had not been dull. Leo, born in Winnipeg in 1896, was one of sixteen young men who pooled their resources and beat their way to England to join the Royal Navy Air Force. Eight of them including Leo, made the grade and stayed with the service until the Royal Air Force was born in 1917.

SHOT DOWN
Shot down in the North Sea, a crash that affected his hearing, he returned to this continent to train the first classes of U.S. Naval Air Cadets.
The careers of Leo and a fellow sportscaster, Reed Chapman, were parallel since the time they would walk. Reed was reunited with his friend [copy indecipherable] 1915 and both turned up in Hollywood where Nicholson was an actor’s agent, Reed, an actor.
Both arrived here in the early thirties and united as a broadcasting team. Nicholson, too, had started the Big Brother Bill show, a popular feature that started such stars as Alan Young, Gerry Wilmot, Bernie Braden and Marv Kenny off on their way to fame.

LIKED BOXLA BEST
Soon after came the rebirth of box lacrosse, and the mushrooming of this new sport from a handful of free fans at the old Denman Arena to great hoards of shrieking followers was attributed in no small manner to Leo’s great descriptions.
While the “Fastest Game on Two Feet,” as Leo dubbed the sports, was his number one claim to fame, he broadcasted baseball in the Senior League back to 1936, went with the pros to Callister Park, then Con Jones, and worked fights wrestling, basketball and auto racing. In 1941, he went to Montreal for a spell as the NHL Canadiens home broadcaster.
Survived by his wife, Margery, Leo will long be remembered as the voice of sport and a good sport.
- Province, Oct. 29, 1947

HONORING LEO TONIGHT
A special “Leo Nicholson Memorial Broadcast” will be heard over radio station CKMO tonight at 9 o’clock.
Master of Ceremonies will be Don Wilson. Also expected to be on the program are Duke McLeod, Clancy Loranger and a representative from the Vancouver City Council. Acting Mayor Charlie Jones has been invited to attend the function.
- Vancouver Sun, Oct. 30, 1947

Large Crowd Pays Final Tribute To Leo Nicholson
A lacrosse stick in flowers, flanked by a tremendous floral tribute, graced the casket of Leo Nicholson today.
The “voice of sport” had an “audience” of more than 500 men from Vancouver’s sportsdom as funeral services were conducted in the serene Center and Hanna chapel, Georgia Street.
Officiating at probably the largest funeral ever accorded a Vancouver sportsman, was Rev. E.D. Braden.
His tribute was brief but significant of the regard in which Leo Nicholson was held by men who ever stepped onto a sportsfield.
“When the time comes to list the great men of Western Canada sport, Leo Nicholson’s name will be headlined,” he said.
Crowds of sport team managers, coaches, players and throngs of fans who heard Leo’s dynamic sports’ events, stood outside the packed chapel.
Among them were such figures as Ross Mortimer, Bob [sic] Browne, Paul Thompson, Charlie Defieux, Percy Hicks, John McNair, Jack Pattison.
Pallbearers were mainly radio announcers and executives who knew and respected likeable Leo, the Dean of Sportscasters.
They were: Duke McLeod, Bill Rea, Don Wilson, Jack Short, Reed Chapman, Dr. Rolf Manson and Art Fortin.
The final sports parade for Leo was made from the Chapel to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, where his body was cremated.
- Vancouver Sun, Oct. 30, 1947