Historian digs deep into Neepawa’s history

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This article was published 18/02/2021 (1689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rick Sparling left Neepawa at age 18 in 1963, but a big part of his heart has remained in the Westman community ever since.

This much has become apparent in his post-retirement hobby of chronicling the town’s history, which eats up much of his time.

“It’s my hometown — I love the place,” he said by phone from his Winnipeg home last week. “The friends I grew up with, we still golf together and bowl together and all that stuff.”

He only ever left because of limited job opportunities of the day, and ended up forging a career in furniture and appliances in Winnipeg.

While working to finalize the printing of his fourth book, he has already shifted his attention to book No. 5, on the detailed history of the Neepawa Natives Junior Hockey Club.

Book No. 4 is a collection of local history columns that were previously printed in the Neepawa Banner & Press.

Sparling’s foray into the world of writing began in 2013.

“I was getting through a period of grieving from my wife who passed away, so it kept my mind busy, and then I got the bug and I love doing the research and all that kind of stuff,” he said. He also finally had time, having retired the previous year.

His love of research began years earlier with the creation of a family tree, for which he tracked his lineage all the way back to 1660.

The writing side of the equation began with columns about history in the Neepawa Banner & Press and a community newspaper in Winnipeg.

Then came book No. 1, about the historic Public School Hockey League in Neepawa. He found all of the league’s associated trophies, shined them up and pulled information from them alongside other research.

“It was a real project, and I was really happy with that book,” he said.

Book No. 2 was about amateur hockey in Neepawa. Coming in at more than 700 pages, this effort covered hockey in Neepawa from the late 1800s to 1989.

“I probably made 100 trips to the archives downtown (Winnipeg) and went through the microfiche — my eyes were crossed for a week, I swear,” he said.

Next up was a book about local businesses, which sold approximately 370 copies.

Book No. 4, “Neepawa Memories & More,” consists of columns under three themes, including “humour defies aging,” “where are they now” about local hockey players of the past and what they’re doing now, and “memories from Central School.”

He didn’t attend Central School, but he did play outdoor hockey there and knew some students.

Printing the book has proven more complicated than expected, but once it’s done, he plans on dropping copies at the Neepawa Banner & Press office to sell, with all proceeds going toward the Roxy Theatre and Neepawa’s Community Access Television Station.

Meanwhile, book No. 5 about the Neepawa Natives is eating up a lot of his time.

“It’s a chore because I spent 70-some hours on 1989-90, and I’ve spent almost 40 hours on 1990-91, so getting all the way to 30 years has been a grind, but I keep plugging away,” he said. “It’s a project that’s kept me going.”

He has interviewed every player and coach on the team’s 1989-90 team, except for one he has been unable to get hold of, and has already spoken with 60 per cent of the following year’s team.

“When someone calls you or comes up with a photograph and that, to me it’s like I just won the lottery,” he said, adding a lot of it comes down to sitting and waiting for people to get back to him before he’s able to write, though research helps fill in some gaps.

The inaugural team is an interesting, scrappy group, he said — namely because they didn’t have a lot of players to draw from at the time.

“They had a training camp and they had just a minimal amount of people, so they had to pluck from their own area — Neepawa and the surrounding towns — and just take regular guys and play against teams like the Portage Terriers and the Dauphin Kings who were settled in the league for years already,” he said.

“They were coached to play with grit and do a lot of body contact, otherwise they didn’t have the talent these other guys had, so they won with grit.”

Although the book focuses primarily on what the players went through at the time, he said it has also been interesting to hear about what they’ve been up to since.

“There are so many guys I’ve talked to who’ve made huge successes out of themselves, and it all started from learning a lot from hockey — they learn a lot from coaches and being disciplined and things like that,” he said.

“Lots of guys have made a really good living, had a good life and big families and things like that.”

The Neepawa Natives’ story isn’t all positive, though. There was a high-profile hazing incident in 2011, and the team’s board of directors decided to discontinue use of the word “Natives” effective the 2021-22 season due to a shift in acceptable language.

A completionist, “but not a realist,” the book will bring Neepawa’s hockey history to the present day.

“I like to have it all in one source, and it’s rewarding to know there’s a history that will probably last, hopefully for a long time and people will look back on it,” he said.

In the end, it’s all about the satisfaction associated with creating something others see the value in and will enjoy. It’s not for the money — all of the profits from his efforts have gone toward something else and he doesn’t charge for his time.

The post-retirement hobby doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, and Sparling has found himself “hooked into” the Neepawa Natives’ history for the foreseeable future.

He was originally hoping to get the book done by the end of 2022, but now that he’s into it, that goal is appearing less realistic.

Regardless of its completion date, he said he’ll keep plugging away until it’s done.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB