Giving the gift of hockey cards
Corner Brook man donates his hockey card collection to elementary students
Sunday nights were hockey night for Woodrow Bessey.
Growing up on the Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland in the early 1960s, the 67-year-old Bessey listened to the games on the radio.
There was no ref cam, instant replay or Bob Cole barking out “Oh, Baby!” after an impressive play.
So, when he listened, he had to use his imagination to see the likes of Toronto Maple Leafs standout forward Eddie Shack barreling down the ice.
“Clear the track ’cause here comes Shack,” he’d hear the great Foster Hewitt bellow, but he couldn’t put a face to the name.
That was until he was given his first hockey card.
That sent him collecting. Perhaps more importantly, it allowed him to see the faces of the players he heard about through the radio.
Decades later, Bessey had amassed a collection of more than 17,000 cards through various means.
Last week, Bessey donated his
collection to the students at a nearby school.
On May 9, Bessey surprised students with a small bag filled with cards. Inside these makeshift card packs, each one of the more than 400 students received 42 different cards.
Since January, Bessey meticulously sorted each of the bags. He made sure there were no duplicates and that each pack had an
assortment of cards.
Not everything was hockey. There were some baseball cards as well.
With a fresh pack in front of them, the students thumbed through the cards, smiled as they saw which card came next and then they did as any group of kids faced with the prospect of discovery what was in their hands — they traded in hopes of building
what they believed to be the best collection they could.
Bessey had offers for the cards before. Some people wanted to give him money or trade but Bessey decided he wasn’t going to part with his collection that way.
He never had it priced but figured the best thing to do would be to donate them.
“It was the right thing to do,” said Bessey.