Hockey and Softball are the sports that help place Brit in the Sports Hall of Fame. He played Junior, Senior and Intermediate hockey and was a member of the Collingwood baseball team that won the provincial title, he also donated time to coaching in both sports.
Category Archives: Year Inducted
JOHN BURNS
No Sports Hall of Fame could complete without a special corner for Johnny Burns, one of the most courageous players ever to wear the Gold and Blue colours of the Collingwood Shipbuilders.
He never played for any other club but Collingwood and he was the driving force on the front line of a team that won five O.H.A. Intermediate championships in ten years from 1910 to 1920.
Playing junior hockey for three years before moving up to the intermediates, Burns teamed up on the forward line with Rabbi Fryer, Tom Collins and Jack Belcher in 1907.
That was Collingwood’s first year in the O.H.A. final and they lost to the famed Berlin Union Jacks.
IN 1908 Collingwood lost again in the final round, this time to the ancient rivals,Midland. But in 1910,13,18, 19 and 20 the Shipbuilders lifted the John Ross Robertson Trophy and a major share for the team’s success belongs to Johnny Burns. His deadly shot and playmaking ability was matched only by his dogged courage and his ice generalship.
A total abstainer, Burns kept some of the more exuberant players in line, especially the tempestuous Rabbi Fryer.
His career almost came to an end in 1909 when he was critically injured but Wiarton’ Bill Simmie in the O.H.A. semi-finals round. Burns hovered between life and death for many days. He not only recovered but went to star for twenty more years with the Collingwood Shipbuilders.
During his career he found time to coach ten junior teams, including the great Collingwood team in 1915, captained by Hall of Famer Reg Noble.
He was an artist in the rink corners, which let Bill Cook to remark after the Kingston-Collingwood Intermediate final in 1920. Going into the corner with Jack Burns is something to remembered coming out of the corner that time, with two fractured ribs.
Burns came out of retirement in 1931, with the late Frank Cook and Jack Dance, to help the Oddfellows win the Collingwood Senior League title.
He died in February, 1964.
ROBERT “ROSE” BUSH
Everybody has a secret dream, no matter how small, and everybody lives for the day the dream will come true.
For many people the dream of a lifetime never materialize but there is always that
hope that lies beneath the human breast.
But a lifetime dream did come true for the late Robert “Rose” Bush on June 23rd, 1978, when Bob Bush cut the traditional ceremonial ribbon to officially open the “Old Village Park” in Collingwood’s east end.
They couldn’t have selected a more appropriate citizen to do the honours because AA park for the east enders’ had long been Bob’s Slogan since he was first elected to council years ago.
The “Old Village” takes in that historic territory between Niagara and Raglan Streets and runs north and south from the waterfront to Shannon’s Bridge. Rose was born and raised in that hallowed section and had been regarded as the unofficial Mayor of the Old Village for most of his adult life.
An outstanding athlete in his younger days, Bob Bush learned to skate on the east mill pond, learned to swim in the old stone quarry (the exact site of the Village Park) played ball in the rock strewn back lots, speared long neglected gravel road that was Raglan Street. When he was fifteen he vowed the east end kids would some day have a park of their own. That park is a reality now and it can stand as a monument to Robert “Rose” Bush.
The Rose took part in about every phase of sport and he kept the sporting fraternity well informed regarding the sporting scene as a columnist with the Enterprise-Bulletin, and in later years, with the Collingwood Times. He played hockey with the Collingwood Juniors after coming up through the town’s minor hockey system, starred on several championships softball teams and was the prime mover in the organization of that fabulous Collingwood Bearded Softball Team during the town’s Centennial year in 1958.
He was a better than average lacrosse player, a hard plunging half-back with the C.C.I. football team and a talented left handed baseball pitcher. In baseball he was a picture but when he switched to softball he became a left hand catcher-and a good one.
He started out with the old Trinity Live Wires around 1938 in the Senior Softball League but he switched to the Legion club after a couple of seasons and moved over to the Pros and helped brother Ed win two league championships.
Rose handled a pretty nifty lacrosse stick when the game made a short lived comeback in Collingwood around 1937.
Rose acted ad bench manager when the Collingwood Greenshirts were winning O.H.A. Junior “C” titles in the early fifties. His brother Ed coached the Greenshirts at that time and this arrangement created repercussion at times. Ed fired Rose about twice a month but blood was thicker than water and the dismissals lasted only from one game to another.
The Rose pulled on punches in his breezy column “Out on the Limb”. His
newspaper career was interrupted for three years during World War 11 when he served with the R.C.A.F. in North Africa, Italy and France. In later years, before suffering a stroke in 1975, he wrote another sports column in the Collingwood Times.
Bob died in 1980. He was fifty-eight.
JOHN BURNS
His father and grandfather earned a spot in the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame for their efforts on the hockey rink.
John Burns has earned the same honour for his prowess in a different sport,
Harness Racing John was born in Collingwood January 27, 1949, leaving
Collingwood in 1970. He has two sons John Derek and Rodney Willis. He was
educated at Victoria Public School and Collingwood Collegiate. He has been in
Harness Racing since 1967, throughout Canada & United States.
A four time Ontario Jockey Club trainer-of-the-year-award recipient, John has received a half-dozen O’Brien awards for his horses. He purchased and owned two world champions in Towners Image and Hardie Hanover, adding to the lengthy list of his major stakes’ champions, selling both of them in one afternoon for a combined $780,000.00 U.S.
Among John’s ownership partners today are former Montreal Canadians’ enforcer John Ferguson and the Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitcher Dan Plesac, who played last season with the Toronto Blue Jays. Presently John has a stable of 26 horses that race at Mohawk and Woodbine Raceway. John also played hockey in the Collingwood Minor Hockey system from 1956 to 1967.
This evening June 9, 2000 marks the induction of John Burns into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame in the Builders’ category.