While attending Plateau High School in Montreal, Hubert threw himself into his studies and displayed a keen interest in mathematics. His French now completely fluent, he also continued to excel in hockey while playing for his high school team. He loved playing left wing, and as a southpaw, that was the position he ended up landing on most teams.
Maybe it was the country air and challenging early years on the farm, maybe it was witnessing his father’s dogged determination for a better life for his family, or maybe it was just innately within him—whatever it was, as a young man in Montreal with war raging overseas, Hubert possessed a fierce determination to carve out his own path.
Like the majority of young men of that era, Brooks felt it was his patriotic duty to volunteer for the war effort. When he tried to apply for the air force, he was only seventeen. The admissions officer deemed him too young, and he was rejected. Undeterred, he applied again in 1940. On his application, under “Skills of relevance to the RCAF,” he listed “Building model airplanes.” Under a question about sports he was engaged in, Hubert wrote: “Hockey extensively, golf extensively, rugby extensively, racing moderately, bicycle riding extensively.” When asked whether he was interested in ground duties or flying duties, Brooks answered that he was keen to take to the sky as either a pilot or an observer. And with that, on August 14, 1940, he was accepted into the RCAF special reserve.
Although the war had halted Brooks’s hockey development in its tracks, he was pleasantly surprised to be given the nod to audition for the RCAF Flyers hockey team in the fall of 1947. The last time he had played hockey was with the U.S. Army All-Stars in Europe about eight months earlier. Now back in Ottawa, Brooks was holding his own on the ice against the legions of air force boys jockeying for a spot. It was like a revolving door, with guys coming and going. At the end of each practice session, Buck Boucher would call out names. If he called your name, you were gone. As long as you didn’t hear your name called, you were another day closer to wearing the official jersey in St. Moritz.
Outside the Beaver Barracks in Ottawa.
Ralf Brooks
THE BOYS IN BLUE
03
As the fall leaves drifted off the trees along Elgin Street and morning frost settled on the windows of the Ottawa Auditorium, Sandy and Frank forged ahead in their quest to find the best among the RCAF’s sixteen thousand men. With the full might of the air force supporting them, RCAF transport planes hummed through the skies, ferrying dozens of players from across the country into Ottawa for tryouts. Sandy, Buck, and Frank also continued testing out their “team in the making” by pitting the prospects against local clubs and other existing military teams. On October 21, they played the army team in the Ottawa City League and won 8–2. Though it gave the coaches a chance to eyeball their prospects, the win was largely thanks to Frank Boucher’s impressive handiwork on the ice. Acting as a playing coach during the game, he was instrumental in scoring goals and setting up many of the team’s successful plays.
On October 28, the team in the making squared off against the New Edinburgh Burghs. The Burghs were leaders in the Ottawa City League. This time the airmen lost 5–3. Hubert Brooks picked up the final goal in the game. On November 8, the Flyers beat the Hull Volants 4–1. Again, however, the Olympic-ineligible Frank Boucher was on the ice and pivotal in the win. Day after day, new candidates were flown in, and those who failed to perform or impress were sent back home.
WHILE MANY OF THE PLAYERS BEING assessed by the Bouchers had flown in from various places across the country, a number of local air force boys had received tryout invitations as well. One was Corporal Irving Taylor. Born in 1919, Taylor grew up playing hockey on frozen ponds, lakes, and rivers around the Ottawa area before he joined the air force in 1938, serving on Canadian bases in the supplies and services department. Another was Ottawa boy Patsy Guzzo. At thirty-two years of age, Guzzo was one of the elder statesmen still holding his own against the onslaught of newcomers vying for a coveted spot on the Olympic team. And like Hubert Brooks, he had been called in and invited to try out from day one. But unlike most of the men coming through the revolving door at Tommy Gorman’s Ottawa Auditorium, Patsy was a well-known hockey commodity to Coach Frank Boucher. Nicknamed “Black Magic” by his teammates, Patsy had played with Frank when they were both stationed in Ottawa during the war as members of the 1942–1943 Ottawa RCAF Flyers hockey team. Together, they came close to winning the Memorial Cup that year, with Patsy as a left-winger and Frank playing centre.
At five foot seven and 145 pounds, Patsy was a nimble, speedy player, known for his finesse and playmaking ability. He was just as proficient at setting up goals as he was at rifling pucks into the net. He was also a strong backchecker and an excellent defensive player, often robbing wingers from opposing squads of scoring opportunities. While in high school, Patsy played on the team that won the Ontario championship. In doing so he set a scoring record after pocketing nine goals over two games. He played in the senior league with Ottawa LaSalle and then with the Hull Volants. But when the St. Louis Flyers of the American Hockey League came calling in 1940, he turned down an offer to play in the pros. Patsy wasn’t interested in a life on the road; instead, he signed up for the air force.
Born in east Ottawa in 1917, Patsy grew up in a large but very poor Italian family. As a young boy he exhibited a passion for sports and showed a natural aptitude for all athletics. In the summer he played baseball and softball with his brothers and cousins in a field across from their house. Little Patsy was a natural and could always play with the bigger boys. Although he was colour-blind, that didn’t stop him from developing into one of Ottawa’s outstanding amateur athletes in multiple sports. Some say he was one of the best amateur pitchers in Canada. He was also mean at bat. Over a two-thousand-game career, he won 80 percent of his softball games and maintained a batting average that was customarily above .400.
When Patsy signed up for the war in 1941, he had to wait nine months before he was activated and took a position as a clerk. His colour-blindness prevented him from pursuing a career in the air. Almost immediately after entering the service, Patsy was on the ice playing for the local RCAF hockey team in the winter. As soon as summer rolled around, he was on the mound pitching for the RCAF baseball team. Friends described him as a jock with brains who possessed a sweet, kind, gentle disposition and a passion for quoting Shakespeare and poetry. He was also a deeply religious man with an infinite devotion to family. In the fall of 1947, Patsy and his wife, Mary, had a little girl at home, with another on the way.
When Orval Gravelle showed up for work as a bellhop at the Château Laurier on November 13, he could never have imagined he’d end up sleeping at the Beaver Barracks that night. The nineteen-year-old was a scrappy little fireball with a shocking mane of red hair. Nicknamed “Red” for both his temperament and his hair, Gravelle played Junior B hockey with the Aylmer Saints in the Ottawa and District League. Raising their family in Aylmer, Orval’s parents didn’t have a lot of money. His first pair of skates were hand-me-downs from their neighbours. The problem, however, was that they were men’s skates. Young Orval didn’t care. He just put on his shoes and then slipped into the huge skates. They may have looked like clown shoes, but those big old blades fit like a glove. He was ecstatic. As he progressed in hockey, the little dynamo supplemented his exercise and training by running up and down hills with a log over his shoulders.
Short, solid, and 150 pounds dripping wet, he was a tough forward with wheels who liked to grind it out and play a physical game on the ice. His coach at Aylmer was Bill Boucher, Buck’s brother and Frank’s uncle. Noticing the weakness up front in the current Olympic hopefuls, Bill suggested that Frank, Sandy, and Buck consider bringing in young Orval to bolster their roster.
Orval was not in the RCAF and was completely in the dark that his coach had suggested the Flyers’ brain trust come take a look at him for their team. A recommendation from Billy Boucher was a ringing endorsement. In their search f
or raw talent, Sandy and Frank paid Orval a visit and took him out for a drive around Aylmer. While driving through neighbourhoods, they asked him to leave his job as a bellhop and join the air force so he could try out for the team. Orval leapt at the opportunity. He joined up as a machinist, impressed the pants off the selection coaches, and landed a spot as another “possible” coming through the revolving door at the auditorium.
The next day Frank and Sandy took the team to Trenton for an exhibition game against the local RCAF team on the base. Patsy Guzzo banged in a couple of beautiful back-to-back goals within the first three minutes of the game. Hubert Brooks and Red Gravelle joined in the scoring parade with a goal apiece as the Flyers beat the Trenton squad 7–4. During the exhibition match, Boucher and Watson also took notice of a player dressed for the opposing Trenton team. The defenceman was brimming with potential. His name was Roy Forbes.
LIKE HUBERT BROOKS, ROY FORBES WAS a decorated flying officer in the war. “Forbesie,” as his war buddies called him, served as a bomb aimer in Bomber Command and also with the all-Canadian 419 Moose Squadron. Unlike Brooks, Forbes started out in Halifaxes and Wellingtons but ended up in the nose of the mighty Lancaster bomber. He flew mission after mission, being buffeted around in the bomb aimer’s bay. Tense hours were spent prone, peering through his Plexiglas window, scanning the world as it raced past below him. As the mighty Lanc’s four massive engines hummed towards their target, Forbes lay there with his hand on the trigger, ready to unleash thousands of tonnes of ordinance upon enemy train yards, radar stations, and munitions depots.
On his twelfth mission, Forbes and his crew of seven were shot down over German-occupied France. Forbes survived a low-level jump and spent five months on the run before making it home. At the end of the war he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery and efforts in avoiding capture.
Tough as nails, Forbes was just as rough on the ice as he was in battle. At five foot six and 155 pounds, Roy was on the smaller side, but he more than made up for his bantam size with his huge heart and his scrappy, determined play. Forbes played a fast, tough game. He was a wiry defenceman who liked to hit, who never backed down from a fight, and who charged around like a Jack Russell terrier on the ice.
A prairie boy to the core, Roy Forbes was born on April 6, 1922, on a small patch of dirt in northern Manitoba. A poster child of the Depression, Roy was one of six siblings in the Forbes clan. His two sisters were the first born, with Roy the oldest of the four boys.
The plot of land the government had handed to the Forbeses to cultivate in tiny Rorketon, Manitoba, did not make for an easy existence. Roy’s parents, Cecil and Elsie, worked themselves to the bone in an attempt to squeeze out a living on their patch of scrub brush, gravel, and dirt sandwiched between Lake Dauphin and Lake Winnipeg. It was a hard, hard life on the farm, and Cecil and Elsie struggled to keep their kids clothed and fed.
Although times were tough in the depths of the Depression, Roy’s parents were resourceful and determined to do anything for their kids. Cecil had a knack for carpentry and ventured up north to work in prospecting camps for four or five months every year. Every dollar he made he sent back home. Elsie guarded the fort, tended to the garden and crops, kept the livestock going, and looked after the kids. Throughout it all Roy was his mom’s little helper, glued to her side.
For young Roy the formative years on the farm outside Rorketon did little to inspire dreams of greatness or any inklings of the world beyond the farm. Isolated and alone, he wasn’t exposed to very much. There were no other boys playing hockey, football, or baseball. He didn’t even know those sports existed. His younger brothers were just babies, and little man Roy developed an uncanny ability to stir up trouble.
When he was three years old he took it upon himself to help out with one of his father’s projects involving the family workhorses. Cecil’s team of four horses had developed some nasty growths around their ankle areas, and his dad had procured a bucket of toxic goop in town to remove them. With the horses tied up in the barn and ready for the application, Roy’s dad went into the house for a quick chat with his wife. Little Roy decided he would help out and surprise his father by taking care of the horses. He picked up a broom and was merrily slathering the goop onto the horses’ ankles when Cecil returned to the barn. Grinning happily, Roy turned to look at his father and accidentally slopped the goop onto his own little ankle. The searing pain was immediate and intense. The toxic goop nearly burnt Roy’s foot clean off!
With no doctor nearby, Roy’s father raced around the countryside searching for a travelling doctor or a savvy farmer to help them deal with the serious injury. Cecil and Elsie’s greatest fear was that Roy would lose his foot. One can only imagine their shock when the doctor Cecil found told them amputation was their best option and he could perform the surgery. But Elsie was having none of that. Taking her son’s foot was absolutely out of the question. Over the course of the next year, there was a lot of limping, a lot of pain, a lot of hobbling around, and in Roy’s words, “a lot of dirty months there.” In the end his doting mother nursed him back to health, and his foot slowly healed.
Not long thereafter, when Roy was about five, his parents had had enough of Rorketon. Life on the farm was grinding the Forbes family into the earth. They packed up their few worldly possessions and moved down south to the booming metropolis of Portage la Prairie.
Roy Forbes.
Gary Forbes
For young Roy, Portage la Prairie opened up a brand-new world of dreams and desires. He went from living in isolation in the sticks to living in a town of four thousand people. It was in Portage that Roy first saw young lovers skating on frozen ponds and gangs of kids playing hockey using sticks and pucks on homemade patches of backyard ice. Portage was an epiphany for him, and the idea and dream of one day playing hockey enveloped his soul.
Even at that tender young age, Roy knew he would have to wait to attain his dream. When your parents don’t have a lot of money, you tend not to think too much about getting your own pair of brand-new skates or a sharp-looking hockey stick. Fortunately for Roy, he didn’t have to wait very long. His uncle from Winnipeg came visiting that first winter in Portage, and he brought Roy a pair of four-bladed skates. They were funny-looking things, but they worked and Roy was ecstatic. The four blades helped provide additional support for his weak ankle. With his little foot burning in pain as he slid it into the boot, he persevered through the agony and developed a passion for skating on the lake. Hundreds of families in Portage were in the same boat as the Forbeses. Money was tight and unemployment was hovering above 50 percent, but the kids still managed to have a blast chasing each other around the frozen lake for hours on end, using balls of frozen horse dung as pucks.
In time Cecil was able to pick up some part-time work at the local airport. He also did odd jobs around the house for a doctor in town and continued to use his carpentry skills up north in the prospecting camps for four or five months of the year. As always, as soon as he got a cheque, he sent it home to Elsie and she would save most of it.
A ray of sunshine presented itself to the Forbes clan when a friend who worked for the city alerted Roy’s dad to a derelict house the city was putting up for sale. Cecil snatched up the rundown shack for the princely sum of twenty dollars. With a hammer, nails, blood, and sweat, the entire Forbes clan threw their backs into the renovation project. It turned out Elsie wasn’t just a talented gardener but a fine carpenter as well. The family converted that dilapidated house into a warm, loving home.
By the time Roy was around nine, the Forbeses were getting by and life now presented them with glimmers of hope. When Cecil and Elsie were able to cobble together a few extra dollars, they bought Roy a pair of hand-me-down skates, and he practically lived in them. As for sticks, well, that was something young Roy and his buddies had to carve out and fashion on their own.
The home in town became an anchor of stability for the Forbes family. While Cecil was up north ha
mmering nails in prospecting camps all summer, young Roy acted as his mother’s assistant gardener. He happily wielded the rake and did whatever he could to help cultivate the land, patting down the earth and getting the vegetable patch ready for planting. One of his favourite jobs was digging giant holes around the side of the house in late summer. All the vegetables and potatoes left over from the summer crop could then be stored in Roy’s holes, which were dug below the frost line and then filled back in. In the dark days of winter Roy would go out, chip through the snow and dirt, and bring in fresh potatoes and root vegetables for his mom to cook up a feast for the family in the barren chill of January.
Roy’s all-time favourite job with the vegetable patch was transforming it into the skating garden. Every fall he and his dad levelled off the garden and built up some nice dirt borders along the sides. It seemed nearly everyone in town turned their gardens into backyard rinks in Portage. Those with wells would get to work laying down the ice, bucket by bucket. The Forbeses had a well too, but they were also on town water, so Roy’s ice required a little less elbow grease. It came in nice and smooth quite quickly, courtesy of a good old rubber hose. Every winter he relished the idea of playing hockey on top of his garden and then seeing the green shoots of vegetables sprout up in the late spring, heralding the approach of summer.
Roy remembers his father, Cecil, as a hard worker and a tough, resilient man who instilled in him the value of perseverance and determination. But he credits his mother, Elsie, with showing him the value of being tough. She was the tough one in the family.
For the kids in Portage, hockey was everything. Aside from practising on their homemade backyard rinks, Roy and his childhood buddies also spent countless hours blazing around the lake when they needed a larger surface for a proper game of shinny. Playing in the freezing prairie winters until their feet turned blue, they staved off the cold and prolonged their matches by lighting up a fire in an old oil drum, getting out of the wind, and warming up inside an abandoned railway boxcar that was nestled in the snowbanks beside the lake. Eventually, parents and kids got together and built a proper outdoor rink with boards. Then, luxury of all luxuries, the town built an indoor rink with lights.
Against All Odds Page 4