Hockey Towns Page 3

  Back in Toronto as a forward with the 1953–54 Marlies, Gerry played a tough game while putting up some points. They went all the way to the Ontario Hockey Association Junior A finals against the St. Catharines TeePees and were down 3–0 in the series when Gerry helped turn the tide. The Marlboros fought their way back to a seventh game, which they lost 5–3.

  Hap Day, the Leafs’ assistant general manager, offered Gerry a pro contract, but Gerry wanted to play for the Bombers again that summer and he wanted to win the Memorial Cup, so he turned down the offer. Gerry had another stellar season as a Blue Bomber in 1954, winning the first-ever Schenley Award for the most outstanding Canadian player, but Edmonton was the western team that went to the Grey Cup.

  Meanwhile, Gerry and his high school sweetheart, Marg, got married. They had a small, quiet wedding in the chapel of a Winnipeg church. She was seventeen and Gerry was nineteen.

  Turk Broda took over as Marlies coach midway through the 1954–55 season. He and Gerry had a pretty good relationship because Turk was easy-going. Gerry says Turk more or less took direction from his superiors, so he was able to be friendly with the players. Fifty years ago, practices were basically just shinny, with no drills. He remembers that for power plays, the coach just put the best players on the ice and said, “Go ahead, play.”

  In January, Gerry took a puck high on his cheekbone. He watched the end of the game and then was rushed to the hospital. The doctors wanted to save his eye, so he was confined to bed and ordered not to move for ten days. His face was so swollen that his new wife looked in and then walked right past his hospital room—she didn’t recognize him. Gerry was back on the ice less than a month later. He’d lost part of his sight in his right eye, but he says it didn’t affect his hockey at all because he was a right winger, so the play was usually on the left, the side of his good eye.

  That year, the Marlboros beat St. Catharines and went on to defeat the Quebec Frontenacs to reach the Memorial Cup final against Regina. The Pats won the first game, so the Marlies got more physical. Regina changed its style of play to match, and that was the team’s downfall. The Marlies took the next four games and brought home the Memorial Cup.

  The next year, Gerry moved up to the NHL, and for the next couple of years he played for both the Leafs and the Blue Bombers. While Toronto struggled, Winnipeg won Grey Cups in 1958, ’59, ’61 and ’62. Gerry was on all four of those teams. In 1959–60, under coach Punch Imlach, the Leafs wound up in the Stanley Cup final. Gerry liked playing for Punch—he said what he wanted to say, and he didn’t sugarcoat it. Gerry says the team lost a few guys because a lot of players couldn’t handle the truth and left.

  Gerry also really liked Tim Horton. Tim had a terrible problem with his eyesight as well. Tim’s vision was so bad, he couldn’t see his toes. He wore contact lenses—big ones that covered the whites of the eyes as well as the corneas. Gerry says that’s why, whenever Tim got into a fight, instead of standing back and trading punches, he would grab the guy in a bear hug and choke him out. Tim Horton was incredibly strong. He had washboard abs and never worked out a day in his life. Gerry so admired Tim that, when he sustained a shoulder injury and went in for therapy and the trainer asked him, “What do you want to develop?” Gerry said, “I want a build like Tim Horton’s.” The trainer said, “Forget it.”

  In the 1960 Stanley Cup semifinals against Detroit, Gerry and Horton collided at full speed. They fell over each other and the Red Wings scored. In football, Gerry had been taught to meet force with force, and so rather than trying to get out of Tim’s way, he had checked him. The next day in practice, they were both wearing blue jerseys. Tim skated over and said, “Me blue, you blue—we’re on the same team,” meaning, “For God’s sake, don’t hit me again.” Bert Olmstead was on the left wing, playing on a line with Bob Pulford that was assigned to check Gordie Howe’s line. At the end of his pregame speech, Punch said, “Pulford’s line will start, and if Olmstead comes off, James, you go out and take his place, but if you hit anybody, try and hit somebody on the other team.”

  The Leafs went on to win over Detroit in six games but lost to Montreal in the final. Gerry is one of only two players in history to play in both the Stanley Cup final and the Grey Cup.

  Dick Huffman died in 1992, but Gerry met up with him in 1987 at Dick’s Canadian Football Hall of Fame induction. Dick asked Gerry if he remembered Shea’s Brewery next to Osborne Stadium. He told Gerry that his dad, Eddie, as a former football superstar, was always welcome in the courtesy room up front where they served free beer. Eddie and Dick would drink together there after practice on occasion. Dick said that, one day, Eddie asked him a favour. “My kid is trying out with the Bombers. If he makes it, do you want to kind of keep an eye on him? He’s kind of a brash kid and might get into some trouble with the vets.”

  Dick said, “Sure.”

  Gerry reflected back on the times when he might have been shooting his mouth off, like in the dressing room after a game when he’d had a few too many pops. It was true—Dick was always around, leaning against a doorway or somewhere in the background, arms crossed, watching, listening. Now he knew why.

  He realized he hadn’t gone to see Eddie in the hospital because there was just too much hurt there, and it had always been one of his life’s great regrets, but knowing that Eddie gave a damn took some of the sting out of the bite.

  Grand Centre

  and

  Cold Lake

  ALBERTA

  POPULATION:

  13,714

  AND

  13,839

  Great Sadness

  Great sadness makes us understand the world.

  After three seasons in Detroit with the Red Wings, Mike Babcock’s assistant coach Brad McCrimmon decided to strike out on his own and take a head-coaching position with the Kontinental Hockey League team Lokomotiv in western Russia.

  The team boarded a 120-seat Yak-42 on September 6, 2011, a clear, sunny Wednesday, near the city of Yaroslavl, which is northeast of Moscow. The plane crashed into a riverbank shortly after takeoff.

  Before going behind the bench, Brad was a rugged defenceman who played in more than 1,200 NHL games with six teams. He partnered with five Hall of Fame defencemen in their early years. Ray Bourque, Mark Howe, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger and Nicklas Lidström all learned the ropes from Brad. A Stanley Cup champion as a player in Calgary, Brad left his wife, Maureen, children Carlin and Liam, and a worldwide hockey family behind.

  Like a caring uncle, father, or brother, Brad wrote letters—missives of support and perspective. In a November 2014 episode of our Hometown Hockey television series for Rogers, author Stephen Brunt talked about a letter Brad wrote to Todd Bertuzzi. Today, Bertuzzi keeps the letter tucked up in the sun visor of his truck. It gives him strength.

  In March of 2004, Bertuzzi was a power forward and a fan favourite in Vancouver when he hit Steve Moore from behind, driving him to the ice. Bertuzzi was retaliating for a hard check Moore had thrown three weeks earlier against Bertuzzi’s captain, Markus Näslund. Moore suffered three fractured vertebrae, and his career was over. Bertuzzi served a fifteen-month suspension from hockey, and he pleaded guilty to criminal assault causing bodily harm. He was sentenced to one year of probation and eighty hours of community service.

  It’s entirely understandable that one would say, “C’mon, Ron, what about Steve Moore?” Here’s my take. Brad knew that Todd Bertuzzi was the perpetrator, but that hockey was an accomplice. In the end, we are shaped by the way in which we respond. In a path rarely taken, Brad decided to be part of a new narrative for Bertuzzi. He had the authority to reshape a life he understood.

  Bertuzzi did what at least a thousand have done. Like the 1987 shove by Troy Edwards of the Moose Jaw Warriors that sent talented Regina Pats centre Brad Hornung into the boards, damaging his third cervical vertebra and spinal cord. It’s the riptide of competition, nothing more. Neighbours of mine have been felled by such events. In the spring of 2015, James Hinchclif
fe of Oakville, where I make my home, nearly died when he crashed into the wall as he was preparing for the Indy 500. A piece of the car’s broken suspension sliced through his upper thigh, severing an artery. Skier Deidra Dionne from Red Deer, who is now vice-chair of the Canadian Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission, was an Olympic bronze medallist in aerials. In 2005, on her final jump at the end of a training session at Mount Buller in Australia, she crashed and broke her neck. Thankfully, surgeons repaired the break with a titanium plate and a bone graft from her hip, and three months later she was training for the Torino Olympics. Duane Daines of Innisfail broke his neck and lost all use of his legs in a September 1995 bronc-riding accident. I could list countless injuries suffered through actions caused by riptides, a horse spooked, a car part failing, a moment.

  As John Ralston Saul writes in his new book The Comeback, we view our own reality through the details of the day. We see it as personalities, rivalries, divisions, failures. We perceive our job as determining whether Caesar ought to go to the Forum. We are on the lookout for suffering. “We are troubled by suffering,” Saul writes. Not a bad thing. But the emotional drama can get in the way of ensuring that the issue is dealt with.

  That is why I don’t like the psychoanalysis in some of the tough- guy stories—they are too predictable. Everyone presumes there is freedom in the convenience of not having to confront fears. I don’t buy it. Suffering—Texas folksinger Townes Van Zandt wrote about it in haunting ballads that reflected his own life. His first serious song, “Waiting Around to Die,” talks about a childhood of domestic abuse, followed by booze and self-destruction. Self-destruction is a path so many hard-boiled players in hockey take today. History is full of treacherous riptides. Todd Bertuzzi was caught in one, and so was tough guy Brantt Myhres.

  Brantt Myhres was four years old in 1978. His family lived in Swan Hills, Alberta, north of Edmonton and south of Grande Prairie. Swan Hills was once home to a huge population of magnificent grizzlies, and then the oil and timber companies came in in the late ’50s, and now there’s just a handful left.

  It was minus-30 out and Brantt had hockey practice, so he grabbed his bag and walked. He would have walked through fire if that was what it took—anything to get away from Jack (not his real name), his stepdad, an abusive drunk. As Brantt forced his legs through the hip-deep snow, he tried to shake off the image of Jack grabbing his mom by the hair, throwing her to the floor and stomping on her face with his big oil-rigger boots. When Jack was really drunk, he’d go after Brantt and his sister, Cher, too. So when a fight started, they’d jump into their bunk beds and hide under their Snoopy quilts.

  One night during a big brouhaha in the living room, Brantt lay in bed, shivering with fear. He could feel his heart thumping in his ears, and his chest was so tight he could only take little, sharp breaths. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his mom, Barb. “Get up and get dressed,” she whispered. “We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

  Five hours later, totally exhausted, they pulled into Grand Centre, a frontier town ten minutes south of Cold Lake. According to the Cold Lake Sun that year, the town had a problem with the consumption of Lysol. “[It] can cause paralysis, convulsions and death, [and has] reached epidemic proportions on area Indian reserves.” And just a year earlier, the paper reported, “Mayor Doug Wold said it’s not safe for children to walk in town because they may be attacked by packs of wild dogs.”

  Five thousand people lived in Grand Centre, where Barb’s parents, Jo and Robert Brady, owned a do-it-yourself hardware and housewares franchise called Macleod’s. A lot of small towns had one. Roland Macleod started a mail-order business in 1917 in Watrous, Saskatchewan, and grew it into a major chain across Western Canada.

  Grandma and Grandpa were hard workers, well respected in the community. Barb and the kids stayed with them until they got their own place on top of a hill in an area called Brady Heights, named for Brantt’s family. Today, houses there go for more than $350,000—at the time, you’d be lucky to get $50,000. It was a great location for Brantt because there were so many kids who loved to play road hockey. After school, there was always a big game at the community tennis courts nearby.

  Grandpa Robert preached honesty, character and hard work. He took Brantt to his practices and games. He’d pull up in his new Ford F-150 and tell the kid to hop in. Grandpa made sure Brantt always had new equipment, good sticks and skates that fit. But what meant even more to Brantt was that someone he cared about was watching him. Grandpa Robert had never picked up a stick in his life, so he was there for Brantt, and Brantt only—not as a hockey fan. Life was really good for the next four years. And then Barb let Jack back into their lives.

  Nothing had changed. In fact, it got worse. One night, while Brantt was lying in bed, he could hear the happy squeals of his sister, Cher, and her friend outside playing. Jack was swearing and shouting from the living room—“Shut up!” Brantt squeezed his eyes shut. Cher had better be quiet, he thought, or she’s going to get it! Suddenly, he heard the crack of his wooden bedroom door being punched open. The covers were pulled down and his stepdad had him by his hair, swinging him up over the floor. He threw Brantt against a TV stand. Brantt’s eye hit the sharp corner, and then he bounced back onto the floor. Brantt started pleading, “Please! Please stop! I didn’t do anything! I was sleeping!”

  He looked into his stepdad’s angry green eyes. They were slits of fury. “I told you to shut the eff up!” Jack roared. With one of his big, strong, hairy hands, Jack grabbed Brantt around the neck, cutting off his windpipe, and then tossed him onto the bed like you would a piece of garbage out a car window. And then he slammed out of the room.

  Terrified, Brantt curled up under the covers. He didn’t dare move or even breathe loudly, but he made plans. Barb was staying overnight at a friend’s, and he was going to call her as soon as Jack left for work in the morning. She would be so mad! She’d come storming home and kick Jack out for good.

  The next morning, as soon as he heard Jack’s truck turn over, he was up like a shot and on the phone in the kitchen. He dialled Barb’s friend and, swallowing his sobs, got his story out. “Mom! Jack beat me up and punched me in the face and choked me and—” She cut him off. “Cry me another river, Brantt,” she said.

  The day after the beating, on December 27, 1984, it was minus-40. Brantt’s eye hurt and there were marks on his neck. He grabbed the new stick Grandpa Robert had given him for Christmas and asked Barb if she’d drive him down the hill to the rink.

  It was a weird afternoon—very still, under heavy orange skies. When they got to the rink, it was later in the afternoon, about 3 p.m., but no one else was around. Brantt shivered a little. He made Barb promise to pick him up in an hour. The sun would set by then, and all he had on were his parka and jeans, hockey gloves and a toque. There was no little shack to warm up in, and as it got darker, it got colder.

  Barb lit a smoke and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Brantt, I’ll be back soon.” He hopped out of the car and skated around. He was always Gretzky, picking up pass after pass from Mark Messier or Jari Kurri or Mario Lemieux, who sometimes magically appeared on the line. Brantt was working hard and staying warm when he looked up and saw that he was now skating by the light of the moon. He figured he’d been out there for at least three hours. His mom wasn’t going to come. Something inside him told him he’d better walk the two kilometres downtown to his grandma’s store or he would die out there. He hadn’t brought his boots, so he hoofed it down the paved road on his skate blades.

  Brantt had trouble turning the knob on the big door to the store—his hockey gloves were too bulky. He shook off the right one and found that his fingers were frozen solid. Finally, he managed to get the door open and saw his grandma sitting at her desk at the right of the till. Her smile quickly faded as she took inventory. His face was an ice cube, making the black eye Jack had given him stand out even more. Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my God, sweetheart! What happened to you?�
�� He didn’t answer. Jack had warned him not to tell anyone about the beatings, and his mother’s words from the day before—“Cry me another river, Brantt”—still echoed in his head. But he was exhausted. He bowed his head, summoned up all his courage and mumbled, “Jack beat me up last night, and Mom forgot to pick me up at the rink.”

  His grandma came over and put her arms around him and started rubbing his back to increase his circulation. “You will not spend another night at that house. You’re living with me and your grandpa from now on.” He threw his arms around her waist. Those words warmed him up faster than a hot bath.

  When Brantt was fifteen, he was invited to the main camp of the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL in Edmonton. He planned on turning heads with his fast skating, hard shot and sharp passing. And he did score a couple goals during the game, but every time he skated past the other team’s bench, their backup goalie would yell, “Ahh, Myhres, you effing hot dog, you puss, you suck. Nice white gloves, you homo!” So when the game ended, Brantt skated by their bench and said, “Go eff yourself, dickhead.” Then, for the first time in his hockey career, he heard two words he’d hear over and over again for the next eighteen years. “Wanna go?”

  They skated to centre ice to square off. By this time, Brantt was tall—six foot three, on a 190-pound frame—so he had an incredible reach. He grabbed the goalie with his right hand by the front of his jersey, and with his left he pummelled the guy’s face with a series of rabbit punches. The goalie’s nose was pouring blood, which ended things quickly. Brantt skated off, passing a guy on the ice, who he thought was a fan there, to congratulate him for a good fight. He was wrong—it was the goalie’s brother. He suckered Brantt and landed right on top of him, still punching. As Brantt struggled to get rid of the guy, he thought, “Holy crap, this is what the WHL is all about? I’m in big trouble.”