Hockey Was My Game
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I know the world doesn’t think of me as a hockey player. I’m sure most of my readers think of me as some sort of sexual superstar — someone to look up to and idolize, but in my younger days, I was an athlete.
I could have turned pro in a number of sports: football, basketball, synchronized knitting, but hockey was my game. Most of you wouldn’t know that because I was winding down my career just as the rest of you were starting out. I played back when hockey was a man’s game – not the namby-pamby, sissy sport it is today. When I played it was for the love of the sport not for the money. I played in the glory years of Canada’s game, the 30s and the 40s.
Oh I know people get sick of listening to us old farts talk about how tough we were back in the old days, but we were tough – damned tough. I learned the game outside on a frozen Lake Couchiching with the gale-force winds howling down from the Arctic.
We were all hard as nails back then. We played hardball with our bare hands. We played football in our bare feet. Only a sissy wore a helmet. That might explain why most of us old guys drool a lot and save elastic bands; I have thousands of them.
We played hockey outside every day all winter long. In the 30s the lakes and puddles froze up in the wintertime. Someone changed the Laws of Physics in the ‘60s and now ice will only form in heated arenas. No wonder kids get colds and have allergies. The little buggers are never outside. We played when it was 40 below zero – 40 below Fahrenheit, not that wishy-washy Celsius crap.
It was cold. I remember taking a leak outside one morning and the stream froze. I stood there all day. Finally my old man came down to the lake with a blowtorch and melted me loose. After that I peed in my pants like everyone else.
I remember back in ‘34 there was no snow. The lake was like glass as far as the eye could see and crystal clear too. We could stand on the town dock and count the beer bottles lying on the bottom.
I remember a kid named Stinky Phipps. Stinky got a break away and took off up the lake. God, that kid was fast. We stopped chasing him around Big Chief Island. Stinky kept on going. He finally quit skating just north of Sundridge, changed his name to Bucko McDonald and was signed by the Maple Leafs.
Later, after he had his brains knocked out, he retired and went into politics where the big money was. Politics was one of the few jobs available back then where having brains wasn’t a requirement – still is.
In fact having a few brains in Parliament today is considered a liability and even the Prime Minister hasn’t much more than Grade Five.
It was right out there on the lake I got my big break. We were playing shinny one afternoon, January 4, 1933. I remember that afternoon like it was yesterday. Conn Smythe came up with a couple of scouts because he heard I was pretty good. Conn pulled up in a 1927 Stutz Bearcat Touring Car. Let me tell you that car was a big deal in Orillia: we still used horses up here until 1972. In fact we needed the horses. We couldn’t afford pucks. We used frozen horse buns. You always knew when spring was here. If you got hit on the head with a slap shot and it was soft and smelled real bad, it was time to put away the skates and pick up the old ball glove.
But I was telling you about Conn: I remember that moment so well. He called from the car, “Hey boy,” he said, “Come over here.”
An hour later I was playing with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I played with all the great stars over the years and taught them a lot. I remember we were practising in the Montreal Forum one Wednesday afternoon and a young French-Canadian kid came up to me. “Monsieur le Rocket” he said (That’s what they called me back then, Rocket Foster, because I was so fast – that and the shape of my head.) “Monsieur Le Rocket, je would lak to be un player de hockey.”
The kid could hardly speak English. I took him down to the St. Lawrence and taught him how to skate lak de wind and shoot de puck. I could see right away he was going to be one of the truly great players in the game, so I gave young Maurice my name “The Rocket”. I changed mine to Syl Apps.
In ‘36, we got up a pick-up team together and entered the Winter Olympics in Baden Baden. Most of you folks are too young to remember the ‘36 Olympics but it was very, very, political. I mind Hitler himself came to all the games and was always trying to get us to play for his team. He even offered us free Dortmunder beer, but we weren’t interested. We were Canadians and proud of it.
Himmler coached the German team. They were sponsored by the big Heidelberg Printing Press Company and they called themselves Der Heidelberg Scnellpressenfrabrik Veinerscnitszel Uber Alles Rangers.
There wasn’t room on one sweater for the full name so they stretched it across three jerseys. That was great for us. Whenever they went into the corner, you always knew that Der Heidelbergshnell would be on the left, Pressenfabrickveiner would be in the centre and Schnitzel Uber Alles would be on the right hand side.
They brought their own cheerleaders, pretty blond frauleins in lederhosen and pigtails. At the start of the game the girls began their cheer. “Give me an H, Give me an E, give me an I, give me a D”. By the time they finished uber alles, it was July, the ice had melted and everyone had gone home.
Language was a real problem for us in Baden Baden. Newsy Lalonde and I slipped into Berlin one night for dinner and a couple of steins of beers. Newsy didn’t even speak English let alone German and neither did I, so I ordered for both of us in Italian. The owner of the restaurant, Wolfgang Hossenfeffer, looked confused and brought out his two daughters.
Mine was delicious. Newsy slept with his. I wish I had thought of that.
The next morning, we beat the Germans 36 – 0. Hitler was so mad he invaded Czechoslovakia and everything went downhill after that.
Next week – the NHL
(Image Supplied)
