Bob Kelly’s talents saved our favourite equipment
After a pickup hockey game Wednesday night, someone handed Kevin Belsher a Labatt Blue.
Bob Kelly’s favourite brand got Belsher thinking of his mentor, the founder of BK Sports Repair on Belfast Road. Just hours later, he received the call he was dreading from Kelly’s wife, Norean. Kelly had passed away during the night following a spell of poor health, mostly stemming from lung deterioration. Kelly, 76, was one of Ottawa’s best-known smokers — sports equipment he repaired with such care usually came home smelling of cigarettes.
On Thursday, after BK’s repair specialist Mathieu Groulx left for a sleepless night, Belsher stayed behind to close up.
“I’m still at the shop, finding it hard to leave,” said Belsher, emailing a reporter about Kelly’s death earlier that day. “Fighting off tears knowing he won’t be coming back through the front door.”
On social media, word spread quickly. Generations of hockey and baseball families reminisced about this man from the shoerepair era who gave new life to old gear for more than 20 years. Long before that, Kelly was helping kids with hockey equipment at the Laurentian Trading Post and Lacroix Sports. He always found a way to make an expensive game affordable to all.
“Without Bob’s help and generosity, Shawn and myself could never have made the NHL, let alone get through minor hockey,” tweeted Jamie Rivers. Jamie and brother Shawn went on to long pro careers in North America and Europe, but as kids relied on the generosity of communityminded people like Kelly.
“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up,” says Shawn, president of GunnMedia in Ottawa, a graphic design and branding company. “We had lots of recycled equipment, deals on sticks, registrations. The Ottawa community treated us well.”
Kelly worked on the Rivers’ skates and then the next generation. Shawn’s son Gunner, a goalie for Laurentian University, brought his gear home at Christmas for BK to mend.
“It just became a staple,” Shawn says. “You don’t even think of going anywhere else.”
The Rivers, Ron Tugnutt, Marc Methot, Codi Ceci and Luke Richardson were among BK’s clientele.
Fortunately, as far as the repair trade, Groulx, 38, has studied under the master for nearly 20 years and can make those German sewing machines sing like Kelly could. Shawn, who favours older, softer skates, figures “Bob and that kid (Groulx) must have done surgery on my skates a dozen times before the bottom of the boot finally rotted.”
Shawn has one regret. He didn’t get in to see Kelly in hospital over Christmas “just to thank him. That wrenches me a bit.”
It’s OK because Kelly didn’t really want visitors at the hospital. He was embarrassed to have people see him that way, hooked up to an oxygen tank, his right foot amputated due to circulation issues. At the store, he left word for Groulx and Belsher to tell customers asking about him he was “retired,” not ill.
Though soft-spoken, Kelly could spin yarns of his early years tending goal in VilleÉmard (the most famous native son next to Mario Lemieux!) He played at Loyola (now Concordia University) and in the 1960s and toured Europe with a barnstorming team that once faced the famed Soviet Red Army club. His dad thought sports were a waste of time and refused to watch his son play.
Kelly had photos of himself in the butterfly position in the 1950s, which he used to back up his claim he invented what is now a staple technique for all NHL goalies. Around town, he played until age 69 and there are players who will tell you he could still make killer saves well into his 60s. His son Dan joined him on the Wasted Knights team.
Kelly was the first to admit he wasn’t a hall-of-fame father to his three kids — Sheilagh and Deborah were his daughters. Hockey was his life, first as a player, then behind the scenes.
His first marriage ended and 38 years ago he married Norean, now facing her own health issues.
Dan says that while he was disconnected from his father for a time, when Dan moved to Ottawa from Montreal in 1988, his dad took him in. “When I needed help, he was there for me — got me back on my feet.”
Kelly made sure his grandkids wore proper, fitted gear. And to all close to him he instilled the work ethic that makes BK Sports Repair hum today, even with the passing of the namesake. Good repairs, fair prices and God help the customer staring at his cellphone when Kelly was talking to them. So rude.
“I spent more time with Bob than my dad in the last 20 years,” Groulx says. “He’s been like a father to me. He’s going to be missed, for sure.”
Dan says the business will be turned over to Belsher and Groulx, just as Kelly wanted it.
Along with his three birth children, Kelly leaves behind two stepchildren, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. A funeral service will be held at the Kelly Funeral Home, Walkley Chapel, at 2 p.m. on Jan. 20, next door to the Jim Durrell/Walkley Arena, where Kelly tended goal. Guests are welcome from 1-4 p.m. wscanlan@postmedia.com twitter/@hockeyscanner