Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame calls on Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/10/2023 (928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new initiative by the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame will be drawing heavily on a pair of Brandon teams and one of the game’s great innovators.

An induction ceremony in Winnipeg on Dec. 20 will include the induction of the 1956-57 Brandon Regals, plus the 1959-64 Brandon Wheat Kings, while George Tackaberry is being honoured in the builder category.

Historically, a new class was inducted every two years at a gala event, but Hall of Fame president Jordy Douglas said the board has decided to add a new veterans class in a special new way.

“We have a plethora of these veterans who played and represented Manitoba and Winnipeg in hockey from the turn of the last century and on,” Douglas said. “We thought ‘How do we include them in the hall as regular members and honour them?’ They came before most of everybody we currently put in the hall.

“The issue is that a majority of the players are long since deceased but we want to honour them nevertheless. This is our first veterans induction luncheon.”

Veterans are defined as players who are 50 years or more removed from the game.

The ceremony will be held on the provincially designated Manitoba Hockey Heritage Day after an event that occurred 133 years ago. The first game of organized hockey in Manitoba was played on the Assiniboine River on Dec. 20, 1890 between the Winnipegs and the Victorias. Admission at the Winnipeg Street Railway Rink was 15 cents.

The two Brandon teams share a connection.

Back then, the Wheat Kings played in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, other than during a hiatus from 1954 to 1958 when the squad went dormant. The Regals moved into the city during that time, playing here for two seasons from 1955 to 1957 in the old minor pro Western Hockey League.

“The Brandon Regals won the 1956-57 Western Hockey League championship and were the Edinburgh Cup finalists,” Douglas said. “That was a one-year team.”

The roster included Bill Bucyk, Bob Chorley, Elliot Chorley, Bob Chrystal, Les Colwill, Lucien Dechene, Len Haley, Ted Hampson, Earl “Ching” Johnson, Norm Johnson, Eldred Kobussen, Frank Kubica, Les Lilley, Vic Lynn, Ray Manson, Howie Milford, Don Raleigh, Bill Voss, Lyle Willey, Charles Woodland and Howie Yanosik.

The Wheat Kings are being honoured as a dynasty, with the 1959-60, 1960-61, 1961-62, 1962-63 and 1963-64 teams included.

• 1959-60 (23-6-3, first place in MJHL, won league) — Ron Baryluk, Terry Bicknell, Keith Dickie , Edgar Ehrenverth, Wayne Fawcett, Wayne Gurba, Bryan Hextall, George Hill, Don Holmes, Jack Matheson, Dunc McCallum, George Peary, Gordon Rice, Tom Ross, Ted Taylor, Gus Vachon, Bob Wilson. Coach: Jake Milford.

• 1960-61 (24-8-0, first place in MJHL, lost 4-2 in final to Winnipeg Rangers) — Bob Allen, Denny Battigelli, Keith Dickie, Wayne Fawcett, Ron Gurba, Wayne Gurba, Phil Headley, Bryan Hextall, George Hill, Barry Hogan, Gerry Kell, Dave Mazur, Chuck Meighen, Ted Taylor, Gus Vachon, John Vopni, Jim Wilcox. Coach: Walter (Ollie) Dorohoy.

• 1961-62 (26-12-2, first place in MJHL, won league) — Bob Allen, Bob Ash, Rick Brown, Marc Dufour, Warren Fordyce, Leon Garinger, Ben Harper, Dennis Hextall, Dave Janaway, Gerry Kell, Ed Maher, Dave Mazur, Chuck Meighen, Jim Murray, Ted Taylor, John Vopni. Coach: Walter (Ollie) Dorohoy.

• 1962-63 (32-7-0, first place in MJHL, won league) — Bob Ash, Bob Brown, Ron Dietrich, Leon Garinger, Dennis Hextall, George Hayes, Brian James, Dave Janaway, Ken Katchulak, Gerry Korp, Lloyd Leslie, Ed Maher, Jim Murray, Tracy Pratt, Bob Stoyko, John Vopni. Coach: Ron Maxwell.

• 1963-64 (27-1-2, first place in MJHL, won league) — Cam Allison, Bob Ash, Crawford Bell, Jim Bell, Rod Collins, Leon Garinger, Jean Louis Goyette, George Hayes, Rick Hextall, Ken Hicks, Ron Huston, Felix Lavallee, Ken Katchulak, Bill Kufflick, Bob Lehner, Lloyd Leslie, Larry McKillop, Jim Murray, John Vopni. Coach: Ron Maxwell.

The Hall is contacting as many players as they can find through their contacts and then hoping that will lead to discovering even more.

“It really becomes an exercise in connecting the dots,” Douglas said.

Anyone with information on a player can email — all one word with no hyphens or periods Admin@mbhockeyhalloffame.ca — or head to mbhockeyhalloffame.ca for more information.

Legend has it that Tackaberry lived in Brandon next to (Bad Joe) Joseph Henry Hall, who complained to him in 1904 about the quality of his skates.

Tackaberry, who had apprenticed as a shoemaker, took up the challenge and built him a pair from scratch after measuring his feet.

Word quickly spread, and Tackaberry was soon swamped with orders for his “Tack” skates. He died on Nov. 19, 1937 and CCM acquired the rights to the name and design secrets.

(If Hall’s name sounds familiar, he’s the player who succumbed to the Spanish flu in 1919, days after the NHL final between the Montreal Canadiens and the Seattle Metropolitans was cancelled.)

Meanwhile, the players who are being honoured are:

• Sonny Rost (1914-2008), a Winnipeg defenceman who spent his pro career in the United Kingdom and was inducted into the British Hockey Hall of Fame in 1955.

• Charles Stuart Tobin (1885-1924), a Winnipeg defenceman who most notably in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) and appeared in four Stanley Cup finals.

• Paul Carl Meger (1929-2019), a Selkirk forward who spent his six-year National Hockey League career with the Montreal Canadiens, putting up 91 points in 212 games.

Douglas, who played 268 games in the National Hockey League and 51 games in the World Hockey Association, has been on the board for about 15 years.

At one time, a committee would sit down and pick the nominees by themselves. That eventually gave way to nominations only, but still meant people were being missed.

“We went from one extreme where our board picked the class, to then going exclusively to nominations, and we’ve just morphed it one more time so that we a nomination committee and a selection committee on our board, and neither meet,” Douglas said. “Our nomination committee goes about finding those who have been missed on the nomination side — in other words, they do the homework to find these guys — and they make the recommendation to the section committee, but you can’t sit on both.”

The new system is a great blend of the earlier approaches, but it unearthed an existing problem in the entire process.

“Who is going to talk about those who played in 1890 and 1905?” Douglas asked. “We used to always put a player and team in every dinner in honour of veterans only to find out there’s a lot of these people. The depth of the history is phenomenal.”

The new luncheon allows more historical players to be inducted and doesn’t preclude the Hall from adding more during the biennial gala.

The major event is a big fundraiser for the Hall but the veterans’ luncheon was intended to be a less formal affair because many players have died. The thought process was that it would be by invitation only, but as word has spread and interest has grown, the event may yet be opened up to the public.

“This is our first go-round so we didn’t know what to expect,” Douglas said. “We want to make it informal but formal in its presentation.”

The very nature of sport, in which teams and fans are inevitably looking ahead, usually means that last week’s game becomes a distant memory and last season is largely forgotten. That ensures Hall of Fames will always have a place to make sure the past isn’t left behind.

“That’s what a Hall of Fame is about,” Douglas said. “It’s not about what you did today, it’s what you did yesterday, and yesterday isn’t just last week, it’s 10 years ago and 100 years ago.”

“All those people who went before us created the game and the atmosphere that exists today. We owe it to them to honour those who went before us.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson