Willie

by Willie O'Ree

  In those days we didn’t have helmets, or visors, or mouthguards. And since we were all at risk, we didn’t hit other players to hurt them. It was rare that anyone got injured by a good clean check. We respected each other. In fact, it wasn’t until I played in the NHL, in a game against Chicago in 1961, that I lost any teeth—two of them, when I was butt-ended in the mouth by Eric Nesterenko.

  Of course, it wasn’t always cold enough to play outdoor hockey. That’s when we played street hockey…

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  I went to two elementary schools in Fredericton—first Smythe Street School, just two and a half blocks from my house, then, for grades seven and eight, York Street School, two and a half blocks in the other direction. Both are closed now, and the latter has been converted into condos.

  My favorite subjects were social studies, because I liked learning about the world, and mathematics, because I could see how numbers were a kind of language when you got the hang of them. Speaking of language, I wasn’t good at spelling and consider spell-check one of the greatest inventions of humankind.

  Out of all those years my favorite teacher was Mrs. Smith, who taught me in grade three. She was a very nice lady, very motherly toward us, and she loved teaching. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I learned a lot about how to talk to students from how she spoke to us. She was really interested in what we thought. Kids know when adults are listening and when they’re just pretending to listen. She was the real deal.

  I also remember a couple of principals, Mr. Close and Mr. Clowater, but those memories are painful. Today kids resolve conflict by talking to each other about it, but when I was at school, problems were resolved in the principal’s office the old-fashioned way. It was pretty harsh justice, and to me, not justice at all. I was sent to the office once for leaving the playground without permission—I don’t remember why, I’d probably gone after an errant ball—and another time for making jokes in the classroom, and another time for fighting back against a bully. The kid hadn’t been picking on me but on the little kids, so I’d stepped in and told him to pick on someone his own size. “Or else?” he said, and my answer was to pop him in the nose. Then I had to answer for it.

  When you went to the principal’s office, you knew what was about to happen. You were going to get the strap—a big, tough piece of leather that the principal would whack down on your hand. (I’d try to pull my hand back just before the strap hit so that the principal would have to do it again.) If the offense was serious enough—like maybe you’d given some sass back—he’d strap you twice. That hurt. And afterward he wouldn’t try to shake your throbbing hand to show what a good fellow he was even though he’d just deliberately injured a child; he’d just say, “Get out of here and I don’t want to see you back again.” I’m glad we’ve moved past that barbaric way of dealing with problems in schools. Or at least, most schools have. In the U.S., there are still nineteen states that allow corporal punishment, including spanking, paddling, and strapping. Most of these schools, no surprise to me, are in the South.

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  When I wasn’t getting in trouble, I was being holy—but I still got in trouble. I’ve spoken of Michael Coster, one of my best pals in those days; we played baseball together and he lived on my street, seven houses away. Sometimes Mike and I would go to our church, St. Anne’s Anglican, and sit in the back pew and kind of giggle during the service. Mike’s father would give us heck. Not only was it bad manners for the minister’s son to be laughing during church, it was just as bad that we were laughing while Mike’s dad was trying to work.

  The craziest thing Mike and I ever did was when we were ten or eleven. The two of us went out right in front of Mike’s house and lay down on the busy street, our hands behind our heads, just relaxing, cars honking away at us as if to wake the dead, which was part of our plan. Mike’s dad came flying out of the house when he heard all the noise. “What the H are you kids doing?” he shouted, sounding both angry and scared. We explained that we wanted to know what it felt like to be dead. Even the minister had to laugh at that one.

  That same street figured into my life the only time the police were called. We used to play baseball in the middle of the road, and on this one occasion, even though we hadn’t broken any windows, the neighbors called in a complaint. When the police came we hid; once they’d gone we came out and played ball again; then the police came back. When they told us we had to stop because there’d been complaints, we were quite bold in telling them that there’d been only one complaint, and that they didn’t like us just because we were kids. The police laughed then, and told us that to keep the peace we should play down at the park.

  The one time the police should have been called, they weren’t. There used to be this old guy named Sam who traveled the streets of Fredericton buying beer bottles. The big ones were worth three cents, the little ones a penny. Sam had a horse and a red wagon and a bell; you’d see him coming. So my friends and I would gather some bottles and then hail Sam. He would get down from his wagon, and while some of us were selling him the bottles, the others would run around behind his wagon and steal some of the ones he already had. Sam wouldn’t see a thing; he’d just give us our money and drive off. Then we’d dash over to the next block, hail him again, and sell him back his own bottles. It seems a terrible thing to have done now, but we were just having fun and making a bit of money.

  So when I went to church on Sundays, I had some forgiveness to ask for. And when I was a kid in the 1930s and early 40s, our old neighborhood church, now called St. Anne’s Chapel of Ease, was where my mother and sister Betty and I would go. I already spent a lot more time with my mother than my father, but on Sunday mornings we were together a lot.

  I used to go to Sunday school, and I sang in the choir—until my voice changed—and I was an altar boy as well. I loved being up on the altar in that beautiful stone church, lighting the candles and swinging the incense and helping the priest perform the mass. I loved it so much that some Sundays I’d be there twice—at the communion service at eight a.m. and then again at the choir service at eleven a.m.

  I still go to church today, especially when I’m back home in Fredericton. On my last visit I went twice on a Sunday—to the Catholic church with my friend Junior, and then to the Anglican church. I like being there, thinking about life, and why we’re here, and what it all means. My answer to that last question is something I’m still working on.

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  My father would sometimes go to church with us, but most often he’d stay home and consider the world and his place in it on the living room sofa with the newspaper. It was when we got back from church that Sunday became a family day. My brother Richard was married and living in Barker’s Point, but we used to get together on Saturdays and buy things at the local market for our Sunday feast.

  What we didn’t get from the market we got from our garden, which was a good size. I considered it partly my turf because I certainly worked it with my dad, helping him plow it and then tending it during the week. We’d grow corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, radish, and rhubarb. I knew what I had to do when I came home from school. I’d get my homework over with and then do everything in the garden that needed to be done: weeding, picking vegetables, you name it. I didn’t have to be told twice. And after that, I’d play sports.

  We also had a henhouse, where we kept chickens for eggs and for meat. Chicken was my favorite meal, and I used to help my dad do the slaughtering when we needed one for Sunday dinner. Killing a chicken didn’t bother me; the biggest challenge was catching it: they’re fast when they’re trying to escape a predator, which would be me with an axe. When you caught one, you’d put its head on the chopping block and then you’d take the axe, striking clean and true on the chicken’s neck so that it didn’t have a head anymore. (It sounds pretty gruesome, but it’s the most humane way to do it.) Th
en we’d dunk the headless chicken in a pot of boiling water to loosen its feathers for plucking. My father would take care of the rest, like taking out the liver and heart and cleaning the innards, before my mom actually cooked it. The experience made me connect to the food chain in a way that is still with me. You learn about life when you kill your own food.

  My favorite day of the week was Saturday, though. Every Saturday night my mom would bake brown bread and make a big pot of brown beans. She also used to make boiled cabbage and corned beef, and my dad loved baked pork chops. I’d eat whatever was on the table. I had an athlete’s appetite, but I don’t remember ever being hungry. But on Saturdays in winter, all I wanted to do was get dinner inside me. For on those nights, I had a pressing appointment with the radio.

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  Since TV didn’t exist when I was young, the radio was how we engaged in the wider world. And on Saturdays, the wider world meant Hockey Night in Canada. I was dying to hear what my hero Maurice “Rocket” Richard was doing for the Montreal Canadiens. Rocket Richard was, to me, a hero’s hero. A member of eight Stanley Cup championship teams, he was a fourteen-time All-Star player, and he was fast—that’s why he was called the Rocket. He showed me—well, Foster Hewitt’s voice told me—what speed could do for a team: win. When the Rocket retired, he was the highest-goal-scoring player so far in pro hockey.

  Foster Hewitt, as the voice behind the games, did about as much for the game as any star player. He made every Saturday night special for a hockey-crazed kid in Fredericton. And not just me. Hewitt made Saturday night magical for “hockey fans in Canada and the United States and Newfoundland,” who, just like the O’Rees of Charlotte Street, would gather around their radios to listen to Hewitt paint us a picture of our favorite teams and our favorite players.

  He was the guy who created and defined hockey broadcasting. Although he’d started out in the early 1920s as a sportswriter for the Toronto Daily Star, his sports savvy helped make him the voice of hockey. When he began announcing games on the radio in 1923, his high-pitched nasal voice made famous that phrase “He shoots! He scores!” And his voice would crackle when he got excited or rise when he had to shout over the roaring crowd—it was all so exciting and dramatic.

  Hewitt created such wonderful pictures of the Rocket blasting in on some poor goalie that those games seemed as if they were taking place right out back on the rink in our yard. I never dreamed at the time that one day I’d be on Hockey Night in Canada myself. As a player.

  Kids today probably watch their heroes on highlight reels and YouTube more than any other way. But I never once watched the Rocket. His legendary rushes and fiery intensity came to life in my imagination so vividly that I remember them as if I’d been right there in the Forum in Montreal to see them. Those epic games played out entirely in my mind.

  I sometimes wonder whether my life would have been different, or somehow felt different, if I’d grown up watching Richard and other NHLers on television. That is, if I saw what they looked like. I never saw the red, white, and blue of the Habs sweaters, but I also never saw black and white—because it wasn’t there for me to see. All I ever imagined as a kid was the game itself. The question of color was never part of it. It’s interesting to think that the tradition of Hockey Night in Canada on the family radio, which was so much a part of Canadians’ lives back then, allowed me to imagine a version of the game that had a place for a player like me.

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  I even learned that black people had played hockey in Canada for quite a while—ever since the late 1800s, in fact.

  By that time Canada’s Maritime provinces had significant black populations—descendants of those who’d migrated north during the American War of Independence in the 1770s, as my ancestor Paris O’Ree did, or of those who’d escaped slavery during the American Civil War in the 1860s. And yet, when the Halifax City Hockey League (HCHL) was formed in 1894, it was for whites only. There was, in some circles, a pseudoscientific theory that black people had weak ankles and no aptitude for the game. Therefore, why would we want to play?

  So the next year, 1895, Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian law student at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, joined forces with Pastor James Borden of the Dartmouth Lake Baptist Church to create the Coloured Hockey League (CHL), whose founding teams were the Halifax Eurekas, the Halifax Stanleys, and the Dartmouth Jubilees. (“Colored” was considered an acceptable term for black people right up until the mid-1960s.) Its formation was a way to encourage black youth to go to church (games happened after Sunday services), and black identity was very much part of the league.

  In March 1899 the Halifax Eurekas played an exhibition game against the HCHL’s Dartmouth Chebuctos, an all-white team. The Eurekas won the game 9 to 7 in the first recorded instance of interracial hockey, as it were. Black people could not only play hockey, but they could play it well enough to beat a pretty good team of white players.

  The Colored Hockey League grew, and in 1900 expanded to include the Africville Sea-Sides, Hammond Plains Moss Backs, Truro Victorias/Sheiks, Amherst Royals, and Charlottetown West End Rangers of Prince Edward Island. Now it was called the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHLM). (Meanwhile, Ontario, for example, didn’t have separate black and white leagues. Hipple “Hippo” Galloway played for the Woodstock team in the Central Ontario Hockey Association, and Charley Lightfoot played for Stratford. But eventually Galloway, who also played baseball, left the game to barnstorm with a black baseball team—after an American player on his otherwise all-white baseball team objected to his presence.)

  The CHLM took on new leadership at the hands of A.R. Kinney, a businessman, and James Robinson Johnston, a lawyer. The league was organized on a “challenge cup system,” where the previous winner retained the title of league champion unless another team vied for it and won. The business and law connections of Kinney and Johnston attracted other successful black managers—and press coverage. White reporters loved the fast, physical play and the innovations the CHLM introduced, such as a goaltender dropping to his knees to stop a puck (that would be Henry “Braces” Franklyn of the Dartmouth Jubilees) and an early form of the slapshot (thanks to Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eurekas). These plays hadn’t yet been allowed or even imagined in the white leagues. So, during the CHLM’s golden years, from 1900 to 1905, its games often drew greater attendance numbers than white league games: between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred spectators, both black and white.

  But even though the league was popular and its players talented, the black teams couldn’t challenge for the Stanley Cup. Once Lord Stanley had donated his silver jug as hockey’s championship trophy in 1893, teams could challenge the Cup holder to try to win it. The champions held the Cup until they lost their league title to another club, or until a champion from another league issued a formal challenge and subsequently defeated them in a special game or series. Some seasons saw the Cup change owners several times. Now, there was nothing in this Stanley Cup challenge that prevented black teams from participating—except for the segregation already in place: the Coloured League had to begin its season after the white leagues had finished theirs. In other words, it was the only league playing.

  So the players didn’t stay in the black leagues out of preference. If they wanted to play the game they loved at the highest level, they stayed out of necessity.

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  All my knowledge about people despising you because of the color of your skin, whether in hockey or in life, was to come later. When I was a little boy, all I knew was that hockey was my life, and that “black” meant the puck and “white” meant the ice. The only color that mattered then was silver: we all wanted to win the Stanley Cup, and we won it a thousand times on those rinks of childhood.

  I played hockey because I couldn’t imagine what life would be like if I didn’t play it. I believed I�
�d be squandering my talents if I didn’t get myself out on the ice to do my thing. The game was the reason I was put on earth, and nothing was going to stop me from playing it.

  Hockey would take me far from home and onto the brightest professional stage the game knows. It would give me a home, feed my family, and win me friends. It would give me some of my happiest and saddest moments. Most importantly, it made me proud of who I am and what I do. And it made my dreams come true. So that’s where the next part of my story begins.

  3.

  RAISING MY GAME

  You might say that I owe my hockey career to a broken collarbone. It happened during my first year at Fredericton High School, after I’d joined the school’s team. The coach’s son was playing on it too, which can sometimes be a problem, depending on the coach. This time it was a problem.

  I was on the ice and the coach’s son was skating toward me with the puck. He had his head down. The first thing you learn after you’ve mastered skating: keep your head up! Anyway, as he was admiring his skates, I stepped into him, knocking him to the ice and, as it turned out, breaking his collarbone. The coach was very upset, telling me that this wasn’t the way hockey was played at Fredericton High School. Just like that, I was off the team.

  I was disappointed, of course, but it was getting kicked off the team that directed me to the path that would take me to the pros. By the time I was fifteen I was playing for the Fredericton Falcons in the New Brunswick Amateur Hockey Association. I was playing hockey all the time—and when I wasn’t, I was thinking it and dreaming it or listening to it on the radio. And, of course, I was trying to keep up with my schoolwork, which became more challenging as the years went on. Mainly because my head was on the ice. If you grew up playing hockey, you know what I mean. There’s just no way school can capture your imagination the way hockey does. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. School is important! But the reality is, for some people, hockey is just about the most exciting thing in the world. You live and breathe it. You think about it all the time: things you’d like to try, things you’d do differently, things you might improve. And then there’s just daydreaming. It takes a lot of work to focus on something other than hockey when you love it as much as many of us do.