He is best known as a commentator on Hockey Night in Canada, beginning in 1964. He made similar broadcasts on NHL games for the major American networks CBS and NBC. He was a colour commentator on Toronto Maple Leafs local telecasts until 1980, when he made on-air comments that were supportive of Leaf captain Darryl Sittler and critical of Leafs owner Harold Ballard. He was subsequently banned from the Maple Leaf Gardens press box. For Hockey Night in Canada, he was moved off Toronto games at this point, broadcasting the Montreal Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets games. His last year with HNIC was 1991, ending a 28-year association with HNIC.
McFarlane is often incorrectly cited as the creator or father of the cartoon character Peter Puck. The cartoon puck, which appeared on both NBC's Hockey Game of the Week and CBC's Hockey Night in Canada during the 1970s, was actually the creation of NBC executive Donald Carswell, although McFarlane had significant input. The character itself and the animation footage was created by NBC's production partner, Hanna-Barbera. After the network stopped carrying NHL hockey, McFarlane purchased the rights to Peter Puck from Hanna-Barbera and continued to promote the character.
Writing career
As of 2010, McFarlane had written more than 96 books on hockey, selling over 1.3 million books. His first book, 50 Years of Hockey was published in 1968 and he continues to write about hockey. McFarlane is an expert on hockey history and has compiled several volumes of NHL lore titled It Happened in Hockey, a 1999 series detailing the colourful history of the Original SixNHL teams, and "Proud Past Bright Future," the history of Women's Hockey. He published two memoirs, Brian McFarlane's World of Hockey republished as Colour Commentary and From The Broadcast Booth. In 2008, he began a youth fiction series The Mitchell Brothers which always features hockey in the plots.
Personal life
Throughout his career, McFarlane collected much memorabilia, photos, and objects focusing primarily on hockey history. In 2006, Brian sold most of his hockey collection to the Municipality of Clarington, where it became Total Hockey, a multimedia, interactive museum located at the Garnet B. Rickard Recreation Complex in Bowmanville. The museum was closed in 2007 and the collection was sold to an Edmonton-based collector in 2013. Plans for the collection have not been made public, but McFarlane was assured by the purchaser that the collection would be preserved and made available to the public at some point. From his teenage years, McFarlane was interested in painting. In semi-retirement he began painting regularly producing several hundred paintings, mostly in the Group-of-Seven style of Canadian landscapes. McFarlane has since become an accomplished painter, exhibiting professionally. McFarlane currently resides in the Greater Toronto area.
