Ab Hughes was the fifth Collingwood born hockey player to make the National Hockey League and he did not achieve this mark until he was past thirty. That is considered to be an advantage age for a rookie but he stayed up there for three years with the old New York Americans and went on to a successful coaching career in St. Louis.

He started as a junior with Collingwood and immediately caught the eye of a Toronto hockey scout who induced him to come to Toronto in 1917. He was only sixteen at the time but he starred with Aura Lee and helped that team win the Ontario Junior “A” title.

His career was interrupted for almost three years when he served with the Canadian
armed forces in World War 1 but he took up right where he broke off and was a
member of the Collingwood Intermediate O.H.A. champions in 1920.

He saw a great deal of senior action with Toronto, Hamilton and Welland and then signed a professional contract with the New Haven Eagles and later played two years with the New York Americans in the N.H.L. in 1931 and 32.

Scotty Carmichael  (founder of the Hall of Fame) was one of a group of Collingwood fans who made the trip to Toronto to see Hughes play his first game as a N.H.L. pro in the new Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931. What a show he put on for the home town fans. Abbie scored two goals and the Amerks beat the Leafs 3-2.

In the late thirties he was signed as a player-manager of the team fledging St. Louis
team in the American Association. He is credited with educating St. Louis to the ice game as he held skull sessions with the fans between periods and before games and organized the first hockey school.

Whit Hammond makes Collingwood’s Hall of Fame as a lacrosse player, speed skater and hockey player.
Eighty years ago he was one of the brightest stars in Canadian lacrosse but at that time he was raising no cheers from Collingwood fans. Wearing the colors of the Owen Sound Crescents he sank many a ball a Collingwood net and we were happy to see him move to Collingwood in 1908.
A fierce competitor at all times, he was a driving force behind Collingwood hockey teams for many years.
He played goal for the Shipbuilders in 1908, the first Collingwood team to reach the O.H.A. Intermediate finals.
His speed skating feats are legendary and as a speed skater he was indirectly responsible for starting a Canadian fighter on the road to the World Heavyweight Boxing title. That may sound like a kooky kind of a statement but it is true. Back in 1900, Whit Hammond and Noah Brusso of Hanover, Ontario, were considered to
be the best speed skaters in the country but they had never met in a race.
Brusso was charged with “ducking a match race with Hammond” and Brusso replied by accepting a match race with this remark. “If Whit Hammond beats me I will hang up my skates forever.” Hammond beat him in three straight heats for a trophy filled with silver dollars at Hepworth. Noah Brusso was true to his word.
He did hang up his skates and put on a pair of boxing gloves and changes his name to Tommy Burns.
It was a wise and profitable choice for the Hanover speed skater. A few years later on Feb. 23rd, 1906, he defeated Marvin Hart for the World heavyweight crown-the only Canadian ever to reach the pugilistic pinnacle.
Whit Hammond was one of the great athletes of his time. He died in Collingwood in 1959.

Ed Kea was born in Weesp, Holland but his family of fourteen relocated to Collingwood, Ontario when he was just four years old. In Canada he was exposed to the game of hockey and took to it very well. Kea never played Junior hockey, nor did he play collegiate hockey but he managed to turn professional in 1969 nonetheless. After two years with the Jersey Devils, and stops with the Seattle Totems and the St. Petersburg Suns, he was signed as a free agent by the Atlanta Flames in 1972.

Kea played 583 games over 10 seasons in the NHL, scoring 30 goals and
175 points. He spent his first six seasons with the Atlanta Flames, who signed him as a free-agent on Oct. 6, 1972.

The defenseman made his NHL during the 1973-74 season when he played three games for the Flames, but he was a regular the following season. Kea spent the next five seasons playing his solid, steady game on the Flames blue line before being dealt to St. Louis just prior to the 1979-80 season. With the Blues,  Kea played three and half seasons before being sent to the minors.

During the 1982-83 season, St. Louis shipped him to their farm team in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, while toiling for the Salt Lake Golden Eagles tragedy struck. Kea hit his head on the ice during a game and suffered severe head trauma and was left handicapped as a result. Though a series of operations saved his life, Kea’s hockey career was obviously over and he retired and spent time with his wife and children.

Sadly, this wouldn’t be the only tragedy for Ed Kea and his family. In September 1999, Kea drowned at his family cottage. Kea was just 51 years old.

We have often heard it said that Donnie Keith is one of the most mild-mannered gentlemen in Collingwood, until he puts on a pair of skates.

When he puts on a hockey uniform, it’s a different story.  He plays the game for keeps, gives no quarter and asks for none.  It has been like that for nearly 20 years since he helped the old West End Wildcats win the town league championship under Coach Reg. Westbrooke back in 1947.  He was the policeman on two great Juvenile teams when the Cubs went to the Ontario finals in 1948 and then won the title in 1949 without losing a single contest.

He jumped into the Junior “B” ranks with Guelph the following year and then spent two star-studded years with the Guelph “A” team in a league that boasted such coming NHL stars as Harry Howell, Lou Fontinato, Andy Bathgate and Dean Prentice.

He gained great respect in his knock-down, drag-out duels with the all time tough
Fontinato.  Keith backed down from nobody and he took as much as he handed
out.  Eddie Bush lured him back to Collingwood in 1951, and he was instrumental
in helping the Shipbuilders win a pair of OHA Intermediate “A” Titles.

He stayed with the Shipbuilders until the end of 1953 and then went over to the
strong Meaford Knights.  His rugged-checking and accurate-shooting were
the main cogs in Meaford’s OHA Senior “B” Championship.

That season he led the league in scoring and penalties.

Donnie played the last 10 years of his active career in senior company with Shipbuilders.  His OHA career spanned 20 years, but he is still starring with the Old Timers well into the 1990’s, along with such other old time Collingwood stars, as Robert Sandell, Don Rich, and Don Cook.

Don Keith was inducted into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame, in 1986.

The local sporting community was saddened when Don passed away 2010.

He was the most artistic body checker ever to perform for a Collingwood hockey
team and must be ranked with the best hitting defensemen of anytime-professional or amateur.

Bon in Newmarket but a resident of Collingwood for forty years, Dutch was the kingpin on the 1935 Collingwood Shipbuilders, winners of the O.H.A. Intermediate “A” championship.

Dutch played hockey under the principle that a good body check should be heard and not seen. There never was a better demonstrator of that principle.

“The bigger they are, the heavier they fall!” said Dutch, and during his career he dropped tons of hockey beef over scorers of arena ice surfaces throughout Canada and the United States.

He weighed only 155 pounds but the answer to his great hitting ability was in the
timing. Dutch never ploughed directly into the path of an onrushing forward. All he needed was a piece of him.

Cain played junior hockey in his native Newmarket and was a member of the Owen Sound Greys, Memorial Cup champions of 1924-25. That was quite a team-Cain, Cooney Weiland, Butch Keeling, Teddy Graham, Hedley Smith and Fred Elliot. The team picture of the Greys is in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Weiland Graham and Keeling went on to stardom in the N.H.L.

In the following years, up until 1928, Dutch played with Eveleth and Calumet in the old Central League. Calumet won the title in 1927.

A few years ago Cain was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in Minnesota. Dutch returned to Canada in 1928 to help South Porcupine win the Northern Ontario senior title and then played on championship teams in the Eastern League with Baltimore Orioles and the Bronx Tigers. He was selected as the most valuable player in the league in the season of 1934-35.

He moved back to Collingwood in 1932 and was about to call it a career when he was
lured back into uniform by the late Walter Robinson, then coach of the Collingwood Shipbuilders. Dutch teamed up with big Jack Portland on the defense. Portland
was a good pupil and went on to a ten-year career in the N.H.L. his last season in 1935 was a winner.

Teaming up with playing-coach Bern Brophy, he helped Collingwood win the Intermediate title for the sixth time since 1910. He died the day after the founding of the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame.

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.