Hi, this is Fred Wallace with ” Off the Wire “.
Prominent hockey name Howie Meeker passed away last weekend, somewhat fittingly, only days before Remembrance Day.
Meeker is well known as a former Toronto Maple Leaf, a 4 time Stanley Cup winner and as the Calder Trophy winner as the NHL Rookie of the Year in the same season Gordie Howe was a freshman.
He would coach and manage the Leafs in later years, and in a testament to his passion, he was fired as General Manager prior to the 1957-58 season after a heated exchange and shoving match with the Leaf brass.
Meeker is also known as a World War II veteran and as a former Progressive Conservative MP.
If you’re my age, you remember Meeker as the host of the Howie Meeker Hockey School on CBC and as a colorful color analyst on Hockey Night in Canada and later on TSN.
That’s not to say that Howie Meeker was universally popular, certainly not in Owen Sound.
After serving in the Canadian Army, Meeker returned in 1945 and played Senior Hockey for the Stratford Indians and among their rivals were the Owen Sound Mohawks.
The Mohawks roster that year, according to Hockey DB, featured somewhat familiar names like Roger Neath, Jim Boddy, Doug Gillespie, Butch Arbour and ” Killer ” Kilpatrick.
Once on a golf course, one of the Mohawk alumni told me they passed a hat in the dressing room before a contest against Stratford and whoever nailed Howie Meeker the hardest earned the pot of money.
And years later, in the late hours of what was an Owen Sound Mercurys reunion, the talk got around to Howie Meeker and emotions boiled half a century after Meeker had played Senior for Stratford.
So hot were the emotions, that one of the Mohawk-Mercurys picked up the phone, called information, and somehow got Howie Meeker’s home number in British Columbia.
When Meeker answered the phone that night, the Mohawk-Mercury caller said, ” Howie Meeker ?……You couldn’t carry Tommy Burlington’s Hockey Bag !!! ”
Then the phone was slammed down at both ends of the connection in Ontario and in B.C.
Howie Meeker.
I’m Fred Wallace