Bill Ballard

William Owen Sydney Ballard

Born: November 10, 1946
Died: March 14, 2014 (Toronto)

Bill Ballard was only 25 and a recent graduate from Osgoode Law School when he became a director and vice-president of Maple Leaf Gardens. The reason — he was filling in for his father, Harold Ballard, who was convicted of fraud in 1972.

The elder Ballard, a notoriously cantankerous figure, began feuding with his son after spending a year in jail at Millhaven. The pair had a stormy relationship which degenerated over the years, ending with Bill Ballard being found guilty of assault — and fined $500 — for an incident involving his father’s companion, a convicted fraudster named Yolanda MacMillan, who used the name Ballard.

Earlier, the father loaned the son $5 million — at 20 percent interest — which was used to finance a concert promotions business launched with partner Michael Cohl. In time, Concert Productions International became a dominant force on the rock scene, bringing to Toronto such acts as Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones.

Later, as president of Orion Capital, Bill Ballard was a founding investor in several mining companies.

As a young man, Ballard graduated with an honours degree in geography from Waterloo Lutheran (now Wilfred Laurier University). In his senior year, he was president of the student union, while also playing centre for the Golden Hawks varsity football team under coach dave (Tuffy) Knight. The Hawks made it to the Vanier Cup national championship, losing 42-14 to the Queen’s University Golden Gaels. Before the game, the Toronto Star’s Frank Orr described Ballard as “a tower of strength on (the) Hawks’ offensive line.”

While an undergraduate, Ballard convinced the board of governors to build a new athletic facility. Construction began on the Laurier Athletic Complex four years later. His continued contributions to the facilities and to the development of coaches led to his induction as a builder into the Golden hawks Hall of Fame in 2009.

Les (Bunny) Jeboult

Les (Bunny) Jeboult and mechanic Walt Tkachuk race their crackerbox off San Diego in 1963.

 

Leslie Jeboult

Born: March 1, 1933
Died: March 6, 2014 (Chilliwack, British Columbia)

Member: Greater Vancouver Motorsports Hall of Fame (2001)

 

Bunny Jeboult won the North American championship in the crackerbox class of powerboat racing in 1963 and 1964. He won the American Power Boat Association titles in a homemade two-person, flat-bottom race boat, powered by a Chevrolet V-8 engine, with mechanic Walt Tkachuk.

Jeboult was a longtime racing-car and hot-rod aficionado. He liked to work the pits at 4,500-seat Digney Speedway in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, where he played soccer, hockey, lacrosse and basketball. Through the 1950s, he contributed to local automotive publications such as “Clutch Chatter” and the B.C. Hot Rod Association’s “Headliner.” He helped the hot rodders organize a motor show at the Pacific Natinal Exhibition in 1957.

Jeboult also served as president of the West Coast Junior Hockey League (junior-B) and the British Columbia Hockey League (junior-A).

Away from the sporting arena, he was a longtime employee of the BC Telephone Co.

Bunny Jeboult with his 1934 Ford roadster in 2003.

 

Jimmy Campbell

James C. Campbell

Born: February 4, 1929 (Sudbury, Ontario)
Died: March 9, 2014 (Troy, Ohio)

 

Jimmy Campbell began his hockey career in the short-lived Ohio State Hockey League, playing centre for the Munsee Chiefs and Akron Stars.

In 1948, he went to Scotland to play for the Ayr Raiders, scoring 35 goals and adding 64 assists in just 45 games. He then transferred to Streatham in the English National League. In 1949-50, he scored nine goals in 35 Autumn Cup games. He added six goals in 10 games in the national tournament.

In the fall of 1950, he joined the Chatham (Ont.) Maroons of the International Hockey League, recording 74 points (22 goals, 52 assists) in 50 games in the 1950-51 season. The 5-foot-10, 145-pound forward skated for Chatham for six seasons. (The Maroons were in the IHL for his first two seasons and the senior Ontario Hockey Association for the last four.) 

Campbell’s professional career ended after the 1956-57 season, which he spent back in the IHL, playing 33 games with the Huntington (W.V.) Hornets and 21 games with the Troy Bruins. (One of his teamates at Huntington was American-born Roger Christian, who would win an Olympic gold medal in 1960.) Campbell had a combined eight goals in his final campaign.

Campbell worked at B.F. Goodrich in Troy for more than 30 years. He ran the youth hockey program in the city and was also a member of the Troy Fish and Game Club. 

Streatham in 1948-49. Jimmy Campbell is third from right in bottom row.

 

Streatham in 1949-50. Once again, Jimmy Campbell is third from right in the bottom row.

Streatham program from 1949.

Buddy Leake

John E. Leake, Jr.

Born: May 25, 1933 (Memphis, Tennessee)
Died: February 18, 2014 (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)

Member: Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame (1997)

A college football and baseball star with the Oklahoma Sooners, Buddy Leake was drafted by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and signed a minor-league baseball contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. He wound up coming north to play halfback and quarterback for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, where he won a league scoring title.

On the same day in 1955 he signed his baseball contract, Leake agreed to terms with the Blue Bombers.

“Since the football contract had a no-cut clause and was more lucrative,” he once told an interviewer, “I played my three seasons of pro football with Winnipeg.”

Leake played in 39 games for the Bombers over three seasons, playing on both sides of the ball and handling place-kicking chores. Winnipeg adopted a “revolving door” offence to take advantage of the unlimited motion rule, as Eagle Day, Bob McNamara, Bob Davenport and Leake ran a razzle-dazzle approach before the snap.

In 1956, Leake, an elusive halfback known for his jukes, and teammate McNamara battled for the Western Interprovincial Football Union scoring lead. Before the final game of the season, McNamara held a two-point lead. McNamara scored two touchdowns against the Edmonotn Eskimos in the final game, while Leake also scored two touchdowns, while adding three converts.

Leake ended the season with 103 points (10 TDs, 30 converts, four field goals, one single) to McNamara’s 102 points (17 TDs, a league best). Leake took the Dave Dryburgh Memorial Trophy as the WIFU top scorer. 

A shoulder injury kept Leake out of the 1957 Grey Cup game in which the Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeated Winnipeg, 32-7. Leake was cut from the team by head coach Bud Grant in August, 1958. The Bombers went on to win the Grey Cup.

Buddy Leake was born in 1933 to Lucille (née Hill) and John Leake, Sr., a Memphis lawyer. Buddy Leake was an outstanding football player at Christian Brothers High School, where he won All-Memphis, All-State and All-Southern honours.

He was recruited to Oklahoma by legendary coach Bud Wilkinson. He made the Sooners football team as a freshman, scoring 243 points in his four-year career, a school record that lasted 15 seasons until surpassed By Steve Owens in 1969.

In a 49-20 demolishing of Texas in 1952, Leake, a sophomore, set three school game records for most points, longest touchdown pass reception, and most converts. He was named a Colliers’ All-American. Leake played right halfback, while left halfback Billy Vessels went on to win the Heisman Trophy. With quarterback Eddie Crowder and fullback Buck McPhail, the Sooners boasted an enviable backfield scoring punch.

Leake, who was named an All-Big Seven halfback in his senior year of 1954, also served as Oklahoma’s kicker.

He was selected in the third round (No. 29 overall) by the Packers in the 1955 NFL draft.

Leake was also a star on the baseball diamond, earning All-Big Seven honours at shortstop. He signed with the Cardinals, who assigned him to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings of the International League. He had two hits in 15 at-bats in 1955 for a .133 average. 

After retiring from professional football, Leake returned to Oklahoma, where he became an insurance executive in Oklahoma City.

He founded the Oklahoma chapter of the National Football Foundation in 1984, serving as the group’s president for 17 years. 

In 1996. Leake was named to the Sooners’ “Best of the Best” team, while he was also recognized as the greatest Sooner to have worn uniform No. 22.

He leaves Carolyn, his wife of 61 years; two sons; four daughters; 24 grandchildren; and, eight great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by a son and a daughter.

 

Buddy Leake (second from left) and Sooners backfield in 1954.

 

 

Terry Trafford

Terrence Hugh Trafford

Born: February 14, 1994 (Toronto)
Died: March 3, 2014 (Saginaw Township, Michigan)

Terry Trafford, a fleet centreman for the Saginaw Spirit of the junior Ontario Hockey League, went missing after being seen driving from his team’s arena on March 3. Police found his body eight days later in a green 1995 GMC Sierra parked in a Walmart lot in Saginaw Township.

Police said the player died of self-inflicted asphyxiation.

Trafford, who had been born in Toronto on Valentine’s Day in 1994, was 20.

Tafford had been disciplined by the Spirit for a violation of team rules and was sent home. He then went missing. He was last seen at the Dow Event Center, the Spirit’s home arena.

Spirit president Craig Goslin said Trafford had not been permanently cut from the team, but was expected “to change his behaviour and make some adjustments.” The Toronto Sun reported he had been caught smoking marijuana while the team was in Ontario for a game at Owen Sound.

The Spirit drafted Trafford in the third round (No. 42 overall) of the 2010 OHL priority selection draft. The 5-foot-11, 190-pound centre was in his fourth season with the Michigan-based team. In 54 games this season, he scored eight goals and had 24 assists.

A desperate search to find the missing player, who was reported to police as voluntarily missing, included a Twitter campaign called #prayforterry.

Trafford was a successful boxer as a boy, winning regional titles. He played his midget hockey with the Toronto Dixie Beehives and the Mississaugua Midget Reps.

After Trafford’s body was found, the Spirit cancelled an upcoming game against Sault Ste. Marie. In a sad twist, the game’s tickets include a photographic portrait of Trafford.

He leaves his parents, Roy and Beverly, two brothers, and two sisters.

Ron Murphy

Robert Ronald Murphy

Born: April 10, 1933 (Hamilton, Ontario)
Died: March 6, 2014

 

Ron Murphy was a stalwart left winger during the final years of the NHL’s Original Six era. He skated for all four of the American-based teams, winning the Stanley Cup in 1961 with the Chicago Black Hawks and concluding an 18-year career by getting his name engraved on the Cup again in 1970 with the Boston Bruins, even though by that time he had retired.

Murphy scored an astounding 141 goals in three seasons of junior hockey with the Guelph (Ont.) Biltmore Mad Hatters. He led the Biltmores to the 1952 Memorial Cup championship, scoring 13 goals in 12 playoff games, as Guelph swept the Regina Pats in four games — 8-2, 4-2, 8-2, 10-2 — at Maple Leafs Gardens in Toronto. The Biltmores were coached by former Rangers star Alf Pike and several of his teammates went on to NHL careers, including future Hall of Famers Andy Bathgate and Harry Howell, who would later become Murphy’s brother-in-law.

The 5-foot-11, 185-pound forward was promoted to the NHL with a 15-game tryout with the New York Rangers in 1952-53. Much was expected of the highly touted junior scoring sensation in his first full campaign in 1953-54. On Dec. 20, 1953, he suffered a concussion and a broken jaw when he lost a stick-swinging duel with Bernie (Boom Boom) Geoffrion of the Montreal Canadiens. The Rangers were leading 2-0 in the second period when a fight broke out at 15:20 of the second period. All the players on the ice became involved with much butt-ending and high-sticking taking place. Finally, Geoffrion picked up his own stick to administer three vicious swings, at last connecting with a two-handed clubbing to the side of Murphy’s head. The blow struck him on the left temple and he collapsed unconscious to the ice, landing face first.

Referee Red Storey gave a match penalty to both Murphy and Geoffrion, carrying with it an automatic $100 fine. Murphy was revived by Dr. Vincent Nardiello and taken to St. Clare’s Hospital. Meanwhile, fans threw cans of beer at the players and the Canadiens became embroiled in a shoving match with spectators at Madison Square Garden. NHL president Clarence Campbell suspended Geoffrion for all of Montreal’s remaining games against the Rangers that season. Murphy was suspended five games, but missed the rest of the NHL season with his injuries.

After two more seasons, the Rangers swapped Murphy to the Chicago Black Hawks for centre Hank Ciesla. Murphy enjoyed seven productive years with Chicago, scoring a career-high 21 goals while playing on the third line for the Black Hawks in 1960-61. Murphy also scored goals in Games 3 and 5 of the Stanley Cup finals against Detroit, which Chicago won in six games. 

In June, 1964, Murphy went to Detroit in a five-player deal. He scored 20 goals for the Red Wings in 1964-65, but his production was limited the following season and he was part of another deal following a game on Feb. 16, 1966, when Boston beat Detroit 5-4. After the final whistle, Murphy, Gary Doak. Bill Lesuk and an unnamed farm-team player were sent to Boston in exchange for Dean Prentice and Leo Boivin. (Coincidentally, Prentice had been one of his teammates at Guelph.) Murphy announced he would retire, but the Bruins coaxed him into continuing.

Murphy skated in only 12 games in 1967-68, the first post-expansion season, as he recovered from surgery for a shoulder and bicep injury. He returned only to suffer a foot injury.

Known as a tireless skater, Murphy was used as a checking forward by the Bruins, who were transforming from perennial doormats to a powerhouse. At age 35, he scored 16 goals and added 38 assists in 1968-69, as the Bruins scored a league-leading 303 goals. Murphy played on a line with Ken Hodge and Phil Esposito, who won the Art Ross Trophy as scoring leader. (The line set an NHL record for points scored with 263.) Murphy had another four goals in 10 playoff games, though his Bruins were eliminated by the Canadiens in the semifinals. 

Murphy dressed for just 20 games in his final season in 1969-70 and retired in March. The Bruins went on to win their first Stanley Cup in 29 years and Murphy’s name was engraved on the storied trophy for a second time.

In 889 NHL games, Murphy scored 205 goals with 274 assists. He also scored seven playoff goals.

He coached the junior Kitchener Rangers and owned a hotel, Murph’s Place, in rural Hagersville, Ont.

A fall down a flight of stairs at his home in Nanticoke, Ont., broke his neck in three places. His face-first fall, an echo of his terrible injury on the ice so many years earlier, left him unconscious at the foot of the stairs for 11 hours. Murphy used a wheelchair in the final 12 years of his life.

 

 

 

Billy Robinson

William Alfred Robinson

Born: September 18, 1938 (Manchester, England)
Died: March 3, 2014 (Little Rock, Arkansas)

Member: Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame (2011)

Billy Robinson was known as a wrestler of refined deportment, a gentleman who delivered a double arm suplex with panache. To lose to Robinson was to lose in style.

The 5-foot-11, 242-pound grappler fought across Britain and then North America before conquering Japan, where he was properly venerated for his technical knowledge of the proper administration of classic holds. He remained a coach and teacher in the art of catch-as-catch-can wrestling until his death.

Born in England in 1938 to Frances Hester (née Exley) and William James Robinson, Billy Robinson learned the sport that would become his livelihood in the rough-and-tumble streets of his native Manchester. “Wrestling is my life,” he proclaimed in a 1979 interview. “When I was little all I did was wrestle.” As a boy, he thought he’d follow his father and his great-grandfather (Harry Robinson, a champion in the bare-knuckles era) in the boxing ring, but an eye injury meant he would never be licensed for prize fighting. At 15, he got a job hauling bags of produce on the docks in Wigan, where he made his way to the Snake Pit, a legendary training ground where he fell under the tutelage of Billy Riley for eight years. He launched his professional career in 1960 and did not leave the ring as a combatant until 1985.

Robinson held both the British and European heavyweight titles for three consecutive years before vacating the crowns to move to Canada. He arrived in 1969, fighting at the Calgary Stampede, the beginning of a Canadian career that would see him become a crowd favourite from coast to coast and in both official languages.

The Human Windmill, as he was known, battled the football player Angelo Mosca in Medicine Hat, Alta., bonked noggins with Nick Bockwinkel in Winnipeg, satisfied the bloodlust braying of fans at Paul Sauvé Arena in Montréal.

A frequent tag-team partner was the great Verne Gagne, a Minnesota farm boy who played football in the NFL before going on to a hall-of-fame career in the ring as chief grappler for — and owner of — the American Wrestling Association. Robinson and Gagne appeared in “The Wrestler,” a 1974 Hollywood movie in which Ed Asner portrayed a wrestling promoter who takes on the mob.

Robinson had a reputation for injuring wrestlers he felt were more showmen than athletes, a practice that did not endear him to most opponents.

“I’m a wrestler,” he once said. “I believe in real wrestling. I believe in catch-as-catch-can wrestling. The show wrestling now has become pathetic. It’s a complete show, and I just won’t have anything to do with it.”

In 2001, Robinson moved to Little Rock, Ark., where his son had made a home. Robinson lived in an apartment and it was there where he was found dead one morning. He was 75.

Gordie Jamieson

Gordie Jamieson (back row, No. 5) with the 1955-56 Clinton Comets.

Gordon Melville Jamieson

Born: September 16, 1930 (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Died: March 7, 2014 (Monroe Township, New Jersey)

A 5-foot-11, 190-pound defenceman, Gordie Jamieson guarded the blue-line for the Clinton (N.Y.) Comets for six seasons in the 1950s.

The rugged skater was a stay-at-home defenceman. He scored nine goals and added 18 assists in his debut with the Comets in 1950-51, which would be his strongest contribution to offence for the team. He also spent 102 minutes in the penalty box.

Over six seasons with the Comets, Jamieson scored 36 goals with 81 assists. He also scored three playoff goals.

Born in Winnipeg, Jamieson grew up in Kingston, Ont. He was added to the Inkerman (Ont.) Rockets’ roster for the 1950 Memorial Cup playoffs, during which he recorded a lone assist in 13 games.

Jamieson was predeceased by his wife Arley Constance (Connie) (née Cantlon), who died in 2012, aged 81. Born in Saskatoon, Sask., she was the daughter of Ralph Cantlon, general manager of the saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper. She worked as a figure skating coach for 60 years. The couple met at the rink in Clinton.

The couple raised their family in East Brunswick, N.J. Jamieson leaves three sons, two daughters, nine grandchildren, and five sisters.

Bernie Fratkin

Bernie Fratkin (front row, far left) was a substitute with the national junior champion Winnipeg Light Infantry team in 1952.

 

Bernard Martin Fratkin

Born: March 21, 1933 (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Died: March 7, 2014 (Toronto)

 

Bernie Fratkin won junior Dominion basketball championships with the Winnipeg Light Infantry team in 1952 and 1953. 

Fratkin was “a handy man to have around,” noted the Winnipeg Free Press, which praised the “slightly built player” for being adept at defence and for grabbing more rebounds than expected.

The team comprised of boys from a three-block radius of Winnipeg’s North End. They were inspired to form a team modelled after the Stella Mission Stellars, another Winnipeg team which won the Ebbie Bowering trophy as national junior champs in 1950 and ’51. Those players than advanced to senior basketball.

Coached by Hal Mauthe, the Winnipeg Light Infantry defeated the Windsor (Ont.) AKOs for the national junior crown in 1952. They repeated as champs the following year in Montreal, defeating the hometown Hi-Aces, 59-55, in the fifth and final game. Fratkin, a substitute, once again gained notice for his play.

“Bernie Fratkin came into the game in the fourth quarter, broke cleanly down the middle for two points, and temporarily broke up a Montreal rally,” Hal Sigurdson wrote in the Free Press. “Not three minutes later he was back with a breakaway basket to build up a once-more crumbling Winnipeg lead.” 

Fratkin was one of seven players to play on both squads. (The 1953 team included Jim Doyle, who would go on to become Canada’s amateur golf champion in 1968.)

Fratkin later became a well-known curler from Winnipeg’s Maple Leaf club, earning notice for his behaviour as skipper in the opening round of a mixed bonspiel in 1974. 

“A real crowd-pleaser this Bernie Fratkin,” the Free Press reported. “One moment he’s standing serenely, chomping on a straw from his broom, the next chasing his sweepers down the ice hollering words of instruction.”

After graduating from the University of Manitoba, Fratkin became a chartered accountant, eventually rising to become managing partner of the Winnipeg office of MacGillivray & Co. He later moved to Toronto to pursue business interests.

The 1952 Winnipeg Light Infantry team was inducted into the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. The 153 squad was added the following year. Both teams were inducted into the Manitoba Sports hall of Fame in 2005.

Fratkin died a fortnight before what would have been his 81^st birthday. He leaves his wife and a daughter.

Bernie Fratkin (front row, third from left) scored four points to break up a rally by the Montreal Hi-Aces as his Winnipeg Light Infantry repeated as Dominion junior champions with a 59-55 victory in the fifth and deciding game of the 1953 finals.

 

Andy Gilpin

Andrew Crowley Gilpin

Born: September 20, 1920 (Montréal)
Died: March 1, 2014 (London, Ontario)

 

Andy Gilpin was a forward with the RCAF Flyers team selected to represent Canada at the 1948 Olympics. The team won a gold medal, though Gilpin did not play due to an ankle injury.

The Flyers claimed the gold medal by going undefeated in round-robin tournament at St. Moritz, Switzerland. Canada went 7-0-1, the draw a 0-0 game against Czechoslovakia and the gold medal settled by a 3-0 victory over the hosts on Feb. 8, 1948.

The 5-foot-11, 170-pound left winger played a season of junior hockey with the Westmount team in his hometown. He scored eight goals and recorded five assists in 11 games in 1939-40.

After enrolling in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he played for military teams in Victoria and Vancouver.

Gilpin, a sergeant in rank, was posted in Whitehorse, Yukon, when he was selected in November, 1947, for the RCAF team being put together to compete at the Olympics. He scored two unassisted goals in his first exhibition game with the squad, which was cobbled together from armed forces personal across the country.

He later hurt his ankle after crashing into the boards and missed playing in the Olympics.

In the early 1950s, he skated for the Arnprior (Ont.) Greenshirts, but stayed in the army instead of taking a chance at becoming a professional hockey player.

He retired with the rank of chief warrant officer in 1975.

A fall on the ice broke his hip and shoulder eight years ago, at age 85. He recovered sufficiently to return to rink, making it his habit to take a twirl around the ice at Nichols Arena in London on Mondays.

The RCAF’s 427 Wing honoured Gilpin with a presentation on Feb. 7, the day the Sochi Olympics opened, coinciding with the 66^th anniversary of the Flyers winning the gold medal. He was presented with a 2014 Team Canada Olympic hockey sweater with his name and the No. 48 on the back.

Gilpin died in Victoria Hospital at London, Ont. He was predeceased by his wife, the former Ellen Hearnden, who died in 2001. He leaves four daughters, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.