Dedicated to the game of lacrosse
“He was the one who taught us the most about teamwork,” said Ken Goss, a former Mac forward.
“You knew that you played for the crest on the front, not the name on the back. We might be up four or five, but Fred would always say, ‘Hey guys, two goals down.’”
Born in Trail, Doig joined his first youth lacrosse team in Rossland in 1939 and also played football. After graduating high school, Doig moved to Victoria to join the Canadian Navy, later becoming a Victoria firefighter. While on the job, he helped deliver two babies. In 1966 he and his wife Marion moved to Prince George, where he could pursue his love for moose hunting and fishing, and he worked as a car salesman at Kodiak Motors and at B.C. Tel before getting hired at Northwood Pulp and Timber.
The Macs won the 1970 B.C. championship in two games over Nanaimo Native Sons and went on to claim the national title by default when the Eastern champions from Quebec declined making the trip to Prince George. Doig then announced his retirement from the game and the four-team Prince George Lacrosse Association held a dispersal draft to create parity.
But he returned the following season playing defence for the Inn of the North and repeated his retirement speech at the end of the season.
That became a running joke, year after year.
His playing days pretty much ended in 1977, after 42 years in the game, when he lost three fingers on his left hand in a mill accident. He played just one game that season in the North Central Lacrosse Association for the Canada Hotel, dressing as the Masked Marauder in a game he hyped earlier in a Citizen article to try to boost attendance.
Dave Jenkins was a hockey goalie who backstopped the Alberta Golden Bears to the CIS national championship in 1964. Five years later, he was just beginning his law practice in Prince George when the Old Stylers found themselves without a goalie. PGLA commissioner John Steeves, a lawyer, knew Jenkins’ background in hockey and convinced him to join the team and Jenkins became Doig’s project, utilizing an unfinished vacant floor at the old B.C. Tel building on Sixth Avenue to turn Jenkins into the goalie who would eventually backstop the Stylers to the 1974 President’s Cup senior B national championship.
“I was terrible at first and Freddie took it upon himself to spend about a year with me,” said Jenkins.
“He took me up there every night in the winter, about five nights a week, and continually shot at me. If you were interested in the game and had any kind of keenness for it, he would do whatever he could to help you succeed. Fred brought kids out of the woodwork to play the game and try to create in them the same sort of love for the game that he had and he did a wonderful job of it. He was the driving force behind the game in this town.
“He knew everybody in the game and went to all lengths to interest athletes who hadn’t played the game and made them into pretty good lacrosse players.”
Long after he quit playing, Doig stayed involved as a referee and coached his son Brett and grandson Drew in minor lacrosse.
His Fred Doig Lacrosse School was a month-long venture in the summer, which taught hundreds of young players the game. At age 70, in 1998, Doig retired from his job as production supervisor at Northwood Pulp and Timber and he returned to senior lacrosse that year as coach of the Yellowhead Inn Red Dogs, just so he could coach Brett. He played a game that year against the Steamers Pub Devils and scored a power-play goal.
Doig, who would have turned 92 today, lived his life as a well-respected gentleman who never publicly uttered an unkind word, even for those he didn’t like. He and Marion, his wife of 58 years, had five children and also raised two grandchildren. They danced through their lives as best friends and did everything together, sharing their love for each other with those close to them.
Fred had been in a coma for several days before he died but just before he passed away, with Marion by his side, he puckered up for one last kiss.