Hockey hero helped Canada win gold
Team captain led Canadians to Olympic win
Bill Dawe played a starring role in Canadian hockey history, but those who knew and loved him best recall a humble man who rarely talked about his glory days.
Heralded on the ice for his slick skating, Dawe captained the Edmonton Mercurys at the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics, leading Canada to a gold medal that wouldn’t be repeated until 2002 in Salt Lake City.
But when longtime friend Larry Pope first met Dawe, his role in hockey history only came to light when Pope asked about it. “He was a very humble individual,” Pope recalled of meeting Dawe for the first time, after being introduced to him through Dawe’s wife, Lee, who worked with Pope at Imperial Oil.
“But I asked him if he was the Bill Dawe that captained the Mercurys, and he said yes he was, and we’ve been good friends ever since.”
The 88-year-old hockey legend died May 20. Dawe leaves behind daughter Bonnie and son Bill, along with three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
An intermediate senior ‘A’ team sponsored by Waterloo Motors, the Mercurys were Canada’s reigning Olympic golden boys for 50 years, but Dawe was never one to look at himself as a hockey hero.
Throughout their 50-year friendship, Pope never saw Dawe seek the spotlight.
“There are a lot of people still around who remember the Mercurys, and he was a very popular guy among people who knew him. I know in the sports pages you guys have a saying that if someone does something important they can dine on that for their life, but Bill was the only person I ever met in my life who had a gold medal and I had to ask him if he was the guy when I first met him.”
Dawe’s son, Bill, said hockey provided his father with Olympic glory but more importantly gave him lifelong friends and business partners.
“What dad got most out of hockey was all the friends,” he said. “He played with five guys that ended up buying Waterloo Mercury. So from 1949, from when they became a team, and then 1950 with the Worlds, these guys were friends and business partners.
“He really didn’t talk too much about his hockey. He was very humble that way.”
Dawe did pass down a few memorable stories, including a one-day tryout with the Toronto Maple Leafs on his way home from one of the Mercs’ trips to Europe.
“On his way back from overseas, the Toronto Maple Leafs asked him to come for a tryout,” his son recalled. “And he went to one practice and said, ‘There’s no way I’m playing in this league, I’ll get killed.’ So that was short-lived.”
Though he never got to see his dad at the height of his hockey heyday, every once in a while he got a glimpse of the player who led Canada to Olympic gold, through old-timer games at the Edmonton Gardens as well as while running his own minor hockey practices.
“I would always have a parent day at practice and he would always come out,” recalled Bill Dawe, who coached minor hockey for 15 years. “You could see the competitive juices.”
While Dawe will forever be known for his hockey success, which also included a World Championship gold medal with the Mercs in 1950, his son remembers a family man who loved all sports.
He served as the Canadian Athletic Club’s president, as a little league umpire, was a longtime member of the Windermere Golf and Country Club and an avid curler.
He also served a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He didn’t fly in the skies over Europe, but made it as far as Halifax before the war ended. He met the love of his life, Lee, while training in Gimli, Man.
And despite a life that was full of larger-than-life stories, ask the people who knew him best away from the rink what defined Dawe and the answer comes back to the humility he carried throughout life.
“I don’t go much for superlatives — I leave that to you sports guys — but he was just a great guy,” Pope said. “He would never blow his own horn, but he was such a wonderful guy.”