The man who called 4,000 Kitchener Rangers games is gone.

Don Cameron, who did play-by-play for the Ontario Hockey League team from the club's inception from 1963 until stepping down at the age of 79 in 2015, died on Thursday after what the team called "a brief illness."

"We send our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Don Cameron, and will be forever grateful for the professionalism, passion and memories he shared with us," the team said in a statement on their website.

A native of Summerside, PEI, Cameron relocated to Kitchener in 1958 as the sports director of CKCR Radio and began to cover the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen, the local senior team. Cameron travelled with the team to the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, CA as they finished second in the hockey tournament to claim a silver medal.

Cameron called all but two of the Rangers' seasons during his 52-year tenure behind the mic in Kitchener. From 1974 to 1976, a competing station to Cameron's held the rights to games and Cameron did not serve as the team's announcer.

Over his career, the Rangers won four OHL titles and two Memorial Cups in 1982 and 2003.

Among the players that Cameron called the games of with the Rangers include Hall of Famers Al MacInnis, Scott Stevens, Paul Coffey and Larry Robinson, as well as current NHLers like Nazem Kadri, Jeff Skinner and Gabriel Landeskog.

In 2013, Cameron was the recipient of the Radio-Television News Directors Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.