I would have liked to have written the story of Bill McLean while he was still
with us but he wanted no part of personal publicity.

Bill’s contributions to the development of sport and young athletes in Collingwood
were hidden under a bushel because that’s the way Bill wanted it.

This single incident, one of many, will attest to the true spirit of helping others
that was Bill McLean’s greatest human asset.

About forty-five years ago we were having a hard time assembling a Junior O.H.A. hockey team. The main stumbling block was the lack of cash. We didn’t have enough of that commodity to pay the entrance fee.

A hastily called meeting was attended by six or seven interested citizens. The
interested citizens ignored the poor turn-out and went ahead with the election
of a board of directors.

Bill McLean, who had returned to Collingwood to practice law after an absence of
many years, slipped unannounced into the meeting just before it broke up. He
didn’t even identify himself but sought out he newly elected treasurer- the treasurer without a treasury.

“Would like to help a little” he said, as he slipped a bill into the treasurer’s hand and departed. It was a one hundred-dollar bill. He didn’t even wait for a “thank you” and that was his only donation as the season progressed.

That was only one incident in the life of Bill McLean where he helped without
looking for anything in return-not even acknowledgement.

Born in Barrie in 1896, Bill taught public school in Collingwood for two years before moving out to Weyburn, Saskatchewan. He played centre for the Presbyterian Theolgian College team in Saskatchewan in 1922 and 1923 but his crowing athletic achievement came in 1923 when he coached the University of Saskatchewan Senior Hockey Team to the Allan Cup finals. This team lost by a single goal in a two-game series to the famed Toronto Granites, Olympic winners in National Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

A year later he coached the Regina girls’ hockey club to the provincial title.

An accomplished marksman he captained the University of Saskatchewan rifle team for two years.

Mr. McLean was admitted to the bar in 1925. He practiced in Indian Head,  Saskatchewan, and Barrie, before returning to Collingwood in 1944.

From 1944 until his death in 1977, he supported Collingwood hockey and ball teams in his own quiet way and during that time became involved in harness racing as a
driver and attained notable success with Billie Direct and Bunty Gratton.

Bill McLean, gentleman, scholar and sportsman, has well earned his niche in
Collingwood’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Red Fawcett was born in the South End of Collingwood, a section of the town that
produced many great athletes over the past eighty-years.

An exceptionally clean athlete, but an aggressive one, Red starred at every game
he chose to play; Hockey, softball, basketball, football and track and field.
He played them all and he gave everything he had in every contest.

I remember him when he was a freckle-faced kid of eleven or twelve. We kept chasing him away from the ball diamond because he was too small but he kept coming back. He made the South End team with players six years his senior.

Red did not pursue hockey after he left the junior ranks, other than town league,
due to business pressure, but he could have made the Intermediate “A” club anything up until his early thirties.

He possesses a wicket shot from the wing and was an artist at picking the top corner of the net from what seemed to be an impossible angle.

He was always up with the first three scorers in the town league but I think his greatest winning goal came on the night of March 12th, 1934. It was the third and final game of the play-offs between his West End club and the old Central Tigers. The
score was tied at 4-4 and Red had taken a rough ride for 58 minutes from a trio of rough customers-Don Haney, Frank Mirlees and Bill Calvert.

Red knew there was nothing to do but “take it” because Buck Walton was the referee and Buck was never one to quibble over a bit of rough stuff. It had to be a deliberate butt-end, a cross check across the mouth or a twenty-foot charge before Buck would hand out a penalty. The clock said 20 seconds to go when Red stick handlers through the entire Central team and blazed a shoulder high shot past Bob Patton for the winning goal and the championship.

That was the same year that the Town League All-Stars took on the Intermediate
“A” team and beat then 6-5. Red had a pretty fair share in that victory. He scored three goals, including the winner. The year 1934 was a pretty good year for Red from a sports standpoint. After starring on the championship hockey team he helped the old Collingwood Grads win the Blue Mountain Softball League title. He pitched five games for the Grads that season and also played centre field shortstop when he wasn’t on the mound. His batting average was exactly .400, second highest in the league.

Red was not the fastest pitcher in Collingwood softball history but he had perfect
control. In the outfield he could go back deep for the long hits or come in fast to pick low liners of his shoe laces. He could throw strikes from centre field to the plate. When playing the infield he dug everything out of the dirt between second and third and could knock the first baseman down with that peg across the infield.

In the many years I watched him play hockey and softball, I never once heard him
dispute the decision of a referee or an umpire.

It was the same when he played for the Collingwood Collegiate.

A steady block of granite on the line in football, a tough guard on the basketball team and a steady point winner on the track and field team. Red Fawcett was a gentleman and a sportsman. Need we say more?  He died in 1972 at the age of sixty.

Robert Ring has served as a coach and in several capacities in the Collingwood Minor Hockey Association’s executive.

As a defenseman in his minor hockey years here, he has the distinction of playing on two CMHA teams that won provincial titles. In recent years, Ring has served as Collingwood’s representative on the Georgian Bay Minor Hockey Association and was appointed district rep for the Ontario Minor Hockey Association in 1994-95.

The OMHA chose “Ringo” as its prestigious Honour Award winner for 1994-95, recognizing him for his tireless volunteer work in minor hockey.

He has also been an active member in adult baseball as president of the North Dufferin Baseball League in Collingwood and was credited with bringing back minor
baseball to this town in the late seventies.

Robert’s 20 years of dedication and volunteer work with minor hockey was also recognized earlier this year when he received the Order of Collingwood.

Robert Ring was inducted into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame, in the builders’ category, in 1996.

George “The Trainer” Montgomery was a pint sized man with the heart of a lion and the courage of a wounded wolverine.

Suffering from chronic asthma from the day of his birth, George tried his best but his
physical handicap prevented him from making an organized team.

However, “The Trainer”, as he was affectionately called by his host of friends, made a scientific study of every sporting event. He was an absolute authority on the statistics of hockey, baseball and football.

But his specialty was organization. George was the moving force behind the founding
of the Collingwood Minor Hockey Association back in 1946. He pounded on doors,
pestered the life out of pockets and peddled fund raising raffle tickets.

But he made Collingwood fans minor hockey conscious and laid the foundation for an
organization that now boasts the control of 400 young hockey players in five leagues, plus the sponsorship of Tyke, Novice, Pee Wee, Bantam, Midget and Juvenile teams representing Collingwood in the vast Ontario Minor Hockey Association. George Montgomery needs no stone commemorate his tireless efforts. The Collingwood Minor Hockey Association is his monument.

His proudest hour came in 1949 when his Collingwood Clubs won the O.M.H.A. Juvenile title. That was the greatest kid team to ever wear Collingwood colours and
every player came step by step up through the hockey organization he founded and help develop.

During his comparatively short lifetime, he served as President of the Collingwood
Minor Hockey Association, the Collingwood Hockey League, Collingwood Softball
League and served as director on several baseball clubs and the short lived Collingwood Lacrosse Club, back in the hungry thirties. This great little man died too soon-far too soon.

“Jeep” Jackson qualifies for the Hall of Fame in many sports including hockey, baseball and softball.

His playing career spans 30+ years that was highlighted by his championship run of eight (8) provincial championships throughout the 1940’s on the ice and ball diamonds

This evening in 1984 marks the induction of “Jeep” into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame.