The rare hockey editorial in the evening edition of the Ottawa Journal sounded the alarm from coast to coast: “The folly of sending a hurriedly-organized RCAF hockey team to represent Canada at the Olympic games should have been obvious from the beginning. It became fully apparent when McGill University ‘whitewashed’ the Olympics by a lopsided score on Ottawa ice. This debacle reflects no discredit on the players, but it is no tribute to the wisdom of those who conceived or approved the idea that they should play for Canada. Unscrambling of this muddle is of national interest far beyond the limits of organized sports circles.”
Under the headline “Team Proves Inadequate for Olympic Games,” the sports editor at the Montreal Gazette continued the bloodletting with his article. “A perplexed RCAF hockey executive and an equally baffled CAHA were wondering today where they could find a hockey team to represent Canada in the Olympic Winter Games at St. Moritz in February. This was the result of the 7–0 pasting a fast-skating smoothly-working McGill hockey team plastered on the RCAF ‘Olympic’ representative here last night at the Auditorium. It wasn’t so much the score that mattered but how badly the air force team looked in losing. Competent hockey observers who saw the game were unanimous in declaring that the air force side could not possibly represent Canada at the Olympics and added further that as the team is presently constituted it would mean complete replacement if the Dominion is to be adequately represented at the Olympics.”
The resounding loss to McGill was a huge eye-opener, a very public embarrassment, and a tremendous shock. Maybe the guys were suffering from stage fright and jitters. Maybe they were outplayed because the McGill squad was already a well-oiled machine that had been playing together as a unit for half a season, whereas this group of Flyers had barely finished practising together. Regardless of the excuses, the Flyers’ brain trust needed to get another quality exhibition match under its belt in order to adequately assess the merits of the current roster and figure out if the situation was as dire as it appeared. And they needed to do it fast.
On December 15, just two days after the loss to McGill, the Flyers were given a chance to quiet the furor whipped up in the press over their dismal showing at Olympic Night. A game against the strong army headquarters team of the Ottawa Senior Hockey League was arranged as part of a double bill at the auditorium. Norman Dawe, vice-president of the CAHA, was coming in from Montreal to attend the game. Buck Boucher was also back from his road trip with the Ottawa Senators. Together the two hockey titans were going to watch the match from the stands for a cold-hearted look at the Flyers. Then they would decide if help was needed and what could be done to improve the team. If the boys sporting the air force–blue jerseys could show determination and a high calibre of smooth and aggressive play, perhaps the pendulum of public opinion would swing back in their favour. Perhaps sweeping changes weren’t in order, and they still had every right to be Canada’s team.
For Frank Boucher, Sandy Watson, and the men of the Flyers, this was a chance at redemption. For the army it was an opportunity for public revenge for being shut out from consideration to represent Canada at the Olympics. There was no doubt the army boys were out for blood.
Although some in the media had already given up on the Flyers, Ottawa Citizen columnist Tommy Shields was still a fan. Prior to the match that evening, he reminded readers to keep some perspective: “Fashioning any kind of team from the candidates reporting here was a man’s-sized job in itself. We do not argue that this team is good enough. But we like to remember that the Royal Canadian Air Force, in recent years, have had their wings shot full of holes on numerous occasions and still managed to come out on top. There may be a remedy in this case, and the RCAF should have the opportunity of finding that remedy before their plans and team are tossed in the discard.”
Twenty-five hundred fans filed through the turnstiles of the Ottawa Auditorium that evening to witness the doubleheader on the slate. First up, the New Edinburgh Burghs were taking on the Hull Volants in regular league play. The RCAF Flyers’ match against the army was second on the card. As the masses took to their seats in Tommy Gorman’s ice palace, the streets in the capital region were blanketed under a few inches of freshly fallen snow. Meanwhile those without a care for hockey flitted around town making last-minute purchases in preparation for Christmas, which was coming up fast.
When the Flyers finally took to the ice late in the evening, the mercury had dipped below minus ten degrees Celsius outside. Inside the crowd of twenty-five hundred greeted the team with an equally frosty reception. There was no cheering, no RCAF bandfare, no fancy write-ups, no pomp and pageantry. The army attackers immediately took to the offensive and banged in an unanswered goal early in the first period. Under the gun, the Flyers responded tensely and struggled to find their groove against the hard-playing army team. As the first period continued, the army’s superior forwards successfully tied up the Flyers snipers and prevented them from executing many of their set plays. Meanwhile, the Flyers defencemen were again woefully weak and unable to set up plays or clear the army forwards from buzzing around the Flyers net and relentlessly banging at loose pucks. By the end of the first period things were looking grim. The Flyers were trailing 3–0.
As the match progressed, the Flyers finally seemed to loosen up and make a game battle of it. They rallied in the second period when former bellhop Orval Gravelle capitalized on a hard shot directed at the army net by Hubert Brooks. Gravelle tipped in the rebound and got the Flyers on the board. Penalties flew on both sides in the rough, hard-fought game, but again the Flyers just didn’t display the talent or ability to contend with the army players’ clever passing and constant backchecking. The army goalie was a fixture in net and stonewalled the Flyers offence with a stellar performance. By the end of the second period, the Flyers had fallen behind 5–1 and were as good as done.
But in the third period the captains of the clouds showed promise. Andy Gilpin pocketed the team’s second goal four minutes into the period, and the men in blue dominated control of the puck. Line after line of Flyers concentrated the action and attacks in the army’s defensive zone, pressing hard. For a few fleeting moments it seemed as if the Flyers might claw their way back into contention. But the effort was too little, too late. The army defenders continually cleared the puck, and their hot goalie rebuffed any of the ensuing Flyers shots. With the spotlight blazing on them, the airmen went down in flames, 6–2 at the final buzzer. The body blow dealt by the army was their second high-profile loss in just two days. The reputation of the RCAF was getting hammered.
It was another huge embarrassment for the team. Deep-seated worry began setting in among the top brass. Had they bitten off more than they could chew? Would they need to withdraw from the competition? Air Marshal Wilf Curtis, chief of the air staff, was in the stands at both games and witnessed his team buckle under pressure. Incensed, he told reporters: “I’m sick with disappointment. We had such high hopes. There was such enthusiasm and support. The team is going to have to quickly strengthen itself immeasurably or it will have to be withdrawn. This thing is bigger than the RCAF, bigger than the CAHA; it’s as big as Canada’s prestige at the Olympics. I think we can still do it. We haven’t much time, but there must be some players of required ability available somewhere, and we will find them. The defence was deplorable. Why I could have run down the ice faster than some of the players skated.”
(Left to right) Orval “Red” Gravelle, Pete Leichnitz, and Roy Forbes.
Ralf Brooks
Obviously this was not the air force’s finest hour. The Flyers knew this, the CAHA knew this, the press knew this, and the army knew this. In his interviews with journalists following the game, army coach Bill Cowley dug the knife in deep and roasted the Flyers with his comments: “My club is not in good condition. It may not have been so strong in the third period. But even at that, any Olympic team should be beating us. I could not figure out what hockey system or plays the air force was using.”
It
was now blatantly apparent to Frank Boucher, Sandy Watson, and Buck Boucher that their team was in deep trouble. They knew swift action was imperative in order to remedy the situation and quiet the outrage being directed at them from the upper levels of the air force, government officials, the Canadian Olympic Association, and a plethora of outside forces.
Immediately after the game, the entire RCAF Flyers management held heated behind-the-scenes brainstorming sessions with Norman Dawe of the CAHA. All agreed that drastic changes were in order. Starting from scratch was out of the question, and the CAHA was still solidly behind the air force team. The new plan called for the RCAF to forge ahead, auditioning more players while the CAHA scoured its ranks in search of a couple of eligible defencemen and at least one entire forward line to send over for tryouts. Many in the press, however, were calling for an entirely new team.
The remodelling got under way in earnest. Within days Sandy, Frank, and Buck had axed half the players who were currently shacking up at the Beaver Barracks. From initial tryouts of nearly two hundred airmen, only eight were deemed to have what was required to maintain a spot on the team. Hubert Brooks, Roy Forbes, Patsy Guzzo, Red Gravelle, and Irving Taylor were still standing, as were fellow airmen Louis Lecompte, Ross King, and Andy Gilpin.
Louis Lecompte was the oldest of the bunch. At thirty-three he was a big defenceman who played a tough and rough game. He grew up “the hard way” on Booth Street in Ottawa. Lecompte’s dad was a shoe salesman and his mother cleaned office buildings. He gravitated to hockey at a young age and showed great promise on the Ottawa senior hockey scene. Much as he loved hockey, Louis also had a love of photography. He signed up as a flight sergeant in the RCAF in 1935. During the war, he was posted overseas and worked in the RCAF’s photographic unit as an aerial photographer capturing reconnaissance images.
Goalie Ross King and forward Andy Gilpin had both flown in to join the team from their station in Whitehorse, Yukon. King was a stellar goalie who had won the Memorial Cup when playing with the Portage la Prairie Terriers in 1942. Gilpin was an aircraft technician who grew up in Montreal playing Junior A hockey. As a young boy, Andy too knew about hard times. His father was gassed in World War I and spent much of his time in a veterans hospital. After Andy joined the RCAF in 1940, he played for air force teams wherever he was posted. He was smooth and fast on his skates, and he possessed incredible stickhandling skills.
Lecompte, King, Gilpin, and the others provided a strong core for the team, but if the RCAF Flyers had any hope of surviving at the Olympics, Manager Sandy Watson and Coach Frank Boucher desperately needed more manpower.
They had discovered their first batch of talented hopefuls right under their noses when they watched the New Edinburgh Burghs destroy the Hull Volants 6–1 in the first match of the doubleheader that evening at the auditorium. The RCAF power brokers couldn’t help but notice the phenomenal skills of a number of standouts on the Burghs squad. Ted Hibberd, Ab Renaud, and Reg Schroeter had been playing together as one of the top-scoring lines in the league all year. Five of the six goals scored by the Burghs that night were slammed in courtesy of this trio. Pete Leichnitz was a solid, speedy centre who Watson and Boucher figured could easily slide onto an existing line or pair up with one of his Burghs mates. And Frank Dunster was a powerful defenceman who showed a penchant for crushing attackers on the blue line. For public relations purposes, Watson, Boucher, and the RCAF upper echelon were still hopeful they could pull from within the air force ranks. But it was starting to look as if they might have to find amateur players like these from outside the force.
Getting these five players into the RCAF blue jerseys could bring new scoring punch and defensive muscle to the Flyers lineup. But would they all meet the amateur eligibility requirements for competing at the Olympics? Furthermore, would they take a leave of absence from their jobs and current hockey team to join the air force and accompany the Flyers overseas for the next three months?
Christmas came early for Frank and Sandy. None of the guys had been paid to play hockey, so there were no issues with their amateur status. The ribbon on top was that Reg Schroeter, Ted Hibberd, Pete Leichnitz, and Frank Dunster were all former RCAF or currently in the RCAF reserve. So calling them back into service should be a snap. Ab Renaud was also a warrior, but he had served in the army during the war. When approached and offered the opportunity to try out for the Flyers, all five men were keen to give it a whirl.
Reg Schroeter was a true Ottawa boy who loved his country and loved the great outdoors. He played all his hockey growing up in Ottawa and, with his four brothers, was a fixture in the local hockey world. Known for his speed and agility, Reg also had a blistering shot and displayed great stickhandling skills. During the war Reg and all of his brothers served in the air force. Reg was a pilot, part of the air training unit—an extremely dangerous job. His war service didn’t see him take to battle in the skies over Europe; rather, he and his colleagues were tasked with pushing trainees to the limit to get them up to speed for battle. It was a deadly assignment. Four thousand men died trying to get their wings in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
After his stint in the RCAF, Reg was working with the federal government at the Department of Mines. His best friend and linemate, Ab Renaud, was also working in government, at the Department of Agriculture just across the road. The morning after the brass saw them tearing up the Hull Volants, both received calls from Minister of Defence Brooke Claxton’s office to come down for a meeting. Getting your bosses to approve a three-month leave of absence was no problem when you worked for the government and had Brooke Claxton’s seal of approval. By noon both of the guys had been shanghaied from their office jobs and were on the ice trying out for the Flyers. Within twenty-four hours of their game against the Volants, Schroeter and Renaud had been accepted onto the Flyers and were practising with the team.
For forward Ab Renaud, signing on as a Flyer meant he had to take a pay cut. During his time in the war with the army, Ab had served as a sergeant in the medical corps. If Ab was going to join the RCAF team, he would need to take an air force position at the rank of corporal. Although it meant a drop in rank and a drop in weekly wages, for a single guy with a passion for hockey and a love of his country, it was a no-brainer. He was in with both feet, and the Flyers gained a steady, 165-pound forward who never gave the puck away, never made mistakes, backchecked like a demon, and displayed consistent firepower as a goal scorer.
Young guns Pete Leichnitz and Ted Hibberd were both just twenty-one years old. They were childhood friends, and both had briefly served in the RCAF. By the time they were of age to sign up for the fight, much of the action overseas was already dying down. Neither of them pursued lifelong careers in the RCAF after the war.
When Sandy and Frank came calling, Ted was working as a clerk for Metropolitan Life. His buddy Pete was working for the federal government in the revenue department. They both happily accepted the offer to pull on the Flyers jersey and sign up as aircraftmen.
Defenceman Frank Dunster’s path onto the Flyers was a little rockier. A tough guy to the core, Dunster was exceptionally gifted at throwing his chiselled frame around on defence. He won the Memorial Cup while playing with the Oshawa Generals in 1940 and was poised to continue climbing the hockey ranks. Known for guarding the blue line with a vengeance, Frank landed legendary hip checks and his straight-up open-ice hits were equally lethal at putting the brakes on approaching attackers. On the ice Dunster was a force to be reckoned with, and junior hockey reporters gave him the moniker “the Blue Line Masher.” But Frank’s dreams of pursuing a professional hockey career were cut short when he chose to serve his country at war.
Like Hubert Brooks, Dunster also served as a navigator in the RCAF. Dunster was in a Halifax bomber as part of the No. 6 Group, Canada’s special Bomber Command delegation. Night after night Frank took to the skies as a member of 420 Squadron, nicknamed Snowy Owl. Their squadron’s motto was “We Fight to the Finish.” True
to that motto, Dunster flew an astonishing thirty-seven missions in 1944, three of them during the devastating Battle of Berlin. When he came home from the war, Frank landed a job as a firefighter with the Ottawa Fire Department. It was decent, fulfilling work that allowed him to spend time with his growing family and continue to play the game he loved with the New Edinburgh Burghs.
When Sandy Watson and Frank Boucher offered Dunster a position on the Flyers, he was thrilled and eager to join up. But when Frank went to the Ottawa fire chief and asked for a three-month leave of absence, his request was instantly gunned down. The fire department wasn’t prepared to allow Dunster to take time off to go and chase pucks around Europe. Moreover, he was told he wouldn’t have a job to come back to if he chose to play for Canada.
Dunster relayed the bad news to Sandy Watson. Not one to ever give up, Sandy pulled some strings and secured an OK from the RCAF brass to re-enlist Frank at his old rank. For Frank it was like a gift from the gods. He could come back into the air force fold in a career he loved, plus he would be able to take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play for Olympic gold. Filled with elation and buoyed by a sense of national pride, the Blue Line Masher leapt at the opportunity. He went in to see his bosses at the Ottawa Fire Department and told them to stuff it. He was heading back into the skies, and he was going to play his heart out for his country on the ice in Europe.
Murray Dowey.
Mary Rose Guzzo and the estate of Pat Guzzo
Wally Halder.
Mary Rose Guzzo and the estate of Pat Guzzo
André Laperrière.
Against All Odds Page 6