Long-time Canucks Anthem singer has passed away.

In a piece of very sad news, the Vancouver Canucks announced that their longtime anthem singer Richard Loney passed away on Wednesday.

“I was lucky enough to hear him sing O Canada so many times during my playing career,” team president and former captain Trevor Linden said in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences go out to his wife Marion, and his family and friends.”

Loney was a staple of the Canucks since he began singing the national anthems for the club during the first Canucks NHL season in 1970-71 and continued in that role for over 40 years, the team said.

One of the most important highlights of Loney's career was singing in Russian when the Soviet Union came to the Pacific Coliseum to face Team Canada during the 1972 Summit Series. Loney told vicnews.com in 2011 that for that song, he had to learn the words from a friend who was a linguist at the University of British Columbia.

“I knew what the words meant—they’ve changed them since. It was too nationalistic, too motherland. Soyuz nerushimy respublik svobodnykh,” Loney said in that interview, breaking out briefly into song. “I could probably go through it if you gave me five minutes.”

In that same interview in 2011, Loney was asked how he landed the gig with the Canucks.

“I was doing a lot of singing with the Vancouver Opera and teaching, so I went to the first three or four games and remember the very first game and saw Our Pet Juliette (singer and host of CBC’s The Juliette Show) who sang the anthem,” Loney said in 2011. “She did fine. She was blonde and had a beautiful long dress. She looked great. Then four or five games down the road I thought, maybe I could do this.”

Here is a video of Loney singing the pre-game anthem prior to a Canucks-Winnipeg Jets playoff game in 1993. He will be sorely missed.

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