Peterborough athletes did their part as Canada went to war

Fighting for their country came first for many players of the era

As we remember veterans this Monday, we must not forget how extremely brave and patriotic they all were. What few people realize is that many were also accomplished athletes.

That was why many years ago Peterborough decided on a sports arena for their major memorial.

In the spring of 1940, one year after war was declared, Examiner sports editor Cec Perdue wrote: “It is time that folks relax a little and enjoy some of the good summer sports being served up. We know there is a serious war on and it is natural to be somewhat worried and jittery, but nonetheless nothing is to be gained by going around long-faced and hollering blue ruin 24 hours a day.”

The Department of National Defence requested that summer that sports teams continue as best they could to give those at home a distraction.

Peterborough entered a team in the Ontario senior B lacrosse league in 1941. Former players had left or were leaving to enlist. Management put together a team of younger players still in their teens, older players returning from retirement and even some players from other sports.

That summer, the football field in the exhibition grounds had become a military camp with 900 soldiers in training and living in temporary barracks.

The senior B team was playing out of the George Street Bowl, an outdoor structure the players built near the corner of George Street and Rink Street. They often had crowds of over 2,000 fans. With a unique mix of young and old players, the games that year were extremely brutal with many fights and brawls. Brooklin, Oshawa and Peterborough battled it out for the divisional title. A playoff game between Brooklin and Peterborough ended with a controversy over police protection for visiting players at the game.

Peterborough attempted to field a team the next spring but so many players had enlisted, they withdrew from the league until the end of the war in 1945.

The war years had an effect on the NHL as well.

On Dec. 9, 1941, fans at a Boston-Chicago game sat and silently listened, along with the players, to a 28-minute radio broadcast over the PA by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, declaring war on Japan and Germany after the bombing of Pearl Harbor two days before.

Later that season, the top line of the Boston Bruins, all Canadians

from the Kitchener area, left the team and enlisted in the Canadian army. They were called the Kraut Line, nicknamed after sauerkraut because of their German heritage, and made up of Bobby Bauer, Woody Dumart and Milt Schmidt. On Feb. 10, 1942, their last game before embarkation, the Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens 8-1. The Kraut Line combined for 11 points.

After the game, in a move likely never seen before or again in the NHL, the players of both the Canadiens and Bruins carried the three players around the ice on their shoulders as the Boston fans sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

More than 80 players and referees from the NHL ended up enlisting in the war effort. The majority of the players were Canadian in those days. Conn Smythe, owner of the Leafs, left to head up an artillery battery during the conflict.

The NHL continued through the war with some adjustments. They reduced the number of players on each team’s roster to 14 during that time. Today, a roster is 20 players. Detroit used 17-year-old goalie Harry Lumley for a few games.

A number of retired players were enticed back to referee as many officials also enlisted. King Clancy, an eventual Hall of Fame player, was one of those exchanging his hockey stick for a whistle.

One hockey player who did not return from the war was 20-year-old Red Tilson. The junior league’s top scorer with Oshawa, he enlisted and was killed overseas.

The Generals have his banner hanging in the rafters of their rink and the OHL’s most outstanding player each year receives the Red Tilson Trophy. Don Barrie is a retired teacher, former Buffalo Sabres scout and a member of the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame. His column appears each Saturday in

The Examiner.