A sports history delivered in their own words
To celebrate our country’s birthday, the Star is showcasing 150 of the quintessential Canadian sporting characters and moments of the last 150 years. In the ninth of a 10-part series, we highlight the storytellers.
The Hockey Sweater
There are times when a wonderfully told story can sum up life far better than anything else and such was the case when Roch Carrier penned The Hockey Sweater.
“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places — the school, the church and the skating rink — but our real life was on the skating rink.”
And so begins the tale of a 10-year-old boy’s hockey hero — Maurice Richard, the great No. 9 of the Montreal Canadiens — and his childhood trauma of being forced to wear the blue and white Toronto Maple Leafs sweater sent in error by the faraway department store, Eaton’s.
It was first published in French in 1979 and translated to English in 1984 and remains a beloved Canadian classic. It’s set in the winter of 1946 in Carrier’s hometown of Sainte-Justine, Que., but his writing about the little boys who grew up asking God to make them play hockey as well as Richard, who combed their hair like Richard and tapped their sticks like Richard, speaks to childhood in a way that transcends generations and the sport of hockey.
At first, the boy refuses to wear it — “Never had anyone in my village ever worn the Toronto sweater” — but his proud and practical mother insists he try it. “It isn’t what’s on your back that counts, it’s what you’ve got inside your head.”
The boy’s desire to play the game he loves wins the day and so he wears the hated jersey to the rink only to discover he was right all along as he’s persecuted by the coach and referee. When he was sent off to church to pray, “I asked God to send me right away, a hundred million moths that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.”
Lou Marsh
The award that bears his name, given out since just after he passed away in 1936, goes to the Canadian athlete of the year from any sport, any discipline, any season. It is a fitting tribute to the man who did just about everything in his illustrious life.
A major in the Canadian military who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War, a world-class sprinter near the turn of the 20th century, a referee who worked NHL games in his 40s and officiated at the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics, and the long-time sports editor of the Toronto Star, where he worked for 43 years covering every possible sport and event.
He was a pioneer of Canadian sports journalism and coined the term “sportive entertainment” to describe professional wrestling long before it took hold in the industry.
Foster Hewitt
Is there a single voice more closely associated with a specific Canadian sports event than Foster Hewitt and Hockey Night in Canada?
As radio broadcaster and television play-by-play voice for more than 40 years, Hewitt, the Toronto-born treasure who passed away in 1985 at 82 years old, was our window into the Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL. He is credited with coining the phrase “He shoots, he scores!” and his trademark sign-on of “Hello, Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” prior to 1949, when Newfoundland became part of Canada, rang out from radios across the continent.
And who can forget his memorable call of Paul Henderson’s goal to win 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union? It was an event of such magnitude that Hewitt was coaxed out of retirement to take part.
Alison Gordon
Sports is often an old boy’s club and when Alison Gordon took over the Blue Jays beat for the Toronto Star in 1979 she faced the granddaddy of them all: the locker room.
She wasn’t welcomed by most players or baseball’s establishment. She faced sexism and outright hostility, all of which she handled with her sense of humour, relentless drive and passion for the game that made her award-winning writing a treat to read.
“I certainly dodged foul balls, literal and figurative,” she wrote in 1984, her final year on the beat.
Women sportswriters were so rare at the time that her membership card to the Baseball Writers Association of America famously read “Mr.” Alison Gordon as the organization had no female-specific honorifics at its disposal.
There was simply no other option imagined back then. But, thanks to her pioneering spirit, professionalism and skill, there is now.
Brian Williams
Perhaps the greatest contribution iconic Olympic broadcaster Brian Williams brought to Canadians was his willingness, his eagerness, to tell stories beyond our borders, to tweak the higher-ups when he had to, to educate and entertain.
The native of Winnipeg, born there in 1946, is synonymous with two Canadian television institutions — wide-ranging coverage of the Olympics and the Grey Cup. He is always fair, never one to shy away from controversial subjects — chiding the International Olympic Committee for not properly honouring slain Israeli delegates from the 1972 Games while broadcasting from London in 2012 — and it has earned him worldwide respect.
It also earned him eight Gemini Awards, two Foster Hewitt Awards, one Canadian Screen Award and, in 2011, the Order of Canada.
Danny Gallivan
They weren’t just shots, they were “cannonading drives.” They weren’t just elusive moves, they were “Savardian spin-o-ramas.” Goaltenders didn’t trap pucks in their equipment, they were deposited in their “paraphernalia.” Some saves were “hair-raising” and players “dipsy-doodled” out of their own end.
As the English language voice of the Montreal Canadiens from 1952 until 1984, Danny Gallivan called almost 2,000 games — including 16 Canadiens Stanley Cup wins — and entertained viewers and listeners as much as the hockey team did, turning a game into a near endless string of unique phrases.
The first game he broadcast, filling in for an ill colleague, was the first NHL game the Sydney, N.S.-born Gallivan had ever seen and his mark on the sport is glaring. Once told by a university professor that there was no such word as “cannonading,” Gallivan was quick to point out: “There is now.”
Geoff Gowan
It is a gift only the greatest of broadcasters and storytellers have, the ability to distil the thought process of athletes and coaches as they go through competition and to make it understandable to the common viewer.
Few in Canadian history possessed the skill greater than Geoff Gowan, the England-born voice of track and field in this country who died at 83 in 2013.
His memorable calls resonate not only with track and field fans who appreciated the nuance he would provide, but with listeners who were just learning the sport and the athletes.
His impact transcended the field of play, though. For 25 years he was technical director and president of the Coaching Associ- ation of Canada, instrumental in developing the national certification program for coaches, lauded as one of the best programs of its kind in the world.
Don Cherry
His opinions are often as bombastic as his clothes are garish but there is no denying the impact Don Cherry has had on the hockey world in a career as a player, a coach and, for the last 37 years, as a must-see commentator.
Now 83, the proud product of Kingston, Ont., had been holding fort on Coach’s Corner since 1981. He began his television career as an in-game analyst but that didn’t last because of his penchant to openly support one team, generally the Maple Leafs or Boston Bruins.
But first with Dave Hodge and alongside Ron McLean since 1986, the ever-opinionated Grapes has been entertaining and infuriating viewers ever since.
Milt Dunnell
No one has seen everything but no one’s come closer than Milt Dunnell, whose columns made the pages of the Toronto Star better for nearly half a century, a columnist from 1959 until he retired — at 89 years old — from the daily grind in 1994.
He never became the story, he told the story and it spanned the entire spectrum of sports. Nine Olympics, too many major prize fights to count, the Queen’s Plate, the Kentucky Derby, a storytelling career almost unparalleled in North American journalism.
He saw Bobby Thompson hit his “Shot Heard ’Round The World” in 1951, the birth of the Montreal Expos in 1969, the AliFrazier “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975, and an unfathomable number of big event. As his colleague, the late Jim Proudfoot, once put it: “Milt, in effect, was the sports editor of Canada.”
Elmer Ferguson
For pure longevity, and the relevancy it took to achieve it, there are few Canadian journalists who rival Elmer Ferguson, for who an award given annually by the Hockey Hall of Fame is named.
Born in Charlottetown in 1885, Ferguson took Montreal by storm starting in 1910 with the Herald, becoming sports editor three years later, serving in that role for 39 years and writing columns until the paper folded in 1957. He simply moved within the same city, writing for the Montreal Star until just before his death in 1972.
Ferguson was one of the first true crossover media celebrities and commentators, working for several years on radio broadcasts of Montreal Maroon games until 1938 before spending nearly 30 years on Canadiens broadcasts.
George Gross
Known as “The Baron” who ruled over the emergence of the Toronto Sun into a national sports journalistic force to be reckoned with, George Gross was a larger-than-life persona in the industry and a storyteller of the first order.
An avid tennis player, Gross was the sports editor of the Sun from its inception until 1985 when he became the corporate sports editor of Sun Media, a post he held until his passing at 85 years old in 2008.
Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Gross was jailed by the post-Second World War communist regime before escaping in 1949 and making his way West to eventually bring his unique brand of journalism to the Canadian landscape.
He was the first journalist to interview Ben Johnson after the sprinter’s positive drug test in 1988, bringing Gross worldwide acclaim.
Phyllis Griffiths
Journalists are taught from the very first day that to get news, you have to go where the news is and Phyllis Griffiths, a true pioneer, did just that.
As a teenager, Griffiths finished high school and began what would eventually be a 46-year career at the Toronto Telegram, riding around the city on her bicycle, stopping at local police stations, fire houses, schools — wherever she wanted in the search of a news tip and a story.
In 1928 she got her own sports column called “The Girl and The Game” — they were different times, indeed — and she wrote for 14 years on women’s sports at every level from local to international, breaking barriers as she went along.
In 1942, she became the first woman photo editor at a Canadian newspaper, advocating all her professional life for the advancement of women in the industry.
Red Fisher
It’s impossible think about the Montreal Canadiens and storytelling about the storied franchise without thinking of Red Fisher, a staple of the craft from 1954 until 2012, first at the now-defunct Montreal Star and then the Gazette.
He was the dean of the beat, a confidant of coaches, players and executives and he held sway over all that went on with the Habs. If Red wrote it, readers could take it as gospel. To mark Fisher’s retirement, Ken Dryden penned this tribute: “Red loved to be noticed. He loved to be the best. He loved to deliver the sharp, cutting phrase. But he knew that the game was the thing. The Canadiens were the thing. He mattered but he was not the thing. He knew it was his purpose to make the next game better.”
Richard Garneau
The posthumous awarding at the 2014 Sochi Olympics of the prestigious Pierre de Coubertin medal — given to those who “exemplify the spirit of sportsmanship in Olympic events or through service to the Olympic movement” — was a fitting tribute to Richard Garneau.
In a career that covered half a century, the great Quebecer covered an impressive 23 Olympics, seven Commonwealth Games and four Pan Am Games.
Garneau’s amateur sport service came along with his role as the long-standing and highly respected host of La Soiree du Hockey, which earned him the Foster Hewitt Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999. The Quebec City native died four years ago at age 82.
Trent Frayne
Pierre Berton, a fellow who knew a thing or two about using the language and telling stories, once referred to his friend as “likely Canada’s greatest sportswriter ever” and there was never much argument about the point.
Trent Frayne’s career spanned more than six decades and he wrote at the Globe and Mail, Toronto Telegram, was a staple at the Star from 1968-74 and was on the pages of the Toronto Sun, Chatelaine magazine, Sports Illustrated and Maclean’s.
Married to fellow writer June Callwood from 1944 until her death in 2007, Frayne, like so many of the greats, painted pictures with his words. Of high jumper Debbie Brill he once wrote: “There she is, maybe 20 yards from the crossbar, calmly eyeing it, one foot slightly ahead of the other, teetering slowly, back and forth, back and forth, long legs bare and smooth and tanned, twin cynosures.” A gift, from a gifted writer.