If only these walls could talk, to hear the voices of yesteryear again— sounds of athletic excellence in all their Blue and Gold splendour.
It’s been a while since I’ve graced these premises — 50 years, actually — when I last sat here within the great room known then as it is now, the Aula Maxima, on the campus of St. Bonaventure’s College, on full, polished display.
Remember the old joke about the annual Stanley Cup parade in Montreal back in the mid-to-late 1950s, when Lord Stanley would take its “usual route”?
Same for me, where, come springtime, I could be found here at St. Bon’s.
For I am Sir Cavendish Boyle’s gift to Newfoundland hockey for Inter-Colonial competition. According to the late historian, Frank Graham, who wrote in his book, “Ready … Set …. Go! A St. John’s Sports Pictorial,” Sir Cavendish, then the governor of Newfoundland, felt it would, “help the cause of the Empire to play a series of friendly hockey matches with teams in the Canadian Maritime provinces.”
The governor apparently had a change of heart, relenting to make me, the Boyle Challenge Cup, the top prize for the champion of the St. John’s Senior Hockey League.
That was well over 100 years ago, in 1904.
Only Lord Stanley himself is older than I (but I have a few years on the Grey Cup!).
Oh, what a night it was this week, Thursday evening at the old school on the hill — “On the hill she stands majestic, noble to our view. Glory, honour, praise, allegiance … These to her are due … “
Oh yes, the alumni sang the old school song in unison and with pride, boys and girls alike.
Unlike my day, girls now attend St. Bon’s. Big change since the powers that be moved me to my new digs at The Rooms, just around the corner from St. Bon’s.
Did you know it was St. Bon’s that dominated the playdowns for the right to parade me around the ice at old Memorial Stadium, hoisting me 27 times, including an unheard-of 16 straight championships between 1944 and 1960?
The string of titles drove the opposition crazy, enough so that it prompted the Guards to bring in the former NHLer, Howie Meeker, chiefly to beat St. Bon’s.
Easier said than done. The Blue-Golds, if you remember, did and still do have their own rink, the Forum. And back then, nobody skated on the Forum’s old ice unless you went to St. Bon’s.
And, as Meeker would grouse many years later in The Telegram, “St. Bon’s always imported one or two teachers who could play.
“They had the only ice in town and were deeper in talent.”
Contrary to rumour, Dr. Harry Roberts — a linchpin within the Guards Athletic Association — did not offer to top whatever the city was giving Meeker to run the Guards by $5,000.
But you can bet they were tempted.
“St. Bon’s? I mean, you were talking about Rocket Richard and Teeder Kennedy and Mickey Mantle when you were talking about those guys. There were other great players in the senior league — (Bud) Duffett, (Stan) Breen and (Doug) Squires ... (Ian) Campbell ... Jackie Withers. But not like St. Bon’s. They were the big stars in town. When they walked the streets, they were revered.”
Derm Connolly
Meeker preached that the game must be played tough, and those who filled the Stadium to watch the Feildians and St. Pat’s and lowly Holy Cross, a school with deeper roots in soccer and basketball than hockey, in addition to St. Bon’s and the Guards, could hear his familiar squawking echo from his perch behind the Guards’ bench.
Upstairs, an up-and-coming broadcaster named Bob Cole would be busy calling the play-by-play on VOCM, Voice of the Common Man.
For the first few years, Meeker could only watch the play. In a controversial move, the local senior league ruled him ineligible because of his days as a Toronto Maple Leaf.
“Because St. John’s is the only place in Canada where pure amateur hockey is played,” St. John’s Hockey League secretary Hugh Fardy told The Telegram at the time.
Some suggest it was the Catholic (read St. Bon’s) influence which put the screws to Meeker. That’s the way it was in those days.
Hugh Fardy. Yes, that Hughie Fardy, the great St. Bon’s defenceman, the Doug Harvey of his day.
Fourteen times he paraded with me, above the broad shoulders upon which he carried the Blue-Golds defence. Five times was Fardy a top defenceman in the senior league, the 1956 senior hockey scoring champion, 1958 league MVP.
The other half of the brilliant defensive duo with Fardy on those St. Bon’s teams was Len Coughlan. Like a lot of them, Len is gone, too, his death coming last January.
What a group it was, that St. Bon’s gang. A Hall of Famer in goal, Merv Green, and a group of Hall of Famers and all-stars up front, including Bill and Ted Gillies, Jack Reardigan and Bobby Redmond.
A word often used to describe the great Teddy Gillies, the 1952 and ’53 St. John’s athlete of the year?
“Electrifying.”
Then there was the elegant Reardigan, whose marvelous skating was incomparable.
Thirteen times — 13! — would Reardigan win the Boyle Trophy.
And if Fardy was the Harvey of the St. Bon’s defence, Cyril Power was the Blue-Golds’ Henri Richard. Power made the senior team as a junior-aged player, and went on to captain the squad six years.
Alas, the Catholic–Protestant clash between Jack and Jimmy Vinicombe’s Blue-Golds and Meeker’s Guards was not to be. Rather, it would be another Mick team, the unheralded St. Pat’s squad from across Bonaventure Avenue, which would be St. Bon’s undoing, winning back-to-back Boyle Trophies in 1960 and ’61 and grinding the St. Bon’s domination to a halt.
Then it was Guards’ turn with three straight Boyle Trophy championships from 1962-64.
Long before 1972 and 1980, Newfoundland had experienced its own “Miracle on Ice” and the bedlam that came about with, “Henderson ... has scored for Canada!”
On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, 1960, all Irish eyes were smiling as St. Pat’s did the unthinkable, slaying the mighty dragon that was St. Bon’s to win their first Boyle Trophy.
It wasn’t so much the win that stirred an entire city, but how St. Pat’s went about it.
St. Bon’s were the mighty Soviets. St. Pat’s, Feildians, Guards and woeful Holy Cross were mere inferior underlings.
“St. Bon’s?” former St. Pat’s pepperpot Derm Connolly relayed to The Telegram years ago. “I mean, you were talking about Rocket Richard and Teeder Kennedy and Mickey Mantle when you were talking about those guys.
“There were other great players in the senior league — (Bud) Duffett, (Stan) Breen and (Doug) Squires ... (Ian) Campbell ... Jackie Withers. But not like St. Bon’s. They were the big stars in town. When they walked the streets, they were revered.”
It was time when the religious wars were at their peak within the hockey arena, on the ball field or soccer pitch, or in the basketball gym. It was often said an atheist was defined as someone who didn’t cheer for one team or another at a local hockey game.
“Bill was a tiger,” Connolly said of Billy Gillies, “but there’s no one I feared more than Teddy Gillies. He was the most exciting guy to watch.
“He could do anything with the puck ... an athlete’s athlete.”
And so in the Boyle Trophy final of 1959-60, it was but another mismatch — St. Bon’s vs. St. Pat’s, the Blue-Golds’ latest sacrificial lamb.
The rich Catholics vs. the poor Catholics.
St. Pat’s had actually altered its lineup over Christmas that 1959-60 season, calling up several juniors to provide some spark. Among the additions were Connolly and Bell Islanders Mike Fitzpatrick and Dick Power.
Granted, St. Pat’s had a pretty decent team, too, with Withers centering Lloyd Kelly and Jim (Aucker) Byrne on the first string. Connolly skated with Charlie Walsh and Joe Kenny and Fitzpatrick with Bart Ford and Johnny Perry. On defence, Power, Don Johnson and Jim Malone anchored things.
In goal, Pat Barrington was more than dependable.
But the Irish were no St. Bon’s and, in fact, virtually nobody gave St. Pat’s even a remote chance of upsetting the unbeatable.
“Except the 20-odd fellas in our dressing room,” Connolly said.
A lot has changed, and memories have faded in the 50 years since that memorable series. This much we know: the teams traded wins through the opening four games of the best-of-seven final, and St. Pat’s won the critical Game 5 to take a 3-2 lead.
Game 6 was set for Wednesday night, March 16 — Paddy’s Day eve — so if ever the stars were aligned for St. Pat’s, this would be it.
A crowd Connolly is convinced numbered over 5,000 filled every nook and cranny inside Memorial Stadium that night. Hundreds, if not thousands more, lined up outside, up King’s Bridge Road in a futile effort to get tickets.
Youngsters managed to crawl up on the beams supporting the Stadium’s roof. In the press box, Cole prepared to call the game.
It was a tough, brutal series. But the mutual respect never waned.
“We were somewhere between love and hate,” Connolly said of the teams. “But at the same time, it wouldn’t stop us from going to the Pioneer (restaurant, on Portugal Cove Road) together afterwards.”
Connolly doesn’t remember details of the game, other than Joe Kenny’s goal to open the scoring. Kenny has long since passed away.
Here was Cole’s call on the play:
“The faceoff will be inside the St. Pat’s blueline, to the left of the goal. St. Pat’s got the draw. They shoot it down the ice. Kenny’s going in ... Fardy’s trying to catch him. He’s in all alone ... he falls ... he scores! Joe Kenny scoring for St. Pat’s and he scored that one as he was lying on the ice! He raced in ahead of Fardy and Fardy knocked him down, but Kenny, as he was sliding towards the net, took a sweep at it and it caught the lower left hand corner with Merv Green coming out of the goal. It’s an unassisted goal by Kenny at 7:30. It’s St. Pat’s 1-0.”
Many of the St. Pat’s players have a copy of Cole’s broadcast. For most of the 60 minutes, Connolly says, the crowd drowns out the broadcaster.
After quelling a ferocious St. Bon’s attack, the final buzzer sounded and the scoreclock read 4-2 in favour of St. Pat’s. Fans quite literally poured out of Memorial Stadium to celebrate in the streets.
“When I went to work after Paddy’s Day,” said Johnson in a 2009 Telegram story (he died seven years ago), “at the Bank of Nova Scotia, everyone had the inside decorated green and gold.
“Big? It was beyond big,” he said. “It was like the Regatta and the Challenge Cup and all the greatest sporting things in Newfoundland just happening at one time.”
“Honestly,” said Connolly “we were heroes. I walked down to the wharf, where I worked, and it was like God had walked down there.
“All of a sudden we were somebody.”
St. Pat’s won again the following year, ironically enough on the same day — March 16. This time the Irish beat Feildians in the final.
And while a win was a win, it couldn’t quite match the victory over St. Bon’s, which all but shattered the Blue-Golds’ run as a hockey dynasty.
Thursday night at St. Bon’s, however, wasn’t completely a funeral, as we enter the 60th anniversary of the epic St. Pat’s win.
Rather, 2019 also marks the 75th start of the run of the 16 straight championships. The year was 1944, following two winters of hockey darkness because of the Second World War.
A youthful Reardigan would win his first Boyle Trophy that year, on a squad led by the Hall of Famer Bill Harris, whose proficiency in the hockey rink, at the baseball park, in the basketball gym or on the soccer pitch was unparalleled.
Terry Trainor, who would go on to forge a fine career as a Herder Memorial Trophy winner, in addition to Boyle champ, and general manager of some great St. John’s Capitals teams, also cut his teeth on that ’44 St. Bon’s squad.
Following the heart-breaking setback in ’60, St. Bon’s would win me one more time, in 1969, led by a new group of Blue-Golds, like future St. John’s athlete of the year Brian Brocklehurst.
Two years later, the senior league would fold and that was end of the Boyle Trophy playdowns. Until it was decided to uncrate me and put me up for competition again, this time to the winner of the provincial high school hockey final.
The decision back in the mid-1980s, in many corners, went over like a lead balloon.
When it comes to Boyle Trophy championships, St. Bon’s is beyond comparison with 27. Both the Feildians — remember Duffett, Breen and Squires? — and Guards each won eight championships. Guards copped four under Meeker’s watch, and the final two St. John’s senior league Boyle championship trophies handed out, in 1970 and ‘71.
The Terra Novas also won eight Boyle Trophies, including the first three from 1903-1905, and an outfit known as the Crescents won six titles, including five straight from 1910-14. A couple of Herders from The Evening Telegram fame played on the Crescents.
So, there you have it. My life in 2,200 words or so.
Or, to sum it up in a couple: passion and commitment.
As for next year, same time, same place.
See you on The Hill.
Robin Short is The Telegram’s Sports Editor. He can be reached by email at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @TelyRobinShort
