Category Archives: Sport

DEVERDE “SMOKEY” SMITH

There was no question about the Collingwood Athlete of the Year Award back in 1935. Deverde “Smokey” Smith won the honours hands down!

Deverde came from down eastern Ontario way with a infectious smile. Nobody paid him particular attention until he turned up at the Exhibition Park one day and he
wanted to try out for the junior baseball team.

Veteran baseball men like Huck Caesar, Dr. Bill Blakley, Father Hugh Ellard and Roy Burmister just couldn’t believe their eyes.

Here was a kid with magic in his left arm and only sixteen years old. His curve looked like the ball was coming at you from first base, the high hard one looked the size of an aspirin and his sinker dropped five feet from the point of delivery to the plate. That evening, this reporter hung the name “Smokey” on him and moniker stuck.

The kid became Collingwood’s skater that very day and baseball was back in Collingwood. I t was too late to build a title winning team that year but in 1935 Collingwood lured catcher Paddy Young away from Creemore as Smitty’s battery mate and the rest is sporting history.

In 1935, Smokey curve balled the Shipbuilders to the Ontario championship and in the process defeated Penetang’s, Phil Marchildon, who was destined to star in the American League with Conny Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, seven out of nine times with two more games ending in ties.

He pitched a perfect game against Coniston in the Semi-final round and had two more no-hit no-run games in the regular Georgian Bay League schedule. His 1935 pitching record with 22 wins – 3 losses while striking out 310 batters. He went on to a professional career in the Canadian-American League and had the pleasure of beating Marchildon in the same league 2-1 in a game that went 12 innings.

Deverde did not seriously pursue a pro career and he hung up the glove after joining the Ontario Provincial Police.

FRANK CRUIKSHANKS

Frank was born in Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia on May 2, 1923 moving to Collingwood in 1970 with his wife Elsie (inducted 2004). Along with their family of 5 children – Frank, Norma, Donna, Clyde and Vicky, the Cruickshank quickly immersed themselves into Collingwood’s vibrant sports scene.

Frank’s resume as a supporter of Collingwood minor sports is impressive. His
accomplishments include:

O.M.H.A. Coaching I,II,III, IV and Referee I,II, III; Executive role in Collingwood
Minor Hockey for 7 years including President in 1979;  Coach & Manager role in teams ranging from Atom to Midget for 20+ years; Chairman and member of the Youth Education Committee, Royal Canadian Legion 1980-83.

Throughout Frank’s active involvement he has been recognized as the recipient of the Andy Morritt C.M.H.A. Award in 1974, Royal Canadian Legion of Merit in 1980
alongside a Life Membership. In 1995, Frank was the further recognized with the
Legion’s Meritorious Service Award in 1985 acknowledged as the highest award
awarded to Legion members.

Frank’s dedication culminated in his membership within the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame on June 12, 1998 in the Builders’ category.

DON HEWSON

The Collingwood Collegiate grad moved out of the Collingwood area in his late teens to attend the University of Toronto where he secured a degree in Mechanical Engineering. A resident of Stouffville, Don his wife Sandra havre raised seven children.

Hewson is the President and major shareholder in a Toronto-based engineering firm, and despite his professional and family commitments through the years, has been able to keep his golf game more than up to snuff.

In 1991, he captured the Canadian Seniors’ Golf Association Tournament with a two-round total of 150 at the York Downs Golf Club. He has had a couple of other notable performances, including a first-place in the Ontario Seniors Better-Ball event and a berth in the 1992 U.S. Senior Amateur event a the Oak Hill course at Rochester, N.Y.

In his younger years, Hewson won several club championships including four in Collingwood, three for Simcoe County and other at York Downs, St. George’s and Scarborough.

He also won a few Collingwood Shipbuilders’ Suppliers Tournament in Wasaga Beach, and Collingwood’s John Richards, often a playing partner of Hewson’s said that if Don didn’t win that tournament, his twin brother often did.

Hewson was active in other sports, and played on two Collingwood hardball clubs that made it to the provincial finals.  He was also a member of Central Ontario high
school championship teams in both volleyball and basketball during his stay at
CCI.

Don Hewson was inducted into the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.

JIM McALLISTER

A very talented athlete since 1958, JimMcAllister dominated area ball diamonds throughout his 20-year fastball career.

Recognized for his excellent control with his drop, rise and slow pitches, Jim was a catcher’s dream as he seldom refused a pitch signal and on the rare occasion the catcher could expect ‘heat’ on the following pitch. He knew what his job was when he stepped on the mound and made sure he did his best for himself and his team.

His reputation elevated him to local legend status with the community often referring to him as “Big Jim” or “Wendell”.

A great team player, Jim’s maintained his focus on the job he was asked to do on the mound with little concern of what was going on around him. He never showed frustration and just worked harder!

Although it was his pitching exploits that are often referenced, his batting abilities were characterized as heavy moon shots that often soared over the outfield
fences.  Throughout his career, he would close out his own game at the plate!

Upon review of his career, many of his personal statistics deserve recognition in League Ball comprising of 3 time – Most Valuable Player, 5 time –
Batting Title, 5 time – League Championships as he recorded 4 No-Hitters per season, 15 Strike outs per game while allowing only 3 hits per game.

Additional achievements included:

1963                  Pitched First No-Hitter in Collingwood Softball

1965-66           Blue Mountain Softball League Batting & Home Run Champion

1967                 Top Pitcher in Wins-Losses (210 Strike Outs)

1968               Blue Mountain Softball League Most Strike Outs

1969              Blue Mountain Softball League MVP

1970             New League Record of 300 Strikeouts in 20 games

Jim’s local Competitive Career:

Co-operators Insurance Fastball Team                               1958

Beaver Valley League Champions                                         1958

Collingwood Shipyard Fastball Team                                  1959

Browns Lumber Kings Fastball Team                                 1960-1965

Beaver Valley League Champions                                        1963 & 1965

Gurney’s Sports Fastball Team                                             1965-1966

Collingwood & District League Champions                       1966

Fisher Electric Fastball Team                                               1967

Elmvale Palace Hotel                                                             1967 – 1970

LOF Glass Fastball Team                                                      1968 – 1971

Blue Mountain League Champions                                   1970

Blue Mountain League All Star Team                              1970

Woods BA Senior Fast Ball Team Barrie                        1971-1972

George’s Furniture Senior Fastball Team – Angus       1972-1974

Clarkson Hotel Senior Fastball Team – Barrie              1976-1978

CHARLES PORTLAND

If an athlete from Collingwood excels in five competitive sports and plays on a World championship hockey team, he certainly qualifies for a spot in his home  town’s Hall of Fame.

Bus Portland performed in the shadow his famous brother, Jack, but nevertheless he was one of the best all Collingwood. We remember a bright sunny day back in 1934 when Bus Portland stole a whole athletic show in the annual Ontario Athletic Commission Meet in Orillia.

All he did that day was win the pole vault, high jump, 12- pound shot put and the long jump, had it not been for a special rule. No athlete was allowed to compete in more than three events in high school athletic events sponsored by the Ontario Athletic Commission.

That same year he set a record in the Collingwood Collegiate Field Day by winning the senior medal with six firsts out of seven events.

He was just as good on the football field. Playing at centre half, he ran plunged and kicked the C.C.I. to a C.O.S.S.A. championship in 1934.

Bus had a very colourful hockey career but his greatest hockey thrill came in 1938 when he starred with the Sudbury Wolves, winners of the McReavey, Gordie Bruce, Fan Hexime and Johnny Godfrey, the Wolves sailed through the entire tournament without a loss. He played on Collingwood junior teams before turning pro with the Hershey Bars in the American League. That team won the American League title in 1936. His last year in hockey was with a winner in 1939 when the Detroit
Ford Holyboughs won the Michigan- Ontario championship.

LARRY SMITH

Larry Smith’s qualifications for the Sports Hall of Fame can come under any of the following headings: Boxing, wrestling, softball, baseball, football, track and field, bowling and coaching.

A very astute business man, he has often been known as “Square Deal Larry”. His idea of a square deal is to trade you a pork chop for a pig and the pork chop would probably be a shoulder cut.

Larry did not come into athletic prominence until around the age of 16 due to the fact that he was an only son and was more than urged to lead a sheltered life. He played a pretty good football game with

Collingwood Collegiate under the coaching of the late Lou Stapleton, earned a letter in Track & Field and made quite an impression in the Coronation Meet at Owen Sound by winning the 100 and 220 yard sprint in a pair of great duels with Eddie Sergeant, the well-known former M.P.P. for Grey. He finished his secondary school education at Glebe Collegiate in Ottawa At Glebe, he took up boxing and wrestling and went to the finals in both these sports in the Ottawa Valley championships.
Incidentally, he lost out in the boxing final to the late Johnny Quilty of St. Patricks College. Quilty later became a hockey star with the Montreal Canadiens.

At the Aggie College in Guelph, he played football and made the college track and field team in the sprints and relay races. Along came WWII and Larry enlisted with the 541 st Parachute Regiment. He won the light heavyweight boxing title at Fort Bragg and found in several important military boxing tournaments at Camp MacKall, Fort Jackson, Camp Gordon and Fort Benning.

He was selected to represent Airborne Command in the All American Army Golden Gloves at Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1943. He won three bouts and lost in the final. During his active duty in Europe, he made sixty parachute jumps and took part in the bloody battle of Arnheim. While in the army of occupation in Germany and Austria, Larry took part in several wrestling bouts with Captain Vern Smith, former American Amateur Union and American Intercollegiate champion. He won points in the General Patton Third Army Track and Field Meet and ran the anchor leg on
the 506th Regiment Relay team in Munich.

After the war, Smith returned to Collingwood, where he pitched softball for the Collingwood Legion softball team. The Legion team won the Blue Mountain League title in 1949, the Legion District title and went to the Ontario final. In 1950, he played centre filed for the Collingwood Intermediate baseball team and won the Georgian Bay League batting championship. This team also went to the provincial final.

He took up 5-pin bowling after he settled down to business as  the owner and operator of the Collingwood Bowling Lanes and had a 250 average for 6 straight years. His best effort was a 256 average and a 975 triple in Senior play. He also won the Legion District Singles title at Newmarket.

Larry coached the Collingwood Collegiate Senior Football team in 1947, acted as wrestling and boxing instructor for the Collingwood Sea Cadet Corps and supervised a bowling school for Grade School children.

Collingwood fans got a chance to Larry in action when he challenged the Masked Marvel, who was then giving wrestling exhibitions with the Kings Brothers Circus. With the assistance of a thick coating of olive oil and the referee (long-time friend Don Jeffrey) Smith beat the Masked Marvel, much to the delight of the hometown fans.

FRANK DANCE

His brilliant career cut short by a near fatal accident in his early twenties, Frankie Dance, will still go down as one of the cleverest hockey players ever produced in Collingwood.

Born in Collingwood, he was the youngest son of another Collingwood Hockey Hall of  Famer, Jack Dance, a member of Collingwood’s first  Intermediate champions in 1910.

He started playing hockey shortly after he learned to walk and came all the way up through the Collingwood Minor Hockey system from Pee Wee to Juvenile.

Frankie was a member of the Collingwood Clubs, winners of the 1949 O.M.H.A. Juvenile championship, a team that went through the entire season without losing a game.

He collected four more provincial medals with the Collingwood Greenshirts, winners of four straight O.H.A. Junior “C” titles in 1950-51-52 and 53. The same team went to the 1954 finals.

Frankie was the playmaker on the great little Greenshirt line with Jim Barrett and Allan Morrill. During that four-year championship span, the Barrett-Morrill-Dance line scored 444 goals, chalked up 347 assists for a total of 791 scoring points.

The passing plays of that line could be described as “poetry in motion”. With that combination there was no such thing as “giving the puck away”. Every move, every play, was made as if the whole operation has been planned on a drawing board a forehand. Dance would lay out that pass dead on the point from right to let with deadly accuracy. He did not even have to lift his head. He knew that either Morrill or Barrett would be on the receiving end and the shot on goal was automatic.

In a game played in Barrie in 1951, Frankie collected ten points with three goals and seven assists.

He graduated to the Intermediate ranks in 1954 and scored thirty-five goals. That Spring he fell from a hydro pole while working as a lineman with the Public Utilities. His life hung in the balance for weeks. His sheer courage helped in his remarkable recovery but the great young athlete’s career was over. His injuries left him crippled for the rest of his life.

His athletic ability was not confined to hockey. Frankie played a creditable game of baseball for Collingwood teams in the early fifties.

He was able to carry on his duties at the Public Utilities Commission for twenty-five years following the accident and was superintendent of the main pumping station at the time of his sudden death, on the job, on the night of Feb. 1st, 1978. Frankie was forty-seven.

JOHN HILL

John Hill and his wife Marie and sons Jim and Gary, are lifetime residents of Collingwood.

John has participated in and organized many sports. He has also volunteered  and officiated for numerous sports and leagues.

The following is a list of his personal achievements:

1947……….Ontario Baseball Association Bantam Finalist

1947-48…….O.M.H.A. Bantam Group Champions

1953……….O.H.A. Jr. C Champions (beating Ingersoll 4-1 series)

1954……….Georgian Bay Sr. Boys Basketball Champs

1954-55…….Captain Jr. C Belairs- Won league over Midland Redwings 9-2.

1955-56…….Legion Sr. Town League Champs

Jan. 1956…..Received a letter for New York Giants to attend rookie camp in Melborne, Florida

1957……….Stayner Motormen O.B.A. Int. A Champions

1960……….Midland Indians O.B.A. Sr. A Champions-defeated Oakville

1964……….Orillia Majors O.B.A. Sr. A Champions

1968……….Tremont Hotel Blue Mtn. Fastball Champions

1969……….Orillia Majors. O.B.A. Sr. A Finalists

1972……….Orillia Majors O.B.A. Sr. A Finalists

1979……….O.A.S.A. Slo Pitch B Div. Champions, Canadian Mist

The playoffs provided John with the opportunity to lead his respective teams. As Captain of the Jr. C Belairs, John singlehandedly defeated Midland accounting for 5 goals/3 assists in final game.

On the ball diamond, it was during the 1960 O.B.A. Championship Series when John’s baseball talents were put on display as he played and excelled in three positions against Oakville – Pitcher, Left fielder and Catcher. Incredibly, John batted .419 throughout this playoff run.

He was a volunteer member of the Collingwood Recreation Board from 1967 to 1985 and served as its chairman for 6 years.  Working alongside Ron Ralph and Brian Sayer, John was  instrumental in organizing Slo Pitch in Collingwood.

-Pitch, Kinsmen Slo Pitch and Hockey Tournaments along with the Beaver Lumber Annual Oldtimers Hockey Tournament.

John was a long time member of the Collingwood Hall of Fame Selection Committee. His local sports history was often referenced by others and his stories always brought a smile. Until his untimely death in 2012, John was an active Director. The reprint of the 2012 Sports Hall of Fame book was the result of John’s passion to update the original 1978 publication.

He has coached minor hockey and baseball, and has also umpired in Fastball, Baseball and Slo Pitch.  He has refereed Little N.H.L., O.M.H.A. and O.H.A.

On January 1, 1988 the Order of Collingwood was bestowed on him, acknowledging his many years as a community volunteer.

WILLIAM McLEAN

I would have liked to have written the story of Bill McLean while he was still
with us but he wanted no part of personal publicity.

Bill’s contributions to the development of sport and young athletes in Collingwood
were hidden under a bushel because that’s the way Bill wanted it.

This single incident, one of many, will attest to the true spirit of helping others
that was Bill McLean’s greatest human asset.

About forty-five years ago we were having a hard time assembling a Junior O.H.A. hockey team. The main stumbling block was the lack of cash. We didn’t have enough of that commodity to pay the entrance fee.

A hastily called meeting was attended by six or seven interested citizens. The
interested citizens ignored the poor turn-out and went ahead with the election
of a board of directors.

Bill McLean, who had returned to Collingwood to practice law after an absence of
many years, slipped unannounced into the meeting just before it broke up. He
didn’t even identify himself but sought out he newly elected treasurer- the treasurer without a treasury.

“Would like to help a little” he said, as he slipped a bill into the treasurer’s hand and departed. It was a one hundred-dollar bill. He didn’t even wait for a “thank you” and that was his only donation as the season progressed.

That was only one incident in the life of Bill McLean where he helped without
looking for anything in return-not even acknowledgement.

Born in Barrie in 1896, Bill taught public school in Collingwood for two years before moving out to Weyburn, Saskatchewan. He played centre for the Presbyterian Theolgian College team in Saskatchewan in 1922 and 1923 but his crowing athletic achievement came in 1923 when he coached the University of Saskatchewan Senior Hockey Team to the Allan Cup finals. This team lost by a single goal in a two-game series to the famed Toronto Granites, Olympic winners in National Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

A year later he coached the Regina girls’ hockey club to the provincial title.

An accomplished marksman he captained the University of Saskatchewan rifle team for two years.

Mr. McLean was admitted to the bar in 1925. He practiced in Indian Head,  Saskatchewan, and Barrie, before returning to Collingwood in 1944.

From 1944 until his death in 1977, he supported Collingwood hockey and ball teams in his own quiet way and during that time became involved in harness racing as a
driver and attained notable success with Billie Direct and Bunty Gratton.

Bill McLean, gentleman, scholar and sportsman, has well earned his niche in
Collingwood’s Sports Hall of Fame.

JACK PORTLAND

We can name a half dozen Collingwood boys who could be classed as “all round athletes” but from a national standpoint the honours must go to Big Jack.

As a hockey player he starred for ten years in the N.H.L. with Montreal, Boston and Chicago.

His name will be found on the Stanley Cup, alongside such greats as Eddie Shore, Bill Cowley, Dit Clapper, Cooney Weiland and the Kraut line of Schmidt, Bauer and Dumart. That was the team of 1939, considered to be Boston’s greatest. That year the Bruins lost only ten games in a 48-game schedule and defeated Toronto four games to one in the Stanley Cup final.

His professional hockey career was cut short by at least five years when World War II intervened. After three years service with the Canadian Army, Jack never returned to the N.H.L.

Pro football lost him because hockey was his first love. He turned don three football offers before signing with Canadians. Jack represented Canada at the 1932 Olympiad at Los Angeles and the 1930 British Empire Games at Hamilton in the high jump event. We always thought he should have competed in the decathlon. He could run 100 yards in ten seconds, toss the javelin, heave the shot put, run the half mile, long jump and triple jump and, of course, set records in the high jump.

He finished his great athletic career back in his home town by playing for the Collingwood Shipbuilders and coaching the Collingwood Greenshirts to their first of four O.H.A. Junior “C” championships.

Jack Portland qualifies for the Collingwood Sports Hall of Fame in just about any category you care to mention.