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215 pages

English

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'A pioneering and beloved Canadian legend comes to life Father David Bauer changed lives at the rink, in the classroom, and at the pulpit. Bauer's dream created the first truly national Canadian hockey team. In 1963, that unique group represented Canada abroad and were committed to both country and to Father Bauer. Whether shepherding the hockey program at St. Michael's College in Toronto or the men s national team out of the University of British Columbia, Bauer was both spiritual leader and trailblazer. Through exhaustive research and countless interviews, author Greg Oliver explores a Canadian icon, the teams that he put on the ice, and the rocky, almost unfathomable years of the 1970s when Canada didn't play international hockey. Finally, for the first time ever, the whole story of Father Bauer s critical importance to Canada's game is told in the rich detail it deserves, and a beloved icon is celebrated for his contributions to our nation's sporti

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Hockey sobre hielo

Ice hockey

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	11 avril 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781770909991
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

FATHER BAUER AND THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
THE GENESIS OF CANADIAN OLYMPIC HOCKEY
GREG OLIVER

This one is for my dad, who has called Kitchener-Waterloo home for most of his life. He taught me so much over the years, but the greatest lesson was how to stay strong by your spouse. Love you, Pop.

CONTENTS
Foreword by Jim Gregory
Introduction
Chapter 1 | THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
Chapter 2 | GROWING UP BAUER
Chapter 3 | BOBBY AND THE KRAUTS
Chapter 4 | THE DUTCHMEN FAIL TO FLY
Chapter 5 | CAPTAIN OF THE MAJORS
Chapter 6 | GOD 1, HOCKEY 0
Chapter 7 | SCHOOL DAYS
Chapter 8 | MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Chapter 9 | FATHER GOES WEST
Chapter 10 | THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO
Chapter 11 | AN OLYMPIAN TASK
Chapter 12 | THE INNSBRUCK INCIDENT
Chapter 13 | RED, WHITE, AND MAROON
Chapter 14 | JACKIE’S BOYS
Chapter 15 | CZECHS AND REFEREES
Chapter 16 | CARL BREWER AND THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
Chapter 17 | END OF THE CRUSADES
Chapter 18 | MAN OF THE WORLD
Chapter 19 | AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
Chapter 20 | CANADA SHUNS THE WORLD
Chapter 21 | THE SUMMIT SERIES
Chapter 22 | BACK IN THE GAME
Chapter 23 | IN THE SHADOW OF A MIRACLE
Chapter 24 | IN THE TWILIGHT
Chapter 25 | THE BAUER COACHING MANUAL
Photos
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Interviews
Statistics
Index
About the Author
Copyright

FOREWORD
By Jim Gregory, Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2007
Without Father David Bauer, I would not be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I would not have been the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, or a vice-president of the National Hockey League. The Order of Hockey in Canada would have gone to someone else in 2015. Heck, Father Bauer even performed the wedding ceremony for my wife, Rosalie, and I, and baptized our first child.
So who was Father Bauer and why does he matter?
He was the most remarkable man that I ever met in all my years, and his story, told here in its entirety for the first time, is equally fascinating.
The Canadian Olympic hockey program, as it exists today, began under Father Bauer. The education programs in junior hockey have him at their core. He played a major role in the growth of international hockey and the resulting Europeans coming to play in North America.
He foresaw things. Back in the early ’60s, he used to tell me, “You know, we’re going to have problems. The Russians are getting too good. We’re not going to be able to handle them. They don’t have a professional league, so all their guys are on one team.”
With an older brother, Bobby, who was a star on the Kraut Line with the Bruins in the NHL, David Bauer learned the game from some of the greats. He took that knowledge and mixed it with his personal experiences and beliefs to become the most unique of hockey men.
His ideas and perspective on hockey weren’t pie-in-the-sky thinking; they were often proved right. I used to listen to him—on the ice, in the dressing room, in the office—as he shared tips. He would tell me things about hockey that you just wouldn’t know if you were working in another job or just watching on TV. I never stopped seeking him out for advice.
My own attempts to play junior hockey at St. Michael’s College in Toronto in the early 1950s may not have panned out—I was cut twice—but Father Bauer encouraged me to stick around and help out with the Midget team he ran. There isn’t much I didn’t get involved with, from running errands to organizing equipment to recruiting players. It all helped as I went on through hockey.
On Sunday, August 6, 1961, Father picked me up in the car he had borrowed from his sister, but didn’t tell me where we were going. It was Maple Leaf Gardens, and we met with Stafford Smythe, who was running the team.
“Is this the guy you were telling me about?” Smythe asked Father, who nodded. Stafford looked at me and said, “What makes you think you can work in hockey?” That’s how I got my job. He hired me right there, strictly on Father’s recommendation. I left my job at Colgate-Palmolive and never looked back.
He had that sort of influence on countless people, changing lives for the better.
Father Bauer was the most knowledgeable, conscientious, caring person I ever met.
Now you get to meet him too.

INTRODUCTION
Wobbling behind his team’s bench during a pivotal Olympic game with Sweden, blood dripping from a small gash above his right eye, Father David Bauer had a decision to make. He could allow his “Boys”—Canada’s national hockey team—freedom to avenge the errant toss of a broken stick which hit their beloved leader.
Or he could practice what he preached.
He took the high road and changed the perception of Canadian hockey abroad.
“The whole team was quite incensed at the Swedish player throwing the stick at Father Bauer,” recalled Paul Conlin, a left winger with the team that played at the 1964 Games in Innsbruck, Austria. “He got us under control right away and it never developed into an incident. In fact, I think the incident helped us quite a bit, helped our image quite a bit, or helped Father Bauer’s image for sure.”
An athlete all through his life, with a bashed-in nose to prove it, Bauer’s strong grasp held back a couple of players who were heading over the boards, the Swedish player Carl-Goran Öberg directly in their sights.
Centreman Roger Bourbonnais’s major recollection is Bauer’s calmness through it all. “We really respected him, so you played his style, and that was discipline and perseverance and excellence in what you do.”
Of course, history has a way of bending and adjusting to suit the current storyline, and martyrs aren’t always what they seem.
Eight minutes into the third period, Canadian defenceman Barry MacKenzie crushed Öberg with a boneshaking and stickbreaking hit. The Nats on the bench roared in appreciation, giving Öberg the gears as he got up from the ice. The stick was tossed in frustration and anger at the yappy Canadian players. They ducked. Their coach did not.
Bauer, wearing black and his clerical collar, was immediately tended to by trainer Johnny Owen. Later it was worth a chuckle—most of the players had cut themselves worse shaving.
There was even a point later in the contest where Coach Bauer asked MacKenzie, “You going to get that Öberg back?” Jumping up from his seat on the bench to get on the ice, MacKenzie promised revenge. “Well, sit down then,” said Bauer.
The thrown stick became part of lore, living on in a way that the game (a 3–1 win for Canada) itself didn’t; perhaps if the “Nats” hadn’t been so achingly close to a medal.
Sensing an opportunity to be in the spotlight he so craved, Canada’s number one nemesis abroad, John F. “Bunny” Ahearne, the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, decreed that Öberg would be suspended for a game, as would referee Gennaro Olivieri of Switzerland, who failed to penalize Öberg.
Speaking on behalf of the world of amateur hockey, Ahearne wanted to “thank Father Bauer for exercising control over his players on the bench after the incident.”
After the game, Bauer did more than dismiss the accident—“I happened to be in the way”—and forgive Öberg; he invited the Swede to be his guest to watch the tilt between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia the next night. “He’s a fine, clean-cut boy,” said Bauer. The left winger and the priest were already acquainted, as Sweden had toured Canada for a series of exhibition games in December of 1963, and Öberg had even attended the Toronto Maple Leafs training camp in September in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. “Little things like that happen in sport,” said the 39-year-old Father Bauer. “I know Öberg very well, and I like him a lot. A little excitable maybe, but he is still a very fine boy in my book.”
At the conclusion of the Innsbruck Games, International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage presented Father Bauer with a special IOC gold medal for character and sportsmanship.
“I think Father really earned it for being the great person he is and the way he handled everything and everybody. It could have turned into a real donnybrook,” said Canada’s general manager, Dr. Bob Hindmarch, in his memoir, Catch On and Run With It .
During the medal presentation, Ahearne said Bauer “stood there cut and bleeding and under control. He also kept his players under control too. Not only that, but the next night he took Öberg to the Russia game as his personal guest and forgave him completely. If we only had more men in this game like him it would be a much better sport.”
Amen.

Chapter 1
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
It was always about something more than hockey. The public and the press may have focused on the end results—a couple of bronze medals in Olympic and World Championship play, a win in the hometown Centennial tournament, spirited and fair play, and a whole lot of heartache—but for Father Bauer, his dream, his Great Experiment, was about both education and his country. Hockey was merely a means to an end, a pathway to patriotism and to a better life.
At a sportsman’s dinner in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in April 1966, Father David Bauer quoted American senator Robert F. Kennedy, who once said, “Part of a nation’s prestige is won at the Olympic Games.” He then shared his own thoughts on what that meant. “Our biggest problem is the task of making Canadians out of all of us,” said Bauer. “We have to start someplace and we have to help our own Canadian athletes.”
The Canadian Dream, if you will, was always a part of David Bauer, reinforced as it was by his brother Ray representing Canada (as a part of the Sudbury Wolves) at the 1949 World Championships, and then another brother, NHL great Bobby Bauer, coaching the Canadian hockey teams at the 195