by Willie O'Ree
Over the next three years I moved on up through the Fredericton hockey system. (The Maritimes’ segregation in ice hockey at the turn of the twentieth century had gone by the time I was ready to play. In fact, Manny McIntyre, a black player who’d become famous as part of an all-black line in Quebec, was born in Fredericton in 1918 and played high school hockey there.) In 1951–52 I played with the Fredericton Merchants of the York County Hockey League, followed by three games with the Fredericton Capitals of the New Brunswick Senior Hockey League. We were young players and I was one of the youngest, but we were keen and had a taste for winning.
After a season with the Junior Capitals, I made a step up to the senior ranks for a full season in 1953–54. That year we won both the New Brunswick Senior Hockey League championship and the Maritimes Senior Playoffs. We also played in the Eastern Canada Allan Cup tournament—an exciting prospect for me, but I knew it was important to show all I had and all I can do. You could say I was used to proving myself in every game I played. As it turned out, I scored seven goals in seven games. So I was sad when the Capitals lost the semifinal. (Making matters worse, at the same time the team I loved, the Canadiens, and my hero Rocket Richard lost the Stanley Cup to the driven, hard-playing Detroit Red Wings.)
I was close to Robbie Miles and Tim Bliss, who were my linemates. With me playing left wing, Robbie center, and Tim right wing, we just gelled. I was the youngest of the three but the most aggressive. Now, I’ve always wanted to win every period of every game I’ve played. Other teams don’t always love playing against guys like that. Sparks do fly. Some guys like to take a shift off now and then, and they don’t always appreciate a guy who plays hard until the whistle goes. But I’ve never met a player who doesn’t value a guy like that on his own team.
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When I was little and played hockey it was just me on the ice, with help from Coot, my big brother. And, of course, my parents came to every game. But when I was in my teens I also played with my friend Junior, an excellent baseball player as well as a hockey player, and our friend Walter “Bubsy” Mills, who could play any sport you put in front of him. His first time on the court as a high school basketball player, for example, saw him named the tournament’s most valuable player. With his stocky frame, he was also a star fullback and linebacker in football, and a guy you wanted on your team on the ice.
There’s a great story that captures the free spirit and fine athlete that was Bubsy. In one hockey game he played in against my high school, we went into sudden-death overtime: Bubsy’s favorite place to be. He begged the coach to put him on the ice so that he could score the winning goal. The coach didn’t listen—Bubsy’s pleas sounded to him like just swagger—but the game went on, and finally Bubsy got his ice time. He skated right over to the Fredericton High bench and told the players they could take off their skates because he was going to end the game with his next shot. When the ref dropped the puck for the faceoff, the center passed the puck back to Bubsy and he charged across the ice, beat one guy, then beat another, and then put the puck in the net. Game over—and it was Bubsy who’d won it.
It was Coot, though, who remained my best hockey coach as I was coming up through the ranks. He was in his early thirties at the time, a solid five ten and over two hundred pounds. Coot played defense but would never use his stick on guys. He played the body every time. On several occasions when we were practicing together, Coot would bodycheck me hard to the ice. So hard, in fact, that it would bring tears to my eyes. I asked him, “My goodness, brother, why did you do that?”
He was as blunt as his check. “You’re going to get hit in the big league, brother, so you’d better learn how to get hit.”
He was right, and so I learned. I was always prepared to take a blow as well as to give a good clean hit when I saw the chance. And during my hockey career I gave, and got, a lot of hits.
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Even though the Fredericton Capitals were semipro, I couldn’t actually get paid for playing for them since it would have ruined my amateur standing at school for other sports. They did, though, give me money for travel and meals when the team was on the road.
The funny thing was that when my high school coach—the one who’d kicked me off the team—saw me playing with the Capitals, he wanted me to come back to play. I said no. He’d had his chance—and he hadn’t given me a chance.
But I got my revenge on him at the York Arena. Back in 1947, when it opened, the arena was Fredericton’s big new covered hockey rink. In fact it was so big for its time, and there was so much snow in winter, that the roof had to be shoveled after every snowfall. The fear was that the weight of the snow would bring the roof down. Of course, that didn’t worry me because I wasn’t thinking snow, I was thinking ice. Some nights I’d even sleep there so that I could get on the ice really early the next day and have it all to myself as I did my hockey drills. You might say, with some understatement, that I was a rink rat. That arena was my second home: not only did I practice and play there, but I did odd jobs around the place for pocket money.
One day I was sweeping the bleachers when Fredericton High’s hockey team showed up for a game against another high school. They were beating them pretty badly, so at the end of second period I said to the other school, “Looks like you guys could use some help.” They said they sure could, as they were depleted by injuries and knew that I played for the Capitals. So I suited up for them, came out in the third period, and scored five goals. “We” wound up beating Fredericton High. It was a sweet moment, with its coach once again regretting his hotheaded decision to kick me off the team.
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Hockey and sports in general were my life in those days. I didn’t have girlfriends as a teenager because there weren’t that many black girls at school, and even though Fredericton was pretty tolerant, it wasn’t done for a black boy to be seen with a white girl. My parents had always said, “Stick to your own kind” to avoid trouble. I never quite saw how love could be trouble, but I did know that other people didn’t see love when they saw two people of different colors together. As I often say, we’re all part of the human race, and so race has no place in how we see one another. How a person lives and behaves and treats his or her fellow humans does. But I know not everyone sees things that way.
Back in high school I had crushes on girls who played sports, but I kept them to myself. Nor did I take girls to the movies. Instead I’d go with my friends, sneaking out with Junior at night or going to Saturday matinees. We were all crazy about westerns.
There were two movie theaters: the Capitol at the corner of Regent and King and the Gaiety on Queen Street. The Capitol played westerns while the Gaiety showed more love stories, so we always went to the Capitol. It cost a dime to see a movie and a nickel for popcorn, meaning you could see a double feature for a quarter. My favorites were The Durango Kid and The Red Ryder and the Little Beaver series. I still love westerns and watch them as often as I can. To this day Junior will call to tell me that The Wild Bunch is on TV. Since he lives in New Jersey and I live in San Diego, that gives me a three-hour heads-up to find out when it’ll be screening in my house. And I’ll watch it again. It’s one of my absolute favorites, as is The Big Country. Gregory Peck, one of the greatest actors who ever took to the silver screen, is superb in that film.
My friends and I also fancied ourselves as cowboys. Out on the end of the Woodstock Road was a riding stable run by Mrs. Goodein, a no-nonsense woman to whom we gave a lot of nonsense. I loved going out there with Junior and Bubsy to rent horses. Once we reached the top of the hill, away from the stables, the landscape would level out—and that’s when we’d dig our heels into the sides of our horses, yell “Giddyup,” and gallop off as fast as we could.
Which was, of course, strictly forbidden. So Mrs. Goodein started sending a minder up with us to make sure we just walked our horses. But
once we got to the plateau, Bubsy would cough—and that was our signal to take off in all directions. The minder could follow only one of us, so we’d beat the system that way. Mrs. Goodein would tell us not to gallop the horses every time, we’d promise not to every time, and she’d rent them to us all the same, knowing full well we were likely to break that promise.
One of the scariest—and in retrospect funniest—outings we had happened when Junior and I came around a corner and saw Bubsy’s horse but no Bubsy. We called out: no answer. We couldn’t figure out where he’d gone, or if aliens had snatched him or what. As I sat on my saddle under a tree, thinking about it, Bubsy leapt down from a branch and onto my horse, startling the hell out of us both. Off we galloped, until I could finally get that poor horse back under control.
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I was what you might call a natural athlete and played practically every sport I could. I came second in a tennis tournament and was a pretty good gymnast, winning some meets; I was also a baseball player and a varsity rugby player. In fact, in 1953 Fredericton High beat St. John in the provincial high school rugby tournament. The score was 12–5 for us, and I scored seven of those points, including a pretty fine forty-yard penalty kick.
I also ran track. Junior ran it too, but he could never beat me, although he did make second place a few times. In fact, a few years ago he found a photo of us running track, with me winning and him running second. He fiddled with it a bit (he’s an engineer) and produced a new photo that had him winning and me in second. When he showed it to me I thought he’d actually won a race off me, but then, true to my competitive nature, I remembered all my victories—along with who beat whom when I didn’t win—and I knew, just as surely as the sun rises in the east, that Junior never did beat me in a foot race. We had a good laugh over his fake news.
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My athletic ability in high school gave me confidence—I felt like I could do anything I wanted to do. And that confidence allowed me not only to say no to the high school coach but also to cross my first color barrier. I was just thirteen.
Even though Fredericton was a pretty tolerant city, there were still places where a black person couldn’t go. For instance, a black person wouldn’t go into a white barbershop to have his hair cut. There weren’t signs up or anything like that—we just knew. And I knew it was wrong. Now, this is an odd thing, as there wasn’t racism of the kind that I would come to know when I made my first trip to the American South, but we understood the possible perils of stepping across a line no one acknowledged was there. It wasn’t that we were segregated. But we weren’t integrated, either. We all lived with an unspoken code. It wasn’t clear what would happen if you broke it, but there was a strong feeling that it shouldn’t be broken. Just as you wouldn’t, as a guy, walk into the ladies’ room to use the facilities, I, as a black kid, wouldn’t go into a white barbershop. Instead I would go out to Barker’s Point, where the black families lived, and go to a barber there.
But then one day I did things differently. Five houses down from us, on the same side of the street, lived a family called McQuade. I was friends with their son, and Joe, his father, who was a barber, would cut my hair on their porch. We became very good friends. When I used to walk by the shop where Mr. McQuade worked, I’d wave to him and he’d wave back. So one day I asked him what would happen if I came into his shop to have him cut my hair. He paused, looked me in the eye, and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t given it any thought. Why don’t you give it a try?”
The O’Ree family was well respected in Fredericton. And since my brothers and sisters were very good in sports, as was I, we were well known, too. So when I walked into Joe McQuade’s barbershop, heads turned because it was me—and because it was me.
The four barber chairs were occupied, with a couple of people waiting. I sat down and Joe nodded at me, but when it was my turn he was occupied. The next barber looked at me suspiciously. “I’m waiting for Mr. McQuade,” I told him. No one said a word to me. Then, when Joe was finished with his customer, he turned and said, “I’m ready for you now, Willie,” and proceeded to cut my hair. I knew what was going on, but I wasn’t nervous.
After that, I continued getting my hair cut at the barbershop. I knew Joe McQuade got some flak for it from the city’s bigots, but I kept going and he kept cutting my hair. Then, once he’d retired, he went back to cutting my hair at his house.
Although it may seem like a small thing, for me it was huge. I was just a teenager, but it showed me that I could change things if I tried. My parents worried that I’d bring trouble onto myself because of color, but I figured trouble was happening because of color already. I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I knew then that I could play hockey with the big guys. I also knew that there hadn’t yet been a black man who played pro in the NHL, even though black humans had been playing hockey for as long as white humans had. My young eyes were seeing how the world around me worked.
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I knew I needed a winning team if I were to fulfill my dream of winning in the NHL. Seems simple enough, but if I wanted to raise the level of my game, I couldn’t do it in New Brunswick. And if I wanted to make it to the pros, I pretty much had to play in the junior league.
When I was nineteen I received an offer to play junior hockey with the Quebec Frontenacs in the province’s Junior A Hockey League. Quebec City is almost four hundred miles northwest of Fredericton, and when you’re nineteen, that’s a very long way. But the Frontenacs’ coach was Phil Watson, who’d been a mighty right-winger, playing thirteen seasons in the six-team NHL—twelve of them for the New York Rangers, where he’d won a Stanley Cup in 1940, and one for the Montreal Canadiens, where he’d won another Cup in 1944. So I was flattered that such a team would want me, but felt skittish about leaving home.
My friend Bob Mabie—who’d go on to a long hockey career at the University of St. Thomas—had been invited to Quebec as well. He said we should give it a try, and that if we didn’t like it we could just come back. That’s what I told my parents as well. They knew I wanted to be a professional athlete, and that if you wanted to be a pro hockey player in those days, you had to play junior hockey. Today you can go to college, on a scholarship if you’re good, and get into the NHL that way. But back then there was only one route to the show.
So my parents gave me their blessing, and with butterflies in my stomach, off I went to Quebec City. Bob and I both roomed with the Begin family. As it turned out, Monsieur Begin was a butcher, meaning we had a lot of steak on the table, which was more than fine with me. I’ll eat almost anything, and while my favorite food is chicken, steak runs a close second. Another advantage was that the Begins lived close to where the Frontenacs played: the Colisée, a big arena with a barrel-vault roof, built in 1949 to seat over ten thousand very devoted Quebec City hockey fans.
It’s an old city as far as our young country goes, with more to see and do—and eat—than a nineteen-year-old from the Maritimes could imagine. In fact, Quebec City is one of the oldest cities in North America, founded as it was—or settled is maybe the better term—in 1608, when Samuel de Champlain arrived and set up camp on an abandoned Algonquin settlement. There the French built high stone walls and a fort called La Citadelle; they still stand today, the oldest city fortifications in existence in North America. And when you pass under the Porte St. Louis or Porte St. Jean gates, you leave modern Quebec City and enter the old town, where I would love to go for crepes and cider.
In 1759 a famous battle was fought on the Plains of Abraham, just outside the city. And even though the British defeated the French, when I lived there the overwhelming majority of people spoke French as their mother tongue. I knew some French because I’d taken it in school, so I could get by. And playing hockey, whether in English or French, was still hockey.
When I first started playing hockey at a high level, my parents,
Harry and Rosebud, worried that, as a black player in a white world, I’d get hurt. After all, hockey players have an infinite number of ways of settling scores. If they don’t want you there, you’ll know it—and it’s going to be painful. But I wasn’t worried about that. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything. I knew I was good. And I had a dream of making the NHL—of becoming what Phil Watson told me I could be when I played for him in that 1954–55 season on the Quebec Frontenacs. He said that, if I wanted it badly enough, I had the skills to make the National Hockey League. I was thrilled by his assessment of my hockey talents. Given his background, this was, I reckoned, someone who knew what he was talking about.
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Phil Watson also said that I could be “the Jackie Robinson of hockey,” another idea that filled my heart with hope and fueled my ambition. For when Jackie Robinson became the first black man to suit up for a Major League Baseball team on April 15, 1947, he broke the MLB color barrier. There’d been Negro League baseball for decades, with some of the best players in the game to be found in their ranks. But they couldn’t break free from those ranks, which held them back just like the chains that had held back their ancestors. And Jackie Robinson not only broke those chains when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers—he also won the Rookie of the Year award and was an All-Star for six seasons.