Baseball and hockey legend recognized for standout career

Like any proud son or daughter, Cathy Hunchuk has told her children many stories about the athletic exploits of their grandfather – tales of his playing days in hockey and baseball, his accomplishments on the diamond and on the ice, all the usual interesting stuff. Her father, and the youngsters’ grandfather, is none other than Moose Jaw sports legend George Hunchuk, an athlete so prolific from the 1940s right through to the 1970s that he ended up playing professional hockey and actually cracked the ranks of the Major League Baseball minor league system. “It’s so fun to share the stories with our kids, because they just knew him as Grandpa,” Cathy Hunchuk said. “They didn’t realize that Grandpa was a phenomenal athlete and just how much he accomplished back when he was playing.”

The Moose Jaw sports world most certainly knows and remembers those stories – so much so that when the selection committee for the Moose Jaw and District Sports Hall of Fame were reviewing potential inductees for 2018, Hunchuk’s inclusion was an absolute no-brainer.

The dual sport star was among six inductees enshrined on the Wall of Fame in Mosaic Place during the Hall’s annual induction ceremony.

“This is completely special; it’s beyond words, in some respects, because he loved Moose Jaw,” Hunchuk said. “Of all the Halls of Fames to be inducted into, this is it. In his words, it would have meant the most.” Hunchuk wasted little time finding sports success, as he was a member of the 1944 juvenile provincial champion Moose Jaw Monarchs and then joined the Moose Jaw Canucks for their WCHL title-winning season in 1946. He turned pro the following season and played in the American Hockey League before shifting over to the Pacific Coast League in 1948 and becoming a first team all-star with the Vancouver Canucks. He had a try-out with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1950 and played minor pro hockey for another season before returning home and spending the next 20 years as one of the top players in area’s amateur leagues.

“It’s pretty cool.” Cathy said of watching her dad dominate the ice when they were kids. “It was a lot of fun going to those games and watching him play, and the camaraderie with the hockey community and the friendships my parents made that lasted a lifetime.” Hunchuk was a founder of the Moose Jaw Pla-Mors in 1959 and was a player/coach for close to a decade. He then was an integral member of various Old-Timers teams and played until the age of 69 in 1996.

That covered the winter months. In summer, Hunchuk was all about baseball, which Cathy described as his first love. And interestingly enough, he was pretty good at that, too. Hunchuk had a tryout with the Chicago Cubs in 1950 and was offered an opportunity to play ‘D’ class baseball but opted to return home as a player/coach with the Regals and Lakers. There, he was the top catcher in the Southern Saskatchewan Baseball League for 15 years, winning the batting title in 1960. He was a founding member of the Moose Jaw Ol’ Birds senior team and saw one of his teams win the over-40 division at the Senior Men’s Baseball League World Series in 1993.

Seeing George’s photo and profile on the Wall of Fame on induction night was even more special for Cathy, knowing his legacy will be forever known. “We’re all super proud and are looking forward to seeing this in the future,” she said. “During the application process, it was an opportunity to do a whole lot more research on my dad and I hadn’t realized that it was a big deal. We’d go through the chronology and it didn’t mean anything to me back then, and he was so blasé about it; it wasn’t a big deal. So now when you think about it, the process he went through to play hockey at the level he did and to travel and be involved in games of that calibre was something.”

Hunchuk was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame as an individual in 1998 and as a member of the Moose Jaw Regals team in 2013. He received the Baseball Sask. Andy Zwack Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998.

George Hunchuk died in 1996. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside former NHL standout Doug Smail, former national champion figure skater Susan Humphreys, baseball coach and builder Jim Baba, baseball and curling coach Roger Anholt and multi-sport builder Stanley ‘Hub’ Gutheridge.