Category Archives: 1950 – 1969

JOHN WALLACE COOK

There was also the duty of serving in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1944-45. “In those days, scholarships were not worth that much and you had to work as well as pay a lot for the schooling, and there wasn’t enough to support that at home,” he said. Among his achievements were high school records in the 100-yard, 220-yard, 440-yard, 880-yard and mile races, along with the broad jump and shot put.

He also won several regional and military events thanks in part to the tutelage of local native and star athlete Charles “Bus” Portland. Cook was a keen volunteer and organizer who served as CCI student council president, and with the help of Marion Clarke and Blue Mountain Resort founder Jozo Weider, established the inaugural Collingwood Collegiate invitational alpine ski meet in 1947. He worked, then managed at Walker Stores outlets across Ontario and would settle in the hometown of his wife Mary, Carleton Place, where his family would own a store for 38 years until selling it in 1995.

During this time, Cook also served as a town councillor from 1960-64 and chaired a committee that oversaw business development for this Eastern Ontario region. He has three children, Richard, Mary Jane and Melinda. His granddaughter, Alex Cook, attends the famed Nick Bolleteri Tennis Academy in Florida, and grandson Brock Matheson plays for Brock University’s varsity hockey team after a successful run with the Tier II Jr. ‘A’ Kanata Stallions. “I can’t say my family hasn’t been holding up the athletic end of the bargain,” he quipped. “It’s been enjoyable to travel and see them perform.” In his later life, Cook still rides 10 miles a day on his bicycle, and is an avid skier and recreational badminton player. “It’s not a competitive thing. I just like to stay active and healthy!”

This evening, October 23, 2004, the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame welcomes Wallace ‘Wally’ Cook as an enshrined member for his Athletic achievements.

CLAIRE ALEXANDER

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.

NORMAN BOADWAY

Skiing in the Collingwood area has come a long way since 1935 when a group of public
spirited citizen had the foresight to see that this winter pastime would some
day put the town and the whole Blue Mountain District on the map.

The whole country was in the depths of the Great Depression when a hundred dollars
looked like a small fortune.

One of the men who realized that there was “Gold in them there, Blue Mountains” was the late Norman Broadway.

He came to Collingwood in 1918 after his discharge from the Royal Canadian Navy,
still recuperating from injuries suffered in the Halifax explosion.

The late John Smart and Norman were driving up from Toronto one Sunday night watching the avalanche of cars speeding back in Toronto from the ski resorts in Huntsville. Norman remarked. “We have bigger and better hills in Collingwood. Why can’t we get in on the action.”

It may have been an “off-the-cuff” remark but it triggered a dream that eventually came true a few years later.

Mr. Smart, who was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame, in 1978, and cut the Mr.
Boadway, lost no time in exploring the ways and means of getting the ball rolling.

They induced Fritz Loosli, a Swiss pro, to come to Collingwood and cut the first
trails after they negotiated a rental deal for the old Doherty property. An old log cabin was turned into a club house and the Collingwood Ski Club was eventually in business.

Now for a ski tow. The answer came when John David Eaton donated the motor from his wrecked Chrysler. The motor powered a wooden sleigh tow and the sleighs ere
built by the late Robert Morrill. The seats were built in Boadway’s cellar.  During the first winter, Norman operated the motor and John sold tow tickets. The tickets sold for ten cents each.

Through his connections as manager of the Collingwood Terminals Ltd. elevator, Norman got Senator Peter Campbell and Gordon Leitch, a pair of big time financers, interested in the development. The rest is history. The development of the ski trails was not the only cause pioneered by Norman Boadway.

He was the driving force behind the birth of the Blue Mountain Crippled Children’s
Camp and the first Collingwood Yacht Club and the founding of the H.M.S. “Hood” through the Collingwood Branch of the Navy League. He helped organize the Collingwood Horticultural Society and served for many years on the General and Marine Hospital Board.

His interest in curling included the donation of the Collingwood Terminals Cup in
the late thirties. Norman Boadway died in October, 1965, in his 67th year.

BILL ALLAN

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.

JAMES “TUB” BARRETT

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.

EDDIE BUSH

Eddie bush is Collingwood’s most famous hockey export over the past thirty five years
and certainly the most colourful.

Eddie makes the Collingwood Hall of Fame on three counts-as a player, a coach and a
builder.

This brash, flamboyant, swashbuckling competitor came a long way since he made the Collingwood Junior as a kid from the other side of the east end track back in
the hungry thirties.

Bush was a winner right from the start. He hated to lose and he expressed nothing but contempt for anybody who took defeat too lightly.

He qualifies as a builder because it was Bush who revived hockey in Collingwood after it had sunk into the doldrums for more than a decade.

He put this town back on the hockey map in 1951 when he closed off his active pro career to give Collingwood three consecutive Junior “C” provincial titles and a pair of back to back Intermediate “A” championships missing a third one after a great series with the Simcoe Gunners. What a work horse he proved to be in those golden years of Collingwood hockey in 1951-52-53. Coaching the juniors, acting as player-coach with the Shipbuilders and still finding time to impact his great hockey skill and experience to the minor hockey teams from Pee Wee to Juvenile.

He turned professional with Detroit in 1938 and the sporting public knew all about it the first day he arrived in Detroit. Jack Adams was not too shocked with the flamboyance of his introduction because he had been exposed to the Collingwood elements years before with Reg Noble, Sailor Jim Herberts and Bern Brophy.

At any rate he sent Eddie to Pittsburgh and Kansas City for seasoning but he was back in the big time in 1941-42. The big fellow had his best season in 1943 and you will find his name in Stanley Cup records.

In the third game of the Stanley Cup finals the Wings beat the Leafs 5-2 and Eddie helped himself to a goal and four assists. That single game scoring record for a defenseman still stands. Bush looked to be on his way to a brilliant N.H.L. career, but, as in the case of Portland,  fate stepped in. Eddie joined the R.C.A.F. and when the war ended thee years later, it was just too late.

His playing career, however, lasted almost ten years more with Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Sherbrooke and finally back in his old home town.

But he continued in the game that has always been his life as a very successful coach at Collingwood, Guelph, Hamilton, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Quebec, Richmond and the Kitchener Rangers. He got back in the N.H.L. as a coach for part of the season with the Kansas City Scouts in 1976.

He was a good football player, better than average ball player and expert at darts and is still pretty nifty with a dollar.

WILF “SCUTT” BELL

He was born December 11, 1912 in Grandview  Manitoba and moved to this area
at the age of 6. He married S.E. (Nellie) Brock in 1942 and together they raised four children, 2 son, Allan and Jim and two daughters, Betty and Barb.

For several years he was an avid curler and member of the Collingwood Curling Club.

Wilf was the patriarch of softball in Nottawa both as a player or as a coach or as a
manager. He played softball from early school days as a catcher. Few base
runners could beat his peg from the plate to second base, always hit well over
.300 and gave everything he had in every game, even if the game was exhibition.
This trait continued into his coaching/managing career. He was a member of the
ball team of 1925 and was still with them 50 years later.

He started the first outdoor skating rink in Nottawa. Bob Martin and Wilf drew hot
water from Smart’s Cannery on First   Street in Collingwood to flood the rink. He shared the dream of having a recreational park with ball lights in Nottawa and this
dream came true in 1969. He was a member of the Nottawa Recreation Committee
who without government grants, worked diligently to realize their dreams.

He was coach of the Nottawa Jardine Midget Club who won the Provincial Championship in 1967; they also won the Blue Mountain Softball title 3 years in a row. That same year the Nottawa Brocks Senior Ball Team won the All Ontario. Most of these players had played under the direction of Wilf in previous years. Therefore a village of 400 boasted two Provincial Championships in one year.

Five members of the 1967 Ontario Midget Championships, Don Gallagher (Collingwood Police Department), Bob Gallagher (Collingwood Police Department), Brad Leno, Les Draper and Dennis Rowbotham (Metro Police Department Mounted Division)became police officers. Jim Bell became a Veterinarian. Wilf also helped to
coach school teams under the direction of Joy Burkholder and Wayne Hartle. In
1977 Wilf coached the Nottawa Daals to the sixth championship in a row.

Wilf started his hockey career in 1960/61 as a manager. He managed teams coached by Dennis Robinson, Harvey Pearen, Cliff Rimmington and Bill Gurney. In 1967 he
managed the Legion Vets, who went on to become All Ontario Finalists, losing to
Leamington in a best of three series. He managed teams on which Paul Shakes and Randy Osburn played, both of whom went on to become NHL players.

Many of the boys managed by Wilf still play hockey today as well as on of his
coaches, Harvey Pearen, who plays on the Beaver Lumber Oldtimers over 45’s.

Wilf’s home was always open to the “young people” and many hours were spent
replaying the “games” until Wilf’s death on April 28, 1984.

GEORGE “CHUB ” BUTTERS

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.