Kelner cherishes hockey experiences

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This article was published 10/02/2020 (2276 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hockey gave Chuck Kelner experiences that a small-town kid couldn’t have even imagined.

Kelner, now 72, played a season and a half with the Brandon Wheat Kings between 1968 and 1969, leading them in scoring in his 20-year-old campaign.

“It was a life experience just to play with other good hockey players and check the whole country out,” Kelner said. “We bused everywhere so it was a neat experience for me, being from a small town. I never even left it until I started playing hockey. You meet all these guys — half of them you don’t remember their names — but you still meet them and have a good time.”

Kelner was born in 1948 to parents Charlie and Evelyn, and grew up in the small town of Geraldton, Ont., a community of 3,500 located 277 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

He played all of his minor hockey there after starting to skate at age four at the natural rink at the end of the street that his father was heavily involved in operating. He and his friends also skated on a nearby lake as soon as it froze over with about three inches of ice.

The lack of artificial ice did create one big problem, which is familiar to any young players relying on Mother Nature.

“We couldn’t skate until probably November before they could even get ice in there,” Kelner said. “We couldn’t get any skating time unless the lakes were frozen.”

That certainly didn’t hold back his development.

Following minor hockey, at age 15 he started playing with the Geraldton Gold Miners of the old Northwestern Ontario Junior Hockey League that operated from 1964 to 1970.

“They had an arena there and then they had a fire,” Kelner said of Geraldton. “It closed down and that was it. When our coach for the junior team tried to get into a league, we needed an arena so all of us hockey players got together and we fixed up the old arena and started anew.”

The advantage to the sweat equity the players put into the facility is that they had as much ice as they could use once it reopened. A recreation centre was built about 10 years later.

Kelner’s father, who had played for the Winnipeg Monarchs in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, looked after the outdoor rink in town.

“I remember going with him to help clean the rink, flooding it and doing everything,” Kelner said. “I was his rink rat. After school I would go help him at the rink and it would be 11 or 12 until we came home. We had to walk home about half a mile and it was pretty cool some nights.

“I sort of lived at the rink. In a small town, what do you do? There’s not too much left. If you liked hockey, that’s what you did. You hung around the rink and skated and had fun.”

Kelner was always a forward, and mostly played on the wing with his friend Jack Byerly, who he would skate with in senior hockey years later.

Everything changed for Kelner in his 18-year-old season, which was 1966-67. In those days, teams earned a berth to the Memorial Cup by defeating a series of challengers.

The Gold Miners met the Port Arthur Marrs of nearby Thunder Bay, falling in three straight. But Kelner had impressed and was picked up by the Marrs after the series ended.

Port Arthur would go on to defeat the Flin Flon Bombers in six games, and suddenly he found himself skating with two other recent pickups, Juha Widing and Bill Fairbairn of the Brandon Wheat Kings.

“I was a forward and they came in from Brandon after we beat Flin Flon,” Kelner said. “They put me on their line, so that was good.”

Port Arthur beat the New Westminster Royals in five games — Kelner scored five goals one night — for the right to face future Hockey Hall of Fame member Brad Park and the Toronto Marlboros in the Memorial Cup.

The Marlboros would prevail in five hard-fought games, but for the small-town kid, it was an incredible experience.

“It was super but it was like a whirlwind for me,” Kelner said. “It was the first time I ever flew — I flew to B.C. to play hockey. We bused to Flin Flon — but it was like being in a whirlwind. When we did play, I was scoring goals so they made a big thing that this guy from Geraldton was scoring goals. I was just a shy kid. It was kind of scary but it worked out in the long run.”

It certainly did.

The Wheat Kings brass, which included general manager Glen Lawson, must have been watching because Kelner was invited to Brandon’s camp for the 1967-68 season. But one of the now unthinkable bumps in the road that were more common in the old Western Canadian Hockey League days lay ahead.

“I got an invite and I was all excited because I just played in a Memorial Cup and now I’m going to Brandon,” Kelner said. “I took the bus and stayed at the Prince Eddy (Edward) Hotel. I was there for training camp, for a week, a week and a half, two weeks, and then all of a sudden they say I’m on Winnipeg’s list so I can’t play. I sat in the stands and watched them practice and then had to go to Winnipeg.”

It turned out that Jets head coach and general manager Eddie Dorohoy had placed Kelner’s name on Winnipeg’s protected list before he came to Brandon. Kelner dutifully reported to the Jets and played there for four months.

“I went home for Christmas for three days and Glen Lawson phoned me,” Kelner said. “‘You’re traded! You’re coming to Brandon.’”

The Wheat Kings sent veteran forward Bob Young to the Jets for Kelner and forward Bob Leguilloux.

Kelner wasn’t quite as starstruck as he might been without the Memorial Cup experience, but he was still impressed by Brandon’s venerable Wheat City Arena.

“It was a good old barn,” Kelner said. “Even Johnny Cash was there (in concert) when we were there. They had some kind of sale for cattle there too. For me, coming from Geraldton, I didn’t see that stuff. I thought it was amazing.”

He said the fan support was excellent, and the old-style wire mesh that was above the boards was just like home. He said it was dark but a great rink to play in.

Between Winnipeg and Brandon, he scored 23 goals and added 26 assists in 60 games that season, but the best was about to come.

Kelner returned for his overage campaign in 1968-69, and led the Wheat Kings in scoring with 35 goals and 30 assists in 54 games while skating mainly with Aurel Beaudin.

“We were buddies,” Kelner said. “Most of the guys who were from out of town hung out together, and the local guys like (Ray) Brownlee, (Jack) Borotsik and (Roy) McLachlan, we hardly saw them very much because they were local guys and went to school so after hockey they were gone. The rest of us were just hanging out, partying around the Prince Eddy I guess.”

But it certainly wasn’t an easy league to play in. The eight-team WCHL also included nearby Winnipeg and the drive north to Flin Flon, plus trips in Saskatchewan to Estevan, Saskatoon and Swift Current, and in Alberta to Edmonton and Calgary.

“Everything was on the bus and we would go to Edmonton or go to Calgary,” Kelner said. “It was like a two-week trip, busing everywhere. We had good times on the bus.”

Kelner chuckled about the dreaded “Flin Flon flu,” a short-term ailment that would render players unable to dress that night against the rough-and-tumble Bombers.

“I didn’t realize it,” Kelner said. “We would get on the bus and when we got a little closer to Flin Flon everybody would be coughing and sick, ‘I don’t think I can play.’ I was wondering ‘What the hell is going on?’”

Even with the success he enjoyed, Kelner now wishes he had spoken up at the time about getting the puck a bit more to provide additional offence.

“I was a good skater and I could shoot very well,” Kelner said of his strengths as a player.

After the 1968-69 season, with an offer to attend camp with the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, Kelner went home and took a job in the garage at a local Ford dealership.

That’s where disaster struck.

“I was doing my apprenticeship for my mechanics and I was fixing a gas tank,” Kelner said. “It was one of those days when there was a spark from another car or whatever and it burned the whole dealership down. Everybody was OK but I was the last guy out. My brother just happened to be pumping gas and he grabbed me out the door and took me off to hospital.”

Kelner received second- and third-degree burns on both hands and spent two months in hospital receiving skin grafts and further treatment. He still headed down to Kings camp, but with cracks in his hands.

“I did all right but I probably didn’t do like I should have,” Kelner said.

He went to a couple of minor pro camps, but ultimately decided to head home.

“I thought I was better than that so I said ‘The hell with it,'” Kelner said with a chuckle. “I’ll just stay in Thunder Bay and play senior hockey. It turned out all right for me.”

Instead of pursuing a pro career, he skated with the Thunder Bay Twins, who were in the semi-professional senior American United States Hockey League in 1970. In 76 games over five seasons in the USHL — the team flew to distant American cities — Kelner compiled an incredible 102 goals and 146 assists, with his friend Byerly putting up 282 points.

In 1975, the Twins won the Allan Cup, beating the Barrie Flyers in six games in the best-of-seven series. That team was inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

The Twins subsequently moved to the Ontario Hockey Association Senior A League, winning it in 1979.

Kelner worked seasonal construction jobs all summer and played hockey in the winter, with the team covering his expenses. After 10 years, he called it quits following the 1978-79 season.

By then, he and his wife Karen had started their family, which includes sons Kevin and Kyle.

“I worked for a small construction outfit and I was a mechanic and backhoe operator and general fixer of everything,” Kelner said. “It was equipment and everything so it wasn’t too bad.”

One of his hobbies was fixing up cars. Until very recently, Kelner still had the vehicle he drove in Brandon, a fully restored 1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT.

He also continued to play hockey but finally had to hang up the blades when he had a spinal fusion four years ago.

“I don’t do anything anymore, I just watch it on TV,” he joked. “I go and visit the boys in the dressing room and have a beer.”

He also travels to Alberta a few times a year to visit one of his sons, and finds ways to stay busy. Kelner certainly hasn’t forgotten his junior hockey adventures from five decades ago,

“It was super and it’s still working for me,” Kelner said. “Everything I do, people know me for hockey. It is pretty awesome that I had all that stuff, it’s just too bad I didn’t earn 50 or 100 million (dollars) like they do now.

“But I’m happy anyway.”

» pbergson@barndonsun.com

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