Fact or Urban Legend

[Rick (Admin)]

Fact or Urban Legend

By Diane Armstrong


Did hockey players ever actually skate on the ice-covered highway between South Porcupine and Schumacher after a game? Here is part two from Over the Hill columns from the year 2000:

I contacted people in three provinces and two states. I read what seemed to be miles of microfilm, stopped people on the street, spent hours on the telephone and poured through old, musty scrapbooks of newspaper clippings.

My search was narrowed to certain generations of hockey players from the years 1947-48 through to the mid 1960s, dividing them by their classification of Juvenile, Junior A and Senior. I knew that hockey was played by many guys in the area, but I hadn’t realized just how many there were. No one had ever told me that detective work was just that – work! I continued to contact every former hockey player I knew, and many I didn’t know personally.

Then Hazel Kulik told me that several years before, CBC radio personality Peter Gzowski did a programme about hockey stories. She and her husband Eddie were driving just south of Orillia and heard the story on the radio.

“Eddie nearly drove us off the road when he heard his name mentioned in regards to the ice-covered roads and having to skate back home several miles after a hockey game. Yes, it really did happen. I met Eddie in 1959, so it happened sometime in the 1950s,” said Hazel.

The Love of My Life became just as curious about the legend and asked a fellow golfer if he had ever heard the story. “Heard it? I did it!!!” That man’s name was Lou Frapporti and he played Senior hockey for the Macmen. Lou told me the event happened during the 1950-51 season. They put on their equipment at the McIntyre arena, as was their custom and went out to South Porcupine for a game against the Porkies. Lou says that because the roads were so bad, they skated to South Porcupine, played the game and skated back home after.

Mike Delich told me, “In 1953, the Hollinger and McIntyre Senior clubs had joined together and called themselves the Hollmacs. I played for them. We had a game against the Porkies in South End one night and I know that I left my skates on and skated back home. The roads were so icy, it was the only way we could travel.”

“In 1949-50, I played Juvenile hockey for the South Porcupine Teepees,” said Art Stanlake. “It was our custom to dress in our gear at the home rink and wear our boots on the bus while carrying our skates. When the game was over, we were leaving the Mac and we met the Junior A Combines who had just played a game against the Senior Porkies in South End. They were the only Junior team at the time and played in the Senior League.”

Art continues, “They told us that the roads were so bad with ice, they had skated back to the arena. We figured if they could skate up Rae Hill, it would be a cinch for us to skate down it, so seven of us took off, boots under our arms and we skated in the freezing rain. We even passed a taxi using tire chains. At the Wye, we saw the Combine’s bus in the ditch. We passed it as well. Yes the story is true. I was there.”

So the tale wasn’t an Urban Legend. It really happened. Not once, not twice but at least three times and the teams involved were Juvenile, Junior A and Senior.

The years were different, but it really did happen and it truly doesn’t matter whether it was on a Friday or a Saturday night.

That’s my view from Over the Hill.


www.timminstimes.com/2013/03/21/over-the-hill-with-diane-armstrong-for-march-21-2013