Back at the turn of the century a Collingwood hockey coach watched a wiry red headed nipper weave back and forth through thirty or forty kids on a west end mill pond.
He wore a pair of beaten up spring skates and he carried a home made hockey stick. With that stick he performed miracles with a wooden puck. He only relinquished possession of that wooden missile when he felt like a rest.
That was the last time Ernie Fryer ever played on a mill pond. He was quickly injected into the line-up of the Collingwood Shipbuilders and for the next three decades he wrote his name across the record books of the Ontario Hockey Association.
He played his entire hockey in Collingwood with the exception of the two-season stint in Northern Ontario and a season with a senior club in Toronto.
He captained and spearheaded the Collingwood Shipbuilders to five Intermediate “A” provincial titles in 1910-13-18-19-20. He and Frank Cook turned down a pro offer from the Montreal Canadians mid-way through the 1920 season.
They said at the time that they could not leave Collingwood with the Shipbuilders on the way to a third straight championship. Of course, the amateur rate of pay was pretty good in those boom days of the early twenties.
The late Lou Marsh once said, “Rabbi Fryer was the greatest amateur player Iever saw. Everything he did in a hockey rink came natural.” Fryer was a legend in his time and he was still good enough to command star rating at forty-eight years of age. I saw him play his last game in Midland in 1934. He scored two goals and drew five penalties. He was his own policeman right to the end. When the final bell sounded, a thousand fans jumped the boards to shake his hand. The rest of the team was dressed and back in the hotel before Fryer left the rink. It was the first time I ever saw anything but fire in his eyes, but there were tears that night. It was the Rabbi’s finest hour.
We have no hesitation in inducting Ernest Fryer as the first member of Collingwood’s Sports Hall of Fame. He died November 15th, 1969. We will never see his like again.
