The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Cross-Canada Hockey Adventures
Episode Date: December 17, 2024Over a period of 8 months, Ronnie Shuker set out to play hockey in every province and territory in Canada. The resulting book is called "The Country and The Game: 30,000 Miles of Hockey Stories". It'...s less a chronicle of his quest for ice time, and more of a journal about the characters he encountered at arenas, motels, bars and mancaves across Canada for whom hockey is no mere game. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Over a period of eight months, writer Ronnie Schuchar set out to play hockey in every province
and territory in Canada.
On his journey, he encountered all kinds of characters
at arenas, motels, bars, and man caves
where hockey is no mere game.
The resulting book is called The Country and the Game,
30,000 Miles of Hockey Stories,
and Ronnie Schuchar joins us now for more.
It's great to have you in that chair.
Great to be here, Steve.
The book is very enjoyable, Ronnie, I gotta tell ya.
And now having said that, I love hockey as much as you do,
but I would never do this.
So where did the idea for this trek come from?
It was really just a way for me to see the country.
I've done a lot of traveling, I've seen a lot of the world.
I've been to some pretty remote places and isolated countries.
And I would take these trips of two, three, four months.
And on one of my journeys, it just kind of
dawned on me that I had seen more of the world
than I had my own country.
I'd never been to Newfoundland or Labrador.
I'd never been to the Maritimes. I'd never been to any of the territories. I'd never been north
of the Trans-Canada Highway except for a two-day writing assignment for the
hockey news in northern Quebec. And I just wanted to change that. So I came back
from that trip. I did a round trip, road trip from the west coast to the east
coast and on the return leg I wrote an article for the hockey news just about what I could find across the
country hockey wise in August which is as you know the worst month of the year
for hockey and I found so much that it just it got me thinking you know instead
of three weeks what if I did a road trip of three months or four months or five
or as it turned out, eight.
What if instead of sticking only to the Trans-Canada, I took every northern road as far as it would
go right to Rhodes End?
What if, you know, and just going through the provinces, what if I went to all the territories
and went to Labrador and, you know, went to Saint-Pierre-Miquelon just off the coast and
I did all of the above?
And you did all of the above?
And it's kind of crazy here because you had been to North Korea, Chernobyl,
Transnistria, the Himalayas.
You played hockey in the highest place on Earth, right?
For the highest altitude hockey game ever played.
Ever played.
14,343 feet, I can't remember.
You're in the Guinness Book of Records.
Yeah, I am, with a bunch of other players, yeah.
So now Canada, you add to the list as well.
So let's go through some of the stops that you made,
and let's start in Newfoundland and Labrador.
I always find that a fascinating province in as much as
a very small population, and yet three Stanley Cup champions come from
Newfoundland and Labrador and arguably one of the great play-by-play guys of all time
in Bob Cole.
You've been there now.
What is it about that place that the love for hockey is obviously so intense?
You know, it was described to me as people in Newfoundland,
they follow their own wherever they are or wherever they come from in the province.
So, you know, if you live in St. John's,
if a player comes from Gander or Bonavista,
you know, they are gonna be cheering for that player
just as much as if the player had come
from their own hometown,
which might be a little different than, say, you know, Ontario.
You might not cheer as hard for, say, a player in New Liskert or something like that.
And there used to be, they no longer do it at the Telegram,
but they used to have a list called Newfoundlanders away,
and they would chart every player that had left the province to go pursue a career in hockey,
whether it was minor pro or junior or university ranks.
And people would email the curator before he retired and say,
is the list coming out?
They'd want to know about the players, where they were going, what level they had hit,
how they were progressing in their careers.
And yeah, it was almost like the province
is just one giant hometown for all these players.
I'm trying to think of the guys that Michael Ryder is
one of the Stanley Cup champs.
Yep.
But I'm blanking on the two other guys.
So am I.
Yeah.
But I went to Bonavista where Michael Ryder was born
and Adam Partey.
And both of them are their hometown heroes there.
Oh, Alex Newhook, Montreal Canadiens?
Is he a Stanley Cup champ?
He would be, with Colorado, I think.
With Colorado.
I believe so, yeah.
Somebody can Google the third one.
Anyway, on we go here.
Wayne Gretzky, you've got to have a story about Wayne Gretzky
in the book, and you do.
Kevin Morrison, Sydney, Nova Scotia,
is part of the Wayne Gretzky story.
Explain.
Kevin was a delight to talk with. And I got lucky because I wasn't sure I'd be able to talk with him.
I wasn't sure if he was going to be there.
But I went to learn about the Lebanese hockey community
in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
And I met with John Hannah, Jr., who is assistant general manager
of the local junior team.
And his father sort of paved the way
for a lot of Lebanese hockey players in Sydney.
And one of them to follow was Kevin Morrison,
who was Gretzky's first enforcer.
Gretzky, when he went to the Indianapolis Racers
of the World Hockey Association,
he was only there for eight games.
But this is the 1970s, late 1970s, Broad Street bullies.
It's still rough time, and
as Kevin described it to me, anybody who is suspended in any league was in our league,
and guess who had to fight them?
And he pointed to himself.
So he was responsible for shepherding Gretzky onto the NHL safely at a time when teenage
phenoms had a target on their back.
And he did.
Nobody touched Gretzky.
And he also assisted on Gretzky's first goal, first pro goal.
And there's a good little story that...
Yeah, tell the story.
It was good.
So it depends.
Kevin Will, it depends on who he talks to, how he's going to tell the story.
How much he embellishes it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So he would, you know, he told me that one CBC reporter came on the 40th
anniversary of Gretzky's first goal.
And he told him, yeah, I deeked around everybody, went up the
ice, shoveled up to Gretzky, and he tapped it in.
And then he turned the camera off, and he said, oh, how did
it really happen?
He said, well, I hit him at the blue line.
He went in and scored.
Top shelf.
But yeah, so he assisted on Gretzky's first goal and Gretzky never forgot, even though
he was only there for eight games.
Kevin told me that when he saw him again decades later at an autograph session in Newfoundland,
Gretzky knew him right away and he thanked him for shepherding him safely to the Oilers.
Wayne is a hockey savant.
He remembers everything.
He's quite amazing.
Okay, somebody in the control room Googled it.
So now we know who that third Newfoundlander was
who won the Stanley Cup.
Danny Cleary, Detroit Redmonds.
Right, of course, yeah.
We both had a senior moment there, but that's okay.
Let's continue, let's go to Quebec.
Remote hockey tournaments in northern Quebec are,
well, that's a lucrative situation, isn't it?
Very lucrative.
Yeah, upwards of $30,000 for one weekend tournament.
Yeah, this kind of blew my mind.
I drove the Billy Diamond Highway right to Rhodes End,
and I was with the traveling goalie Adrian Mizzi,
who accompanied me for the first six weeks of the road trip,
and we went to the communities of Chissasubi
and Muskegonish in the James Bay Cree Nation.
And I learned about a high stakes,
semi-pro hockey circuit there.
Where it's not a league,
it's more like a revolving circuit of tournaments.
So there are 11 towns in the James Bay Cree Nation
and it'll just move from town to town
throughout the hockey season.
And every team from every town will show up
to the host town, and prize money is anywhere
between 20 and $30,000.
And it's high-level hockey.
I played with some of these guys,
just shinny-shooting pucks around.
I'm glad it wasn't a game,
because boy, could they shoot the puck and skate.
There's some legit semi-pro pro players up there
And it's it's their NHL. They're they're hockey heroes up there to kids. They're revered
it's one reason why they don't go south to pursue a pro career is because
You know, they got it made there
they have these high stakes tournaments that are just you know, the focal point of these towns.
And yeah, I mean, why would you go south
when you're basically a hockey god up there?
Well, three and a half years ago,
we did a show for the agenda on what I argued was
the most important goal in the history
of the Toronto Maple Leaf franchise.
And I guess, you know, a lot of people have their different views
on this, but in my view, when you score a goal in overtime
that wins you the Stanley Cup, and that's only
happened once in Maple Leaf history,
then that's the most important goal in Leaf history.
We did it on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Bill
Borilko's overtime goal.
And just to help set the stage for our conversation,
we got a clip. All right. Sheldon, if you would, let's overtime goal. And just to help set the stage for our conversation, we got a clip.
Alright, Sheldon, if you would, let's roll that.
No wonder the fans are in a frenzy.
Every game in the series has gone into overtime.
The Maple Leafs go into this one with a vim that spells sudden death to the Canadians. Borilko slams it in to win the game and the Stanley Cup.
And his teammates promptly elect him man of the hour.
Joy reigns supreme for the world's champions of hockey.
Now, phenomenal. And Bill Barilko, I think that was his fourth Stanley Cup in five years that he played for the Leafs.
It was. And of course a few months later he went on a fishing trip, the plane crashed, and he
died at the age of 20 something.
24.
24.
And for 11 years the wreckage from that plane crash was not found.
And of course coincidentally enough the Leafs never won another Stanley Cup until the year
in which that wreckage was found.
Okay that's the setup.
I'm guessing that if this had happened with any other team
in any other sport, it would be massive.
It's not.
No.
How come?
I'm still trying to figure that out because the story,
I mean, the screenplay is basically written.
I don't understand this.
It's the people who are close to this story
in Timmins and Cochrane, Ontario,
they described it to me as Canada's Buddy Holly story.
Someone at the height of their career, in their early 20s,
makes a snap decision to fly, dies in a plane crash.
The only difference is that Borilko disappeared for 11 years and Buddy Holly obviously was found immediately.
But you know Buddy Holly is revered in America whereas here Borilko, if it wasn't for the tragically hip and 50 mission cap,
probably would have forgotten the story entirely.
And even since then it's been 30 plus years now and the story still hasn't gotten its due in my mind.
And I don't know why.
There hasn't been a full documentary.
There hasn't been a full length movie.
There's been a couple books, some short docs.
But that's basically it.
And it's mystifying to me because it's
the most famous plane wreck in Canadian history.
And it's not just a hockey story. It's a Canadian story.
And as I quote Gord St. Clair from the Tragical Hip, I wasn't able to interview the hip directly,
but he talked with the Canadian press in 2020 and he said,
if this had happened in America, you know, if somebody had a grand slam in the ninth inning and won the World Series, you know, Robert Redford would have played him.
We'd all know about it.
But for some reason in Canada, we don't do our own missed well.
And I think he's bang on.
Like, we really don't.
And this is one that really, it needs its due.
I hope it comes.
This resonated with you, though, in a major way.
So much so that you, I gather you felt a need to actually go to the spot where
the wreckage was found.
Yeah, I don't have any other good explanation for going there other than I just felt compelled.
You know, like most Canadians, all I knew of the story were the 33 words from 50 Mission
Cap by the tragically hip.
I never pursued the story beyond that.
But in, I think it was around 2018, I picked up the first book on Borilco
by John Mulatti, Over Time Over Do.
Read it from cover to cover,
and I was just instantly hooked.
Read everything I could on the story,
watched everything on YouTube I could,
and I was just consumed by the story
to such an extent that I just, I don't know,
I just felt drawn to the place where the plane crashed.
So, but I found that you couldn't do it over land, I don't know, I just felt drawn to the place where the plane crashed.
But I found that you couldn't do it overland,
although I later discovered that people have tried.
But the Hudson Plane is so impenetrable
that nobody has gotten there, to my knowledge, overland.
Henry Hudson was the guy who flew the plane.
Yes, absolutely.
And so I decided I would take a helicopter
to about a mile away from the crash site and then hike in.
And I'm actually glad I did because not being from Northern Ontario, I really couldn't understand why it took so long to find the plane.
Even though it's the 1950s and early 60s, I was kind of perplexed. Why did it take so long?
When I was flying above the trees, I was like, okay, I get it now, I get it.
The trees are so densely packed
that you just can't see between them
unless you're literally hovering right over them.
And to my knowledge, the plane stalled
and took a nosedive right into the muskeg,
so no trees were taken out.
So it's any wonder why it was found at all.
So I just wanted to go there and, I don't know, put in the work, so to speak, to just
hike in.
It's only a mile, but it ended up being three, just because there's no direct route in the
Hudson Plain.
And I just, as the GPS counted down, you know, 100 meters, 80, 90, 10, 9, 8. I just felt this pull to the site.
And there was a puck and a sign nailed to a tree
that we were looking for.
But we got a huge dump of snow.
And either it was covered or the tree had fallen down.
And we couldn't find it.
But it was OK.
I was just being there and taking in the Northern
Ontario forests.
And it was my way of paying respects to the story.
On this show, three and a half years ago, we had as one of our guests, I don't think
you name him in the book, but his name is Mark Farah, and he's the guy who owns the
wreckage.
He's got it in his basement.
He does.
You've seen it.
I have seen it. He feels the same way about this story as you do.
Yeah, you know, the people who are connected to the story are extraordinarily passionate
about it.
They're protective of it and they want to keep it alive.
Like they just erected a billboard at the edge of town by Porcupine Lake where the plane
took off 70 years after Borilko died. And it was all privately funded.
So the people who are really close to the story
are just doing whatever they can to keep it alive.
And they're extremely passionate about it.
And so they should.
It's just a remarkable story.
Ronnie, I got an idea.
You and I are going to have a chat
after we finish this interview.
I got an idea.
All right, I want to hear it.
You're going to like it.
Stand by.
Sheldon, want to bring the next picture up?
Middle of page two.
This is a pretty famous picture.
Those who are, sorry, if you're listening on podcasts, this is not going to be helpful
at all, but we have a shot here of six young boys.
And one of the boys in this shot, second from the left, might just be the greatest hockey
player of all time.
Maybe.
It's either him or Wayne Gretzky.
This is March 31st, 1961, and that kid is Bobby Orr.
Wanna tell us about the significance
of the game these kids just played?
Yeah, so I had known the Bobby Orr,
how he was discovered, I'd known that story
for quite a while, he was discovered
in a town called Gananoque, near Kingston, Ontario.
And it was the second of a two-game total goals
playoff series for the semi-final
of the provincial championship.
And of course, he was with Perry Sound,
and Gananoque had won the first game in Perry Sound.
Perry Sound came to Gananoque for the second game.
And there were scouts in the stands,
from the Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens.
A young Scotty Bowman was there.
And they weren't there to scout Bobby Orr.
They were there to scout two players
from the Guernon-Okwe team.
One of them was on the left there.
His name was Rick Eaton.
And the other, who isn't in the photo, is Doug Higgins.
And when I found out and read about this story,
I just kind of wondered what happened to these two guys.
And so I just wanted to follow up on their story
and try and understand how they felt about being connected
to arguably the greatest player of all time,
if not second to Wayne Gretzky.
So I managed to track down Doug in Petawawa, Ontario, and then he put me in touch with
Rick and Ganon Okwe.
And all these years later, they still recollect that game in vivid detail, and they were able
to go goal by goal with me.
And Bobby Uah tied the game late, but they put it away.
4-3 in overtime, I think, was a score.
And so they won the provincial championship, beat Bobby Orr,
went on to win the overall provincial championship
over a team from Goderich in the southwest of Ontario.
And when they were brought back home after the final game,
they were feted like they won the Stanley Cup.
Everyone from the town turned out.
Fire engines blaring.
The captain, Doug Higgins, had to go up onto the...
There was a hotel at the four corners of Gananoque Way and give a speech.
And I could, like, they're in their 70s now,
and they just retold the tale like they had just won the Stanley Cup the year before.
And what I didn't know is that they both actually
did go on to sign contracts with the Boston Bruins.
And I mean, they never played, they never played pro,
but I mean, how cool is that?
You were signed by an NHL team in the original six.
And all these years later, they remember that game
and their connection to Bobby Yorah, they appreciated it,
opened up so many doors for Doug Higgins.
And it was just a delight to hear these guys
tell this story from their childhood when they're 14
and just like they were living it, reliving it in the moment.
I've got so many questions here related to your travels
all over the country.
But given that we're TVO, I want to spend a little more time
hearing O.
All right.
We've just got a few minutes left here,
but I wanna do something.
Two hours west of here is London, Ontario,
home of the junior hockey Knights.
And here's an excerpt, I'm gonna read this
from the book here, made by the Knights trainer,
Don Brankley, at a game in Windsor some years ago.
This was one of the last games at the Windsor Arena,
which everybody called the barn.
Sheldon, you wanna bring this quote up,
and I'll read it for those listening on podcast?
He says, I've been sweared at, spit on, and punched here.
I remember the time our tour bus was broken into
and the night our tires were slashed.
I'm happy for the people of Windsor
that they're finally getting a new arena.
It's not like it wasn't time,
but they'll have to work at capturing
the same kind of atmosphere that was in this place.
Bring the craziness to your new building and I'm going to wave goodbye to you now.
And you'll notice I'm using all of my fingers this time.
Okay, tell us about Branks.
Branks was a character and the lead up to that quote, imagine, I guess,
in the barn there would have been 5,000 or so fans. I don't remember the seating capacity, but
before he took the microphone and he said that
to the fans, there's the chant going on,
water boy, water boy, water boy.
And it started in Windsor in the 1970s,
just a few years after he became the trainer
of the London Knights, a career that would span 38 years.
And just one game, he wasn't the standard trainer,
would stay in the back of the bench and just be unassuming.
He would yell at the referees,
he'd goad opposing team players,
he'd yell at the goalie, he'd taunt fans.
And so one of the fans in Windsor
just started calling him Waterboy, and it just caught on.
And in an age before social media, it went viral around the league, and he was known as Waterboy, and it just caught on. And in an age before social media,
it went viral around the league,
and he was known as Waterboy around the league
for the rest of his career.
And I mean, as you can probably tell by that quote,
he loved it, lapped it up, played the heel.
He was just, he's since passed in 2017,
but I interviewed him in 2008
when I was a journalism student at Western.
And he's just such a character, I interviewed him in 2008 when I was a journalism student at Western.
And he's just such a character.
And only in Canada could a junior hockey trainer become, in his words, a rock star.
In Windsor in the 1970s, Broad Street bullies again, it filters down to the junior ranks.
He had to get a police escort to and from the bench in between each period just because
there's so much hatred between him and the fans.
It's Slapshot.
It was, absolutely. Yeah, and he was just, he was, you know, hated throughout the league,
beloved in London, loved his players, was there for 38 years.
Well, let me give you two examples here. Rick Nash and Pat Maroon.
Yeah.
Okay, Nash is retired, but he was a big star with mostly Columbus and a little bit of Boston.
Pat Maroon's still playing.
I saw him play the other night for the Chicago Blackhawks.
Yep, still going.
He gave them some advice, which apparently was helpful.
It worked both times.
Tell the story.
So Rick Nash came first and then Maroon about six or seven years later.
Both were top scorers with the Knights, and they were mired in scoring juts at one point.
Six or seven games, no goals.
So Branks took Nash aside and he said,
you know what, why don't you walk out backwards
onto the ice tonight before the start of the game?
So he did, sure enough, second period, he scores,
goes down the bench to touch gloves with his teammates,
and he just sees Branks smiling widely, chewing his gum,
and then about six years later, Maroon, you know,
Nash had gone on to the Columbus Blue Jackets,
and Maroon was now the top scorer with the London Knights.
Myred in a, I think it was a seven game drought
for him at the time, and Branks pulled him aside,
said, I'll tell you what, I told Rick Nash.
In the second period, Maroon scored.
So he was two for two on that.
Cool.
There are so many good stories in this book, Ronnie,
and we will happily recommend this to those who love
both the country and the game, which coincidentally enough
is what the book is entitled.
The Country and the Game, 30,000 Miles of Hockey Stories,
and we're delighted it's brought Ronnie Shuker
to our studio here at TVO tonight.
Thanks, Ronnie.
Thanks for having me.