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.