Category Archives: 1980 – 1989

1950 - 1969, 1980 - 1989, All, Bowling, Male

JOHN COOPER

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The late John Cooper was tragically killed in a car accident in 1985.  But through his induction to the Hall of Fame, people will remember him for his involvement in the sport of five-pin bowling.

He was a natural, said Randy Osburn, when he was 12 years old he led his league in triple average with a score of 716.

In 1966, John won the zone finals of the senior boys’ competition, and than the Ontario finals at the Plantation Bowl in Toronto.  That qualified him for the Canadian Senior Boys’ Five Pin Bowling Championships in Vancouver, B.C.

When the competitions were over John returned to Collingwood as Canadian champion.

The next year John and Greg Huntley set a new record in Canadian bowling.  The pair bowled for 50 hours and 38 minutes consecutively.  Between them they rolled 9,877 balls.  John knocked down 43,130 pins including 690 strikes, and Greg knocked down 38,837 pins and 472 strikes during the period.

John was not only an active bowler, he donated of himself the time to become program director of the Collingwood Youth Bowling Council in 1971.  He was also an executive of the Blue Water Five Pin Bowling Association and the Georgian Bay Bowling Association.

Bowling was John’s prime sport, but he also enjoyed outdoor sports, golf, fishing and skiing.

John Cooper was inducted into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.

1980 - 1989, All, Builder, Male

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.

1900 - 1929, 1930 - 1949, 1950 - 1969, 1980 - 1989, All, Athlete, Male

GEORGE “CHUB ” BUTTERS

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Chub Butters could be classed as one of Collingwood’s best all around athletes because he excelled in track and field, hockey, football, basketball and swimming.
While attending the Collingwood Collegiate he won the Intermediate and Senior track and field  championships in 1932 and 1933. A foxy broken field runner on junior and senior high school football teams, he was a star half back with the 1933 Central Ontario Secondary Schools Senior champions in 1933 when his team defeated St. Catherines 12-9 in the final. Chub scored the winning touchdown.
In Inter-Collegiate track and field competitions he set school records in the 100 and 220 yard sprints and in the low hurdles.
His long amateur hockey career started in the old Collingwood Junior Town League when he captained the champion East End Club. At the age of 15, Chub made the Collingwood Junior O.H.A. team and after four years in junior company graduated to the Intermediate Collingwood Shipbuilders.
In 1937, he played for Geralton in the Northern Ontario Senior “A” series and then performed two seasons with Timmins in the same league. Returning to Collingwood in 1940, he played Senior “B” and Intermediate “A” for his home town until his retirement from hockey in 1952.
In 1951 he captained the Collingwood Shipbuilders, under coach Eddie Bush, to the provincial championship. He was outstanding in the finals series against Fort Erie.
He was considered one of Collingwood’s most outstanding swimmers and divers and in the summer of 1929, won the first Collingwood Aquatics Cup with five firsts in swimming seconds to Don McMinn, one of this town’s really great distance swimmers. He liked to remember how he played on the wing with Rabbi Fryer
when that great old timer played his last game against Midland in 1934.
He was also a better than average softball player with the Pros in the old Collingwood Softball League and he had a one-season fling at the game of lacrosse when the late Lou Dique tried to revive the game in 1927.

1930 - 1949, 1950 - 1969, 1980 - 1989, All, Baseball, Hockey, Male

JAMES “TUB” BARRETT

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James “Tubby” Barrett was one of the slickest stick handlers in  Collingwood’s long hockey history and one of the games most potent scorers.

Small of stature but as tough as a pine knot, the “Tub” made monkeys out of
the opposing defensemen thirty years ago when the famed Collingwood Greenshirts
won four consecutive O.H.A. Junior “C” titles and the Intermediate
Shipbuilders won two back to back titles in 1951 and 1952.

In his hey day he worked on a super forward line with Allan Morrill and the late
Frankie Dance. The scoring records of this remarkable junior hockey trio will
probably stand forever.

One night I saw this line rack up 37 scoring points in a 20-3 win over Barrie. Barrett collected five goals and nine assists, Morrill had six goals and six assists and Dance
chalked up three goals and seven assists.

During the four-year reign of the Greenshirts in O.H.A. Junior “C” company,
Tub scored 174 goals, 139 assists for a total of 313 points in 113 games.

The line of Barrett-Morrill and Dance scored 444 goals during that four-year span.

At the same time, Barrett and Morrill, took part in the Intermediate “A” play-offs in 1952 and 1953, adding two more O.H.A. Medals to their collections. They played no small part in the winning of the two Intermediate titles for Eddie Bush. Tub Barrett and Allan Morrill picked up six O.H.A. championship medals in four years-the record still stands.

Barrett started his hockey career with the Collingwood Midgets in 1945 and was a member of the star studded Collingwood Clubs, winners of the Ontario Juvenile title in 1949. He tool a fling in the Scottish League in 1954 but came home before the end of the schedule and finished that season with Bracebridge. He played two more seasons with Collingwood before calling it a career. We have no way of
compiling an accurate record of Barrett’s goal scoring total over his brilliant ten year span, but a conservative estimate is four hundred goals.

His athletic prowess was not confined to hockey. Tub was a member of the
Collingwood Midget baseball team, Ontario Midget champions in 1947, under the
coaching of Brit Burns.

He was good enough to receive a pro tryout at a baseball camp in Toronto in 1949 as a catcher. From 1949 to 1952 he played baseball with Collingwood, Thornbury and Creemore and was a member of The Stayner O.A.B.A. Intermediate champions in 1957 and the Collingwood provincial finalists in 1958.

His shelf of silverware, with medals and trophies, representing provincial
championships, include: one juvenile, four junior and two intermediate hockey
medals, plus a junior and an intermediate medal for baseball at the provincial
level.

1950 - 1969, 1970 - 1989, 1980 - 1989, All, Hockey, Male

CLAIRE ALEXANDER

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Born in 1945, this fine hockey player came up through the ranks of the Collingwood
Minor Hockey System.  He had played in numerous leagues previously but had
been rejected by umpteen more. On the strength of his booming shot, Alexander
once won a scoring championship playing Senior hockey with the Collingwood
Shipbuilders.

Following a nomadic Junior career, Alexander became one of the hockey’s last great amateur players.  After a brief stint in minor-pro hockey in the mid-1960s, he returned home to Ontario and took a job as a milkman, while continuing to star with local senior amateur teams. A skilled defender with a booming shot, Alexander led the Orillia Terriers to the Allan Cup , awarded to Canada’s top amateur club, in 1973

He turned professional with Knoxville and in 1972 the Toronto Maple Leafs talked Alexander into giving pro hockey another chance, and he joined their Central Hockey League affiliate, the Oklahoma City Blazers the following year. He was an immediate hit, as he scored 60 points and was named the league’s top rookie and top defender.

In 1974-75, at the age of 29, Alexander was called up to the Leafs, making his NHL debut at the age of 29. He finished the season with 7 goals (including a hat-trick) and 17 points in 42 games. He spent most of the next two seasons on the Leafs’ roster, posting 21 points in 81 games, and made his most notable contribution in the 1976 playoffs with 6 points in 9 games.

For the 1977-78, Alexander was traded to the Vancouver Canucks. He split the season between the Canucks and their farm team in Tulsa, but made a substantial  contribution with 26 points in just 32 games in Vancouver. The following season, he moved to the  WHA with the Edmonton Oilers, posting 31 points on a team featuring Wayne Gretzky in his first professional season. He then spent two season playing in Germany for a two-year term, later coaching a junior team there and another team in Switzerland the year after before retiring in 1981.

Following his retirement, the Leafs hired him to coach their AHL affiliate in St. Catharine’s in 1984. In 1985, his preference for a private life to raise his family resulted in Claire leaving the organization.

Alexander finished his career with 18 goals and 64 points in 155 career NHL games, along with just 36 penalty minutes. He also recorded 8 goals and 31 points in 54 WHA games.

He played on Toronto Metro Old-timers, world’s champions for 1983.

Nowadays, he cheers on his daughter Buffy, representing Canada in rowing for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Beijing will be the third Olympics for Buffy Williams, who won a bronze medal with the women’s eight in Sydney in 2000 and placed fourth in the women’s pair in Athens in 2004 with partner Darcy Marquardt.

Claire was inducted into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

1930 - 1949, 1950 - 1969, 1980 - 1989, All, Hockey, Male

BILL ALLAN

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Although he excelled as an all around athlete, Bill Allan’s hockey career made him a
real traveling man. Not counting his minor hockey activities, Bill played on
nine teams in three countries and two continents.

Born in Victoria Harbour, he played minor hockey in Midland before moving to Wiarton, where his late father served as government Indian Agent.

The Allan family moved to Collingwood in 1935 where Bill made the Junior team the
first time out. After three years with the Collingwood Juniors he moved north
with Don Jeffery to Pomour Mines in the NorthernOntario Senior “A” League.

In 1939, Bill and Jeff came back to Collingwood just in time to help the
Collingwood Shipbuilders win the O.H.A. Intermediate “A” championship
under Bern Brophy.

He moved to the Port Colborne Sailors in 1940 and in 1941 joined the R.C.A.F.
During his training period as a wireless operator he found time to perform for
the R.C.A.F. team and the Truro Bearcats.

Following his discharge after the war, Bill moved out to the Pacific Coast League where he starred with the Portland Eagles in the years 1946-47-48.

He was on the move again in 1949 and this time he crossed the Atlantic
to play a bang up defensive game for the famed Harringay Greyhounds of the
English League.

It was back to Collingwood in 1950 as the Shipbuilders went to the finals against Port Colborne. Jack Portland, just back from a long N.H.L. career, coached that team.

Bill teamed up with Eddie Bush as the Shipbuilders won the O.H.A. Intermediate
“A” title in 1951. A severe eye injury put him out of action for most of the 1952 season but he came back to finish up his career with the Shipbuilders, Intermediate “A” finalists in 1953. He commanded the Kiwanis Ai Cadet Squadron and coached minor hockey teams for a number of years.

Hockey was not his only sport. Bill Allan can be rated as one of the best softball
pitchers ever to perform in the old Blue Mountain League. He pitched on two
championship ball teams in the early fifties with the Canadian Legion and
Trott’s Pros.

1930 - 1949, 1980 - 1989, All, Hockey, Male

ROY BROCK

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A Collingwood native, Roy was born on March 13, 1917. 

A renowned goal scorer, Roy  played several years with the Collingwood Juniors and a member of the Barrie Juniors Ontario Championship club in 1937. A  top scorer, he was invaluable for the Collingwood Intermediate Club winning the Ontario title in 1939. Additionally, Roy played with the Petawawa in the Allan Cup. As a professional, Roy Brock skated in New Haven, Three Rivers and
Knoxville.

Away from the ice, Roy was the club professional at the Collingwood Golf and Country Club for 20+ years.

1980 - 1989, All, Builder, Male

FRED BROCK SR.

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This man was a driving force in having a referendum for the building of the Collingwood Community Arena in 1948.

He is placed in the Builders’ Category of the Hall, but was also a fine athlete. He was a long-distance runner and a swimmer in his younger days.

Mr. Brock helped form Collingwood’s Junior and Senior hockey leagues in the
1930’s, donating the trophies. He also organized Collingwood’s first swim meet.