Gordie Howe will forever be ‘ home’
Gin Saskatoon ordie Howe’s dying wish came true Sunday. The hockey great went home, with wife Colleen, to a final resting place on the Saskatchewan prairie.
Their ashes are forever mingled, set into the base of the Saskatoon statue that bears his likeness, in the city that gave him life and built him into a man.
“Whenever he t al ked about wanting to go home,” daughter Cathy said Sunday, “especially when things got really confusing for him ... I would often ask him ‘ where’s home?’ He would look at me and say ‘ Saskatoon,’ like I should know.”
As dementia set in, as death lingered in the foreground, Howe remained sure and steadfast about where he wanted to rest, in peace, when the time came.
The statue, he said. Saskatoon.
So the family — 61 of them altogether, both immediate and extended — staged an interment service Sunday morning outside SaskTel Centre, the city’s hockey arena. It’s where Howe’s statue skates in perpetual fashion, elbow upraised, and it’s now where he and Colleen are available for visitation.
Later that morning, family members journeyed to the bridge that bears his name, and the school he attended, and the house he lived in for three years from age 12 to 15.
You can see King George school from that house, and when Howe got nostalgic, he’d tell family members that he was the only kid in the school who could kick a soccer ball to the top of the old, turreted building. On Sunday, the family retraced the steps he would have taken, from the school door to his nearby home in Saskatoon’s inner city.
As the procession moved toward that house Sunday, people came out of nearby homes, sat on front steps and watched with great interest.
Across the street, Dolores McCartney sat in a chair on her front porch. She’s lived across from Howe’s old home since the mid- 1970s, and she’s proud of it.
They should rename the street — now Ave. L South — Gordie Howe Street, she said. She met the hockey great a few different times. She shows where the great man once stood, on her lawn.
There’s a picture on her phone: Howe, and her son, Deon. Howe’s hands are wrapped playfully around Deon’s neck, tempting a twominute penalty, if only an official had been nearby.
Deon’s there, too, clutching a Howe autograph, and another picture of him with Howe.
“I tell people Gordie Howe used to live there, and they’re ‘ yeah right,’ Deon said. “But facts are facts.
“He gave you a good feeling when you met him, and it lasts a lifetime. When I think about meeting him ... just remembering it brings joy to me.”
Patton MacLean owns that home across the street, the place where Howe’s bones and muscles changed from boy to man, and he’s delved into the man’s housing history. Howe lived in six different Saskatoon houses, he says, and this was the last one before he left home to pursue a hockey career for real.
The house needs a lot of work. MacLean hopes to have it declared a heritage building. He sees people drive by and slow down. Sometimes, they stop their cars and take pictures. MacLean is glad they do, because he appreciates this house and its place in Gordie Howe’s story.
“I think about him every day while I’m there,” MacLean says. “It’s hard not to think about him, living in that house.”
After touring the home, the Howe family returned to SaskTel Centre, where the Saskatoon Blades and Swift Current Broncos prepared for a Western Hockey League clash. They held a pre- game ceremony in Howe’s honour. Outside, fans mingled around the statue, phones flashing. They embraced his bronzed likeness, squeezed in tight, entire families recording the moment.
Somebody left a puck in front of the statue — “So you may play hockey in heaven,” reads the gold lettering.
Then the place empties, and things get quiet.
“It was a very, very difficult summer for me,” said Gordie and Colleen’s son, Mark Howe, who is the Detroit Red Wings’ director of pro scouting. “I’m normally a very bubbly person, really look forward to every day ... but it was tough. A tough summer.
“But I’ve gotten back to work with hockey starting up again, and coming here today, so the healing process is starting to happen, which I’m very grateful for. But you’re going to miss him. You’re going to miss him every day.”