The mystery of Leafs’ ‘Bashin’ Bill’ Barilko
For 11 years the hockey player’s death went unsolved, until his plane was found in northern Ontario
It was a glorious and unforgettable moment for Hogtown hockey fans: a Stanley Cup-winning goal that would be called the most famous in Toronto Maple Leafs’ history.
Defenceman Bill Barilko dove headfirst toward the Montreal Canadiens’ net and fired a backhander to send the puck flying behind Gerry McNeil during overtime in Game 5 of the finals.
The crowd of 14,577 went wild on that triumphant night of April 21, 1951, as teammates hoisted Barilko on their shoulders and fans swarmed onto the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens. Their hero, whose name was already engraved on three Stanley Cups, had put the final nail in the coffin of the Leafs’ bitter rivals and top team in the National Hockey League.
“It was as clean as a hound’s tooth,” Toronto Daily Star sports writer Red Burnett said of the spectacular shot. “McNeil never had a chance.” It would be Barilko’s last goal. Four months later, “Bashin’ Bill,” as he was known for his hard-hitting style, vanished into thin air. Eleven years passed before the mystery of the 24-year-old’s disappearance was solved. And 11 years passed before the Leafs lifted themselves from the ensuing doldrums of defeat to hoist the silver trophy again.
In August 1951, Barilko made the fateful decision to go fishing before returning to Toronto for training camp and the start of a new hockey season. He was visiting his family in Timmins where he grew up, and accepted a last-minute invitation from friend and local dentist Henry Hudson to fly to Rupert House on James Bay in northern Quebec.
They were to leave on Friday, Aug. 24 for what would be Barilko’s first fly-in fishing adventure. But his mother, Fay Barilko, pleaded with him not to go by air “to that wild bush country,” she told the Star later. “I had a premonition something would happen.”
Her husband had died on a Friday five years earlier and she never wanted Bill to “take a chance on anything on Friday,” she said. “I told him I would rather die than see him take this trip.”
But he just laughed, leaving his mother so angry she refused to kiss him goodbye.
The two men headed out Friday morning in Hudson’s single-engine Fairchild 24 and were last seen refuelling at Rupert House on their way home late Sunday afternoon. They never arrived.
The Royal Canadian Air Force quickly organized a search involving dozens of planes, personnel and local searchers. Northern bush pilots were optimistic, saying Hudson, 47, was an experienced pilot who knew the area well after years of flying into James Bay on hunting and fishing trips.
But Mrs. Barilko was “near hysteria” over her missing son. “My poor Billy,” she sobbed to a reporter. After a near-sleepless four-day vigil, the 52-year-old widow flew to Kapuskasing, Ont., in a plane hired by the Star, ready to go into the bush at the first sure sign of a sighting.
She had always brought him luck when she travelled to Maple Leaf Gardens to watch him play, she said. Perhaps she could work her magic again.
By this time, R.C.A.F. searchers had covered 78,000 square kilometres and decided to drop to an altitude of 500 feet which would amount to “practically looking under every twig,” explained Flt.-Lt. G.J. Ruston.
More than two months later, there was still no sign of the missing plane or its occupants. The massive aerial search ended with a final price tag of $385,000 (about $3.7 million in today’s dollars), making it the most costly in Canadian military history.
Rumours and theories about the disappearance ran wild, according to hockey historian Kevin Shea, who wrote a book in 2004 called Barilko: Without a Trace. Perhaps the kid who grew up poor in northern Ontario had turned to smuggling gold out of northern Ontario into the U.S., some speculated. Or he’d gone overseas to teach Russian hockey players the secrets of the game.
In early June of 1962, just weeks after the Leafs finally won the Cup again following an 11-year drought, a helicopter pilot spotted glinting metal among thick black spruce 75 kilometres north of Cochrane.
On June 6, searchers trekked two kilometres into the dense bush to find the Fairchild 24 partly submerged in a swamp, wings torn off and cabin partially burned.
Two skeletons were still strapped in their seats, with the remains of fish stored in a smashed pontoon. Investigators determined Barilko and Hudson were killed on impact.
The toast of Toronto hockey fans became the stuff of legend.
“Barilko’s 1951 Stanley Cup-winning goal is one of the greatest and most memorable goals of all time,” Shea quoted former NHL goaltender Ken Dryden as saying.
In 2002, the Star named it one of the top 10 sporting moments that fans would never forget.
Film producer George Mendeluk, who bought movie rights from Shea’s book, called the Barilko tale “the Buddy Holly story of hockey.” Holly, a popular singersongwriter of the 1950s, died in a plane crash at age 22.
The Tragically Hip also immortalized the narrative of one of Canada’s greatest aviation mysteries in their 1992 song, Fifty Mission Cap. As Gord Downie sang, the year Barilko’s body was found was the same year the Leafs triumphed again.
After the popular athlete was finally laid to rest, the team he’d always dreamed of playing for brought the Cup home three more times, including the last one 50 years ago.
“I had a premonition something would happen . . . I told him I would rather die than see him take this trip.” FAY BARILKO BILL’S MOTHER