Jack Brown

John Clifford (Jack) Brown

Born: 1940
Died: January 3, 2014 (Summerside, Prince Edward Island)

In the early 1980s, organizers in Summerside, P.E.I., decided to expand the local economy by turning their seaside city into a sports tournament destination. A key figure in the success of the move was Jack Brown, who worked for the health department.

In 1985, he lured the junior men’s Canadian softball championship to the city, the first Canadian title to be held at Summerside. Four years later, he brought the junior men’s worlds tournaments to the city, its debut on the global stage.

The campaign culminated in winning the right to host the International Softball Congress (ISC) world championships in 1994. Brown was part of a delegation that made a presentation to the softball congress at Salt Lake City, Utah, two years earlier. Summerside beat out New York, Vancouver, Salt Lake City and Winnipeg in winning the bid.

In 2005, the junior men’s world championships returned to the city.

Brown, a resident of Miscouche, was also noted as a tireless supporter of charities in the city. He died at Prince County Hospital in Summerside, aged 73.

Jim Irons

James Donald (Hamish) Irons

Born: September 22, 1937
Died: January 18, 2014 (Owen Sound, Ontario)

Member: Brampton (Ont.) Sports Hall of Fame (1985)

 

Jim Irons, a world-class miler, competed for Canada at both the Commonwealth and Pan American Games. A diligent pursuit of the four-minute mile brought him tantalizingly close to breaking the barrier.

In qualifying for the 1962 Commonwealth Games in a meet at East York stadium in Toronto, Irons posted a 4:04.2 time, the fastest mile run on Canadian soil by a Canadian at the time. He came third in his heat at the Games in Perth, Australia, but struggled in the finals, finishing eighth of nine runners. In poor conditions, including gusty winds, Peter Snell of New Zealand took the gold in 4:04.58. Irons finished in 4:17.52, nearly seven seconds slower than his time in the heats. The field “maintained an almost funeral pace,” wrote Jack Sullivan, sports editor of Canadian Press.

Irons, 24, was a trainee sanitary inspector in his hometown of Brampton, Ont. He had originally been granted a month’s leave at half pay for the Games. County council later decided to pay him full wages during his absence.

Before the Games, Irons joined other runners in a 47-mile relay road race from Hamilton, Ont., to Toronto to raise funds for the United Appeal. The 29 runners ran along Highway 2, Lake Shore Boulevard and north on Bay Street to Toronto City Hall. Irons, racing for Toronto, was given the honour of the final mile, loping up the steps to shake hands with Toronto mayor Nathan Phillips.

In 1963, Irons ran for Canada at the Pan Am Games at Sao Paulo, Brazil. He did not win a medal.

Irons was an original member of the Toronto Olympic Club, founded in 1954.

The runner went undefeated as a Canadian juvenile and junior at distances from a half-mile to two miles. He set a Canadian junior record in the mile, later smashed by Bruce Kidd.

As a 19-year-old, the student from Brampton High tied the U.S. schoolboy record by running the mile in 4:22.7 at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1957. “Irons disclosed a great closing kick,” the New York Times reported. “He overwhelmed the opposition with his burst at the finish.”

Irons won 13 provincial and national titles in a 14-year running career.

His best indoor time in the mile was 4:01.9, set in 1963, while his best outdoor time was the 4:04.2 he managed in the 1962 Commonwealth qualifying track meet in Toronto.

Irons also played a role as a pacesetting “rabbit” imported to help a Loyola University Chicago student set a new world record.

At Chicago Stadium in 1964, Irons served as a pacemaker, running the quarter in 0:58.5 and the half in 1:58.8 before fading, as Jim O’Hara a rake-thin accountancy student completed a 3:56.4 indoor mile, breaking his own world indoor record by one-fifth of a second. O’Hara’s record stood for 14 years.

John Hayward

John Charles Hayward

Born: May 20, 1954 (Montréal)
Died: January 15, 2014 (Newmarket, Ontario)

John Hayward coached his younger sister Mary Ann Hayward, born in 1960, to nine national and more than 20 provincial titles. She was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2007.

“Knowing someone too well can sometimes be a hindrance but in other ways it’s a good thing, because I know her game so well and know the way she thinks and where she’s trying to go,” he told the Hamilton Spectator newspaper in 2005. “What makes it difficult is it’s your sister. That can be a negative, because you can become too attached.

He was a Class A golf professional and a member of the PGA of Canada since 1981. In his 30-year career, he worked for courses in four provinces, including the Royal Montreal Golf Club, Elm Ridge Country Club, Summerlea Golf & Country Club, Mystic Golf Club, and Lionhead Golf and Country Club.

Hayward also coached amateur hockey for 25 years, including a stint as head coach of the men’s varsity team at John Abbott College, a Cegep (junior college) in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., on the island of Montréal. He coached the Islanders from 1992-93 until fired after a dismal 1995-96 season. “They’re here for an education,” he’d say of his players, “hockey comes second.”

Danny McLeod

William John (Danny) McLeod

Born: November 5, 1921 (Medicine Hat, Alberta)
Died: January 14, 2014 (Kingston, Ontario)

Member:
Medicine Hat (Alta.) Sports Wall of Fame (2011)
Kingston (Ont.) and District Sports Hall of Fame (2001)
Canadian Forces Sports Honour Roll (1989)

 

Danny McLeod, a decorated veteran of the Second World War, was the driving force behind the creation of the governing body now known as Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS).

He was also the founding athletic director at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., a two-time coach of the year in the Ontario Hockey Association, and the NHL’s supervisor of officials.

His own sporting participation included rodeo, boxing and junior hockey in Alberta.

McLeod’s impressive sporting credentials came later in a life already notable for a military career of distinction. He dropped out of high school and left the family farm to enlist in the South Alberta Regiment immediately after Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, and during the conflict that followed he was promoted from trooper to lance corporal to corporal to lance sergeant to sergeant to acting warrant officer. He would retire from the Canadian Army in 1971 with the rank of major.

In 1942, he became the first Canadian to be posted to the famed Sandhurst Military Academy for military training, graduating first in his class.

McLeod fought in the liberation of occupied France, Belgium and Holland, and fought on into Germany. It was during a brutal tank engagement with the enemy where an outgunned McLeod managed to fend off a Germany assault, earning a Military Cross. McLeod was in British Columbia training armoured units for an assault on Japan when the war ended.

He then served as a peacekeeper in Indochina and was posted in Europe in the late 1950s. In 1960, by now a major, McLeod was posted to the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ont. He was the college’s first athletic director, coaching the hockey team while also coaching the Kingston Frontenacs of the Ontario Hockey League and the senior Kingston Aces. The Aces represented Canada at the Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland, where they won a silver medal under his cpaching.

Soon after arriving at the military college, he also began organizing the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union, now known as the CIS, becoming the group’s founding secretary-general. He was Canada’s chef de mission at the International Student Games in 1968 at Turin, Italy.

In 1971, he became supervisor of officials for the NHL, a position he held for eight years. He was responsible for training all the on-ice officials used in the famed 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. (He had mixed results. The Canadians were so infuriated by the refereeing of the games played in Moscow they referred to German referees Franz Baader and Josef Kampalla as “Baader and Worse.”)

The retired major received many honours late in life. The Major W.J. (Danny) McLeod Award is presented to the most valuable player in the CIS hockey championships. The NHL Officials Association presented him with its Birchall Leadership Award in 2007. In 2011, the CIS awarded him the Austin-Matthews award for outstanding contribution to interuniversity sports.

On his 90^th birthday, the residents of Canada Lane in Bergen op Zoom, the Netherlands, gathered to congratulate the milestone achieved by their liberator.

Finally, his old school district presented him with an honorary diploma 68 years after he dropped out to join the war effort.

 

 

Danny McLeod is back row, second from left, in this gathering of Canadian officers from all forces.

Eric Paterson

Eric Evan Paterson

Born: September 11, 1929 (Edmonton, Alberta)
Died: January 14, 2014 (Sherwood Park, Alberta)

Eric Paterson was half of the goaltending duo that helped Canada win an Olympic gold medal at the 1952 Winter Games.

He was added to the roster of the Edmonton Mercurys, an amateur team selected to represent Canada at the Olympics in Oslo, Norway.

The 22-year-old netminder had limited experience at any level in hockey. Diminutive and slight, at just 5-foot-9, weighing 155 pounds, he was known for his quick reflexes and for being a nervous wreck before games. He was paired with Ralph Hansch, 27, a more experienced goalie who worked as an Edmonton firefighter. (At the Olympics, Paterson wore sweater No. 1, while Hansch wore No. 0, a number since banned from use at the Games.) The pair surrendered 14 goals in eight games, as Canada won seven straight before tying the United States, 3-3, to claim the gold medal.

Paterson gave up just four goals in three games, all victories, for a 1.33 goals-against average. He recorded a shutout in an 11-0 whitewash of Poland, played outdoors in a driving snowstorm. He was also in goal for an 11-2 win over Switzerland and a 3-2 win over Sweden the following day. His performance was all the more remarkable for his having suffered a knee injury during a pre-Olympic exhibition tour of Europe.

The players returned home to Edmonton to a parade along Jasper Avenue. The Mercurys were sponsored by Jim Christiansen, a local automobile dealer who spent $100,000 to send the team to Europe and who covered player salaries for the duration. A half-century would pass before another Canadian team claimed Olympic hockey gold.

Paterson played two seasons of junior hockey with the Edmonton Maple Leafs before giving up the sport. He had been inactive for two seasons when he made his senior hockey debut on Jan. 5, 1951, when he was pressed into service as an emergency replacement for Bev Bentley of the Regina Caps, who was out with influenza. With Paterson in nets, the Caps upset the hometown Edmonton Flyers, by 4-2.

A year later, he was on Olympic ice.

Through the 1950s, he played for the Nelson (B.C.) Maple Leafs, Rossland (B.C.) Warriors and Ponoko (Alta.) Stampeders, who claimed the Western Canadian intermediate title in 1956. He gave up five goals in a loss in his one Western Hockey League game for the Edmonton Flyers.

One of his final games as a player was an exhibition pitting his intermediate Central Alberta All-Stars against the visiting Japanese Olympic team. The All-Stars defeated Japan 17-2 in a game played before 3,800 fans at Lacombe, Alta. Paterson made 27 saves, while a beleaguered pair of Japanese goalies stopped 53 of 70 shots fired their way.

Paterson worked as a machinist with the Edmonton Transit System for 42 years. He served on the executive of his union, Local No. 569 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. For 11 years, he was an appeals commissioner for the Workers Compensation Board. He was predeceased by Hansch, who died in 2008.

For five decades, the Mercurys held the unwanted title as most recent Canadian hockey Olympic gold medallists. They happily relinquished the title in 2002 when Canada defeated the United States to claim gold at the Olympics at Salt Lake City, Utah. Paterson was in attendance at the game.

The 1952 Olympic Mercurys with goalie Eric Paterson front row, centre.

Tyler Lawson

Tyler W. Lawson

Born: May 19, 1983 (Barrie, Ontario)
Died: January 6, 2014 (Springwater, Ontario)

 

A rugged defenceman who liked to mix it up, Tyler Lawson spent six seasons throwing around his 6-foot-4, 230-pound frame.

In 19 games with his hometown Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League, he scored a single goal. He was also on his best behaviour, recording only 37 penalty minutes in 2002-03.

The previous season, he managed somehow to be penalized 213 minutes in just 34 games with the junior-A Parry Sound (Ont.) Shamrocks. Playing on the blue-line in Bobby Orr’s hometown, Lawson somehow found the time when not in the penalty box to record four assists.

Used as an enforcer wherever he played, Lawson wore many different sweaters in his brief career, as coaches inserted the bruiser into the lineup to intimidate opponents. He also played junior-A in his home province for the Aurora Tigers, Port Hope Clippers, Blind River Barons, and Espanola Screaming Eagles.

As a professional playing in the minors in the United States, he suited up for the Memphis RiverKings, Laredo (Tex.) Bucks, Richmond (Va.) RiverDogs, Quad City Mallards of Moline, Ill., and the Missouri River Otters of St. Charles, Mo. He played in 34 games in the minor pros for five teams, scoring one goal and adding one assist, while being punished with 217 penalty minutes. 

In two seasons in the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey, a Quebec circuit notorious for donnybrooks, Lawson scored four goals with three assists in 64 games for the Sorel-Tracy Mission and the CRS Express of St-Georges. The referees flagged him for 494 penalty minutes. 

His retired from the minor pros at the end of the 2006-07 season.

Lawson operated heavy equipment on construction sites. He died when his snowmobile collided with a SUV on Ontario County Road 27 in the township of Springwater, outside Barrie.

Ben Lands

Ben Lands (second from left) was a tenacious basketball guard who represented Canada at the 1948 Olympics and who won a national championship with the Montreal YMHA Blues in 1950.

Benjamin (Bennie) Lands

Born: February 22, 1921 (Montréal)
Died: January 13, 2014 (Montréal)

Ben Lands was a clever, patient, and effective guard who led his basketball team to the 1948 Olympics and to a national championship in 1950.

Lands played for the Young Men’s Hebrew Association team in Montréal, a hoops powerhouse in the immediate postwar years. After the 1947-48 season, Lands received the Ben Hockenstein Memorial trophy as the YMHA’s most valuable player, while the city basketball league in which he played awarded him the Duquette trophy as league MVP.

The YMHA Blues team represented Canada at the Olympics in 1948 as part of a hybrid. The Blues were joined by players from the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds. The eastern and western champions were initially going to play as units on the court with five-aside switchovers when needed, but as the Games in London neared it was decided to graft the two parts together.

The Americans were overwhelming favourites for the gold medal, but it was thought Canada would be likely to claim a silver, or bronze. In the end, the experiment failed and Canada wound up in the losing bracket, which it won handily to finish the Olympic tournament in ninth place.

The son of Jewish immigrants, Lands took up basketball at age 16, soon becoming the nucleus around which one of Canada’s greatest basketball teams formed. The 1947-48 YMHA Blues lost the Dominion title to the Vancouver Clover Leafs, but got half the Olympic nod after defeating the Clover Leafs at an Olympic qualifying tournament held at Maple Leafs Gardens in Toronto.

The qualifying showdown took place on May 10-11, 1948, a time when events in the Middle East dominated the front page. On the night the tournament opened, a testimonial dinner was held in Toronto for the boxer Barney Ross, the event sponsored by the League for a Free Palestine. Israel declared independence just days later.

Only six of the Blues players were able to travel to London for the Olympics — Lands, Sol Tolchinsky, Mendy Morein, Sydney Strulovich, Doodie Bloomfield and Murray Waxman. Land, who was the oldest at 27, got time off from his work, but had to do without a pay package for the six weeks it took to travel back and forth to Europe by steamer. The six Blues joined with eight players from UBC, but the two teams never gelled, even attending separate functions (a luncheon for the students at B.C. House, a lunch for the Montrealers at Maccabi House).

The basketball team was housed in an air force training camp that lacked a practice facility.

“They finally got us a firehall, a gym,” Lands told the Montreal Gazette two years ago. “But there were beams right in front of the baskets, so certain areas we couldn’t shoot from. Then, when we got to the Games, they gave us a ball that was like a football. So basically we weren’t prepared to play basketball.”

Canada opened the tourney with easy victories over Italy (53-37) and host Britain (44-24). They then lost a squeaker to Hungary, 37-36, before being humiliated by Brazil, 57-35. The preliminary round concluded with a close 52-50 win over Uruguay. With a 3-2 record, Canada seemed likely to make up for a shaky start in the medal round, but officials placed Canada in the consolation bracket based on points scored. Unaware of the tie-breaking rules, the Canadians, sportingly, had not run up the score on the British.

Canada steamrolled opponents in the also-ran group, finishing ninth by defeating Peru, 49-43. Canada’s final record was 6-2.

Two years later, the YMHA Blues, with Lands, as always, directing the game from the floor, claimed the national senior men’s basketball title.

Lands also played for Canada in the 1950, 1953 and 1957 Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics. He was honorary captain for Canada at the 1997 Games.

The national champion 1949-50 Blues were inducted into the Montreal Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.

Glen Lindsay

Goalie Glen Lindsay (No. 1) sits front row, centre with Saskatoon Blades teammates.

Glen Stuart Lindsay

Born: April 11, 1948 (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
Died: January 10, 2014 (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)

 

Glen Lindsay’s solid performance in goal for the Saskatoon Blades in the 1968 playoffs led to his being selected by the Minnesota North Stars in that summer’s NHL amateur draft. Lindsay was picked No. 22 overall by the North Stars and was the third goalie taken in the draft behind Michel Plasse (No. 1 overall) and Gary Edwards (No. 6).

Lindsay got another year of seasoning in goal in his home province with the Swift Current Broncos, while playing in four games for the Des Moines (Iowa) Oak Leafs of the International Hockey League in 1968-69.

The 5-foot-11, 190-pound netminder spent three seasons with the Trail (B.C.) Smoke Eaters of the Western International Hockey League from 1969-72.

He returned to the IHL for a full season with the Des Moines team, renamed the Capitols, in 1972-73. In 28 games, his goals-against average was 4.29. 

Lindsay completed his playing career in goal for the Rosetown (Sask.) Red Wings.

While with the Blades, he sometimes wore sweater No. 0, an oddity now outlawed by hockey rules. He mostly wore sweater No. 1 during his career, except for a season in No. 18 for the Smoke Eaters.

Away from the arena, Lindsay worked as a haberdasher in his hometown, at first for Lindsay & Scott’s Menswear and for 29 years at Mr. Big and Tall.

Blades goalie Glen Lindsay is down and scrambling in 1968 game against Winnipeg Arena Jets. Puck is at far right.

Joe Junkin

Joseph Brian Junkin

Born: September 8, 1946 (Lindsay, Ontario)
Died: January 11, 2014 (Harrisburg, Pa.)

Member: Lindsay (Ont.) and District Sports Hall of Fame (2008)

Joe Junkin’s NHL career lasted 7 minutes, 56 seconds.

On Dec. 14, 1968, the backup replaced Gerry Cheevers in the Boston net after the Bruins took a 10-5 lead over the visiting Chicago Black Hawks. The rookie stopped all six shots he faced. He never played another NHL game.

His debut game is remembered, if at all, for Bobby Orr’s performance, the greatest of his career to that date. The defenceman scored three goals and added two assists. The Bruins peppered the Chicago net with 50 shots in a rare game in which four goaltenders saw action. Boston scored seven times against Dave Dryden and three more against replacement Jack Norris.

Junkin, who was born in Lindsay, Ont., played junior-B with the Bobcaygeon Bobcats before joining the senior-A Belleville Mohawks. The Boston Bruins signed him as a free agent in 1968, assigning him to their Central Hockey League farm team, the Oklahoma City Blazers. He was called up in December after Eddie Johnston suffered a fractured skull.

He had a stellar training camp in September, 1969, most notably backstopping the Bruins to a 5-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in a preseason exhibition game played in Peterborough, Ont. The Toronto Star pronounced him “a standout,” but Junkin suffered a severe leg bruise and did not replace either Johnston or Cheevers on the Bruins roster.

The netminder split the 1969-70 season between the Blazers and the Hershey Bears. He then suffered a detached retina in his left eye when struck by a deflected puck while working at a summer hockey camp in Oklahoma City. He missed the following season after undergoing surgery.

The goalie played two games for the minor-league Long Island Ducks before joining the Syracuse Blazers. In 34 games in 1972-73, he tied teammate Yves Belanger for the Eastern Hockey League shutout crown, as both Blazers goalies recorded five blanks. (Belanger would go on to play 78 NHL games for three teams.) Junkin had a 2.61 goals-against average. The Blazers went on to win the Walker Cup as league champions.

Junkin returned to a major professional league when he made his debut with the New York Golden Blades of the World Hockey Association at the start of the 1973-74 season. It would be a troubled season for the franchise, which wound up orphaned as the Jersey Knights playing out of Cherry Hill, N.J. The goalie had a 21-25-4 record with a lone shutout and a 3.79 average.

He moved with the franchise to San Diego at the end of the season. He played in 15 games for the Mariners in 1974-75 (1 shutout, 3.29 average).

The Cincinnati Stingers picked up his rights in the offseason, though he never played for that club,

ending his playing career in the minor Southern Hockey League in 1975-76 with the Tidewater Sharks and Roanoke Valley Rebels.

Junkin died of cancer in Harrisburg, Pa.

Cy Whiteside

Cyril E. Whiteside

Born: March 27, 1932 (Innisfail, Alberta)
Died: January 7, 2014 (Woodland Park, Colorado)

A bashing defenceman who spent as much time in the penalty box as on the blue line, Cy Whiteside engaged in several infamous brawls in a peripatetic career.

His most notorious incident came in a game while captain of the Colorado College Tigers when, infuriated by a referee’s call, he cross-checked the official to the ice, not once, but twice. He resigned from the college team two days later.

In a 1959 International Hockey League game, he got into a fight with opponent Danny Summers. Two policemen separated the players as they were dispatched to the penalty box. It did not take long before the fight resumed off the ice. This time, four policemen were needed to separate the combatants and escort them to the dressing rooms.

In a 1964 game, Whiteside suffered a gash to his forehead that needed eight stitches to close. Despite the injury, he managed to be one of two instigators of a bench-clearing brawl during which he was assessed 20 penalty minutes. In another 1964 game, the defenceman was assessed a match penalty for stick fighting and fined $25 by the league.

The 6-foot-2, 190-pound defenceman accumulated more than 100 penalty minutes in each of his first five full seasons in the IHL.

When he was signed before the 1963-64 season by the Des Moines Oak Leafs, an Iowa newspaper hailed him as “the top defenceman in Triple A hockey.” Whiteside was an IHL First Team All-Star in 1960-61 and 1961-62, while earning a berth on the Second Team in 1962-63.

Born in Innisfail, Alta., Whiteside grew up in Wetaskiwin. He played junior hockey for the Brandon Wheat Kings and the Crows Nest Pass Lions for a season before spending two seasons with the senior Moose Jaw (Sask.) Millers.

In 1954, the bashing blue-liner moved to Scotland to play for Ayr Raiders under coach Stan Obodiac, the future publicity director for Maple Leaf Gardens.

Back on his home continent, Whiteside suited up for three different senior teams in 1955-56 — the Ponoka Stampeders, Spokane Flyers and Kamloops Elks — before enrolling at Colorado College, where he graduated with a geology degree in 1959.

In the IHL, never known as a league for the faint of heart, he skated for the Denver Mavericks, Minneapolis Millers, Fort Wayne Komets and the Oak Leafs. He wound up his career playing  senior hockey in Alberta with the Drumheller Miners and Calgary Stampeders, helping the latter win the Western Canadian championship in 1969. He was unable to get leave from work to join the team for the Allan Cup championship, which was won by the Galt (Ont.) Hornets.

Whiteside worked in the oil patch with Centron Pipe Systems for 32 years. He was also a part-owner of the Oklahoma Stars hockey team when he lived in the state.