BROBERG o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-07-28 published
Jean P. BROBERG
In loving memory of Jean P.
BROBERG ,73, who died in the Onalaska Care Centre on Friday, July 23, 2004.
She was born November 11, 1930, in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Ernest and Marian
(RICH)
ABBOTT.
She married Ernie
BROBERG and he preceded her in death on October 13, 2003. Jean truly enjoyed
spending time at their cottage, on an island, in the Rocky Bottoms on Lake Huron, Canada. She is
survived by two daughters, Sarah (Chris
ROSS) Good and Karen (Roger)
FRICKE, a son, David (Debbie)
GOOD,
six grandchildren, Shana and Megan
GOOD, Max and Zachary
ROSS, Aaron and Evan
FRICKE, a sister, Shirley
(Dale) PERRIN, a brother, George (Jane)
ABBOTT. In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death
by her parents. Memorial services were held Tuesday at 11 am in the Dickinson Family Funeral Home,
1425 Jackson Street, LaCrosse. Sister Mary Ann
RYAN, O.S.F., officiated. Burial of her remains will be on
the island in Canada, near the cottage. Friends called at the funeral home on Tuesday
from 10: 30 am until the service.
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROBERG - All Categories in OGSPI
BROOKS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2004-03-20 published
Alexander Gardner
WATSON
'Everyone said we'd never win'
How an Royal Canadian Air Force medical officer took a sad-sack
squad of airmen and built a team that brought home Olympic hockey gold
By Tom HAWTHORN,
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, March 20, 2004 - Page F11
Victoria -- He was a hockey enthusiast who turned a makeshift
team into world beaters. In 1947, Sandy
WATSON was a Royal Canadian
Air Force medical officer with an amateur's passion for hockey,
but within a year he had put together a squad of airmen that
overcame great odds to win an Olympic gold medal.
Dr. WATSON's part in the story of how the Royal Canadian Air
Force triumphed at the Olympics began with the announcement that
Canadian hockey officials had decided to skip the 1948 Winter
Games. The news so upset the doctor, who died late last year
at his home in Ottawa, that he vowed to create a team from scratch.
"When I read the headline saying we -- this great hockey nation
would not be sending a team, I was offended," he said. "And
I thought maybe I could do something about it."
The International Olympic Committee had adopted tough new rules
defining an amateur athlete. The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association
felt the new standard eliminated most senior players from the competition.
With the entry deadline just 48 hours away, Dr.
WATSON decided
on what he would later describe as a whim to build a team from
among fellow Royal Canadian Air Force members. The squadron leader
won approval from hockey officials and superior officers in two
frantic days of lobbying. Canada would take part in the Olympic
tournament after all. Now all he needed were some players.
The Royal Canadian Air Force's postwar enrolment of 16,000 promised
a wealth of hidden hockey talent. Dr.
WATSON had managed a series
of exhibition hockey games in England in the months following
the defeat of Germany, pitting the air force against the army.
The games featured such National Hockey League players as left-winger
Roy CONACHER, a sniper for Royal Canadian Air Force teams during
the war. Such professionals were ineligible for the Olympic team,
of course, so Dr.
WATSON knew the calibre of players would not be very high.
About 200 airmen were dispatched to Ottawa for a training camp
in October, 1947. The volunteers were mostly a sad-sack lot,
a shock for Dr.
WATSON and coach Frank
BOUCHER, an Royal Canadian
Air Force sergeant. Some could barely skate.
The team made its public debut in an exhibition game played at
the Auditorium in Ottawa on December 14, 1947. The opponents
were McGill University's varsity team, deliberately chosen to
offer minimal resistance. The air-force brass was in attendance,
as were senior hockey officials and the governor-general, Earl
Alexander of Tunis. To Dr.
WATSON's horror, the McGill Redmen
scored an easy 7-0 victory.
The newspapers were highly critical of the Olympic team. An all-Royal
Canadian Air Force team seemed a folly. Senior officers in the
air force could not have been happy about such a poor squad wearing
the Royal Canadian Air Force roundel on their sweaters. They
were likely to be embarrassed on the world stage.
Reinforcements were needed, so Dr.
WATSON went hunting.
"We just put the thing together overnight, almost," he told the
Medical Post in 1988. "Our guys had played together as a team
for something less than three weeks before we left. The goaltender
I never even met until we reached Europe."
Dr. WATSON's first move was to scout an Ottawa Senior League
game. The New Edinburgh Burghs beat the Hull Volants 6-2, with
five goals produced by a forward line of Reg
SCHROETER, Ab
RENAUD
and Ted HIBBERD.
Dr.
WATSON invited the trio to join his squad,
also taking former flying officer Frank
DUNSTER and Pete
LEICHNITZ.
Other players parachuted onto the team were defenceman Andre
LAPPERIERE, a student at the University of Montreal; forwards
George MARA and Wally
HALDER from Toronto; and, goaltender Dick
BALL, also from Toronto.
The recruits joined Louis
LECOMPTE, Pat
GUZZO, Irving
TAILOR/TAYLOR,
Andy GILPIN, Roy
FORBES, Ross
KING, Orval (Red)
GRAVELLE and
Hubert BROOKS on a team called the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers,
but whose military experience varied. While
HIBBERD and
LEICHNITZ
were civilians sworn into the Royal Canadian Air Force with the
rank of aircraftsman 1, Mr.
BROOKS, a flying officer, had been
a prisoner of war who escaped three times before joining Polish
partisans. He was awarded the Military Cross.
With the team preparing to embark for Europe, Dr.
WATSON faced
another crisis. Mr.
BALL, slated to be the starting goalie, failed
his physical with a lung infection. Facing another 48-hour deadline,
Dr. WATSON awoke Toronto bus driver Murray
DOWEY with a telephone
call at his home at 1 a.m. The practice goalie for the Toronto
Maple Leafs was willing to play, but would need a leave of absence
from his job. Dr.
WATSON convinced his boss, Allan
LAMPORT, a
future mayor of Toronto, in a phone call at 1: 30 a.m.
Mr. DOWEY was called back at 2 a.m. and told to report at Downsview
airport at 6 a.m. to catch an Royal Canadian Air Force plane
to Ottawa. The airport was fogged in that morning, so a sleepy
Mr. DOWEY caught a train to the capital.
His appearance did not immediately impress the team manager.
"Around noon a skinny, bedraggled kid, looking like something
dragged through a knot hole, arrived at my office," Dr.
WATSON
once told the Ottawa Citizen. "We swore him in the Royal Canadian
Air Force, got him kitted up with a uniform and he looked even worse."
The Canadians were given poor reviews by the European press.
A tie and a one-goal victory over lightly regarded English teams
did not auger well for the Flyers.
The round-robin Olympic tournament was held in an outdoor rink
at St. Moritz, Switzerland. In the opening game, Sweden scored
against Mr.
DOWEY after just two minutes and 35 seconds of play.
But the Canadian goalie would be the team's star and a crowd
favourite with his innovative use of a catching glove. Canada
beat Sweden 3-1, before rolling over Britain (3-0), Poland (15-0),
Italy (21-1) and the United States (12-3).
A scoreless tie with Czechoslovakia was followed by a 12-0 drubbing
of Austria. The gold-medal game was played against the Swiss
hosts on February 8. Dodging snowballs thrown by local partisans,
the Flyers won 3-0 to claim an unlikely gold medal and a place
in Olympic lore. Canada finished with seven wins and one tie.
Mr. DOWEY allowed just five goals in eight games for a miserly 0.62 average.
Two days later, Mr.
BROOKS married his Danish sweetheart, Birthe
GRONTVED, in a ceremony at a small church in St. Moritz. Barbara
Ann SCOTT, the Canadian figure skater who also became an Olympic
champion at those same Games, was the maid of honour and Dr.
WATSON was best man.
The Flyers barnstormed Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Sweden,
England and Scotland while overseas. They completed the European
tour, including the Olympic matches, with a record of 31 wins, five losses, six ties.
"Nothing in my life gave me the same thrill (as) organizing that
trip and then actually winning it," Dr.
WATSON said.
While something told him that Canada had a chance, few at home
believed it when the team set out.
"Everyone said we'd never win," he told the Medical Post. The
headline in the Ottawa Citizen the day they left summed up the
opinion of the sporting press: "The Flyers, like the Arabs, are
folding their tents and silently stealing away."
Alexander Gardner
WATSON was born on March 28, 1918, at Cellardyke,
a fishing village on the north shore of Scotland's Firth of Forth.
As captain of a minesweeper, his father had trawled for mines
during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. Long months spent fishing
the dangerous waters of the North Sea seemed unsuitable for the
father of a young family, so the
WATSONs moved to the Ontario
fishing village of Port Dover on Lake Erie when Sandy was a toddler.
A brilliant student, he spent a year studying at Queen's University
in Kingston, Ontario, before completing a medical degree at the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He won a scholarship to
Cambridge, where he earned a bachelor of surgery. He later studied
at Harvard and Columbia Universities in the United States.
An Royal Canadian Air Force wing commander during the war, Dr.
WATSON became in peacetime one of Canada's eminent ophthalmologists.
In 1967, he helped found the Sally Letson Foundation for post-graduate
training. He served as the foundation's executive director for 25 years.
He was chairman of the department at the University of Ottawa
medical school from 1968 to 1985. Dr.
WATSON was the driving
force behind the university's Eye Institute, which opened in 1992.
He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 1988.
Among his patients were a Parliamentary Guide's worth of notables,
from governor-general Jeanne
SAUVÉ to New Democratic Party leader
T.C. (Tommy)
DOUGLAS/DOUGLASS. He treated prime ministers John
DIEFENBAKER,
Lester PEARSON, Pierre
TRUDEAU, Joe
CLARK and Brian
MULRONEY.
Dr. WATSON also became the eye specialist for the Montreal Canadiens,
a legacy of his desperate plea for assistance while putting together
the Royal Canadian Air Force team. The Canadiens contributed,
while Conn
SMYTHE of the Toronto Maple Leafs refused. (Major
SMYTHE was army, of course.) One young prospect examined by Dr.
WATSON was a gangly, teenaged goaltender who needed contact lenses.
Dr. WATSON reported the goalie's vision was good, and Ken
DRYDEN
would lead the Canadiens to six Stanley Cups.
Dr. WATSON, who retired in 1997, died at home in Ottawa of prostate
cancer on December 28. He leaves his wife, Patricia, sons John
and Alexander, and five grandchildren. He also leaves a sister,
Faye McVEAN. He was predeceased by a sister and a brother, who
drowned as a teenager.
His death came just 17 days after that of Mr.
BOUCHER, the coach,
who also died in Ottawa. They are survived by eight of 17 players.
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROOKS - All Categories in OGSPI
BROWN o@ca.on.grey_county.owen_sound.the_sun_times 2004-12-31 published
RAMSAY,
Gordon
Davidson
On Tuesday, December 21st, 2004, at Grey Bruce Health Services,
Owen Sound, surrounded by his family. Gord
RAMSAY, Korean War
Veteran, passed away in his 75th year. Will be sadly missed by
his wife, Margaret, of Owen Sound. Predeceased in 1981 by his
late wife, Reene
(ADAM/ADAMS,) of Montreal. Dear father of John, of
Kitchener, Patricia (Bryan
LOW/LOWE/LOUGH), of Thornbury, Linda (Alex
BROWN),
of Meaford and stepfather of John (Bonnie)
WALKER, of Pennsylvania,
Leslie (Tyrone)
SIMMONDS, of Victoria, British Columbia and Christopher
(Liana) WALKER, of Milton. Also survived by six grandchildren,
one great-granddaughter, four step-grandchildren; two brothers,
Donald, of Cambridge and Lawrence, of Brockville and many nieces
and nephews. Gord was past president, past zone commander and
past district commander of the Royal Canadian Legion, a member
of St. George's Lodge A.F. + a.m. and the Ramoca Shrine Club
of Owen Sound. Cremation has taken place. A Celebration of Gord's
Life will commence with a Legion Service and then followed by
a Masonic Service at Branch 6, Royal Canadian Legion, Owen Sound
on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 at 1: 30 p.m. Arrangements entrusted
to Grey Bruce Cremation and Burial Services, Owen Sound, 371-8507.
Page A2
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROWN o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-03-03 published
Leonard Arthur
COOPER
"Len, a member of the Christadelphian faith, now sleeps in the Hope of the resurrection."
In loving memory of Leonard Arthur
COOPER,
August 12, 1922 - February 26, 2004.
Leonard COOPER, a resident of Mindemoya, died at the Sudbury Regional
Hospital, Saint Joseph's Site, on Thursday, February 26, 2004 at the age of 81 years.
He was born at Mindemoya,
son of the late Henry Edward
COOPER and Violet Ludella
(NEVILLS)
COOPER.
Leonard farmed for 50 years on the farm where he was born, and nine months ago moved
to Mindemoya. He was a devout member of the Christadelphians, and
lived his life the way he taught others. He had a variety of
interests, which included hunting, and fishing, growing potatoes,
gardening, and feeding and watching birds. Leonard's greatest joy
was his family and socializing with Friends. He loved people and
loved to attend his church meetings. A truly loving and loved
husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend, he will be sadly
missed, but many memories will be cherished.
Dearly loved husband of Betty
(BROWN)
COOPER, and loving father of
Wayne and his wife Sylvia of Shelburne, Lloyd and his wife Janice of
Big
Lake,
Barbara and husband Phillip
WILTON of Scarborough, David
and his wife Jill of Mississauga, Paul and his wife Karen of
Mindemoya, Mary and her husband David
WILSON of Silver Bay and Linda
and her husband Dalton
NYBERG of Aurora. Predeceased by infant
daughter Diane Margaret. Proud grandfather of 23 grandchildren and
eight great grandchildren. Dear brother of Nellie
THOMAS of
Tehkummah, Alvern
NIGHSWANDER of Little Current, and Burt and Don
COOPER of Espanola. Also survived by sisters-in-law,
brothers-in-law, and many nieces and nephews. Predeceased by sisters
Lena and Jean and brothers Jack and Max.
Friends called at the Culgin Funeral Home in Gore Bay on Sunday,
February 29th. The funeral service was conducted in the Wm. G.
Turner
Chapel on Monday, March 1st with Mr. John
WILSON officiating.
Spring interment will be held at the Mindemoya cemetery.
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROWN o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-05-19 published
Carl Archibald
BROWN
In loving memory of Carl Archibald
BROWN who passed away on May 12, 2004.
Carl BROWN, a resident of South Baymouth, passed away at the Manitoulin
Health Centre, Mindemoya, on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at the age of 80 years.
He was born at Tehkummah,
son of the late Archibald Martin and
Hazel Marie
(LITTLE)
BROWN. He was a member of St. Andrew's By the Sea
United Church at South Baymouth and a member of Doric Lodge number 455, Little
Current. Carl had been self employed all his life. He enjoyed gardening,
reading, walking in nature and biking. Carl was a kind and loving man,
known and respected by all. He will be greatly missed and his family and
all who knew him will cherish many happy memories. Carl is survived by
his loving wife
Roberta
(SIM)
BROWN.
Loving and loved father and
grandfather of Robert
BROWN,
Gary
BROWN, wife
Christie and their
children Marty, Alasha and Adam, Janice
BROWN and husband Gerry and
their children Christopher and Temara, Michael
BROWN and wife
Shelley
and their children Natalie, Darren and Camellia, Heather Nichols and
husband James and their children Myles and Katherine, Anne
McDONALD and
husband Barry and their children Andrew, Emily and Jessica, Bonnie
DOWHANIUK and husband James and their children Nadia and Peter, Frances
BRUYNS and husband Tony and their children Caleb, Kaitlynn, Liam and
Hannah, David
BROWN and wife
Marnie and children Laura and Aislinn and
Mary SIMIONI and husband Oscar. Also survived by loving mother-in-law
Cecilia SIM, sister Marie
ANSTICE (husband Bert predeceased) and sister-
in-law Cora
COND and her husband Glen. Predeceased by brother William.
Friends may call at the Fairview United Church, Tehkummah after 7 pm on
Friday. The funeral service was conducted at the church on Saturday, May
15, 2004 at 11 am with Darlene Hardy officiating. Interment in Hilly Grove Cemetery.
Doric Masonic Lodge number 455 will conduct the memorial service on Friday at 7 pm.
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROWN o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-06-23 published
Ivan John EADIE
In loving memory of Ivan John
EADIE who passed away on May 24, 2004 in his home in the Warsaw area.
On May 21, 1925, Ivan John
EADIE was born in Little Current, Manitoulin Island,
son of the late Mary
SIM
and John Garnet Eadie. Ivan grew up and was educated on Manitoulin Island before going to work on
the Great Lakes with Patterson Steamship Lines. After a few years on the boats he enlisted with
the Mercant Marine and later joined the army, serving overseas during WWII. On December 6, 1947,
he married Barbara Phyllis
PAYNE on Manitoulin Island. They moved to the Warsaw area where Ivan
went to work for General Motors in Oshawa, retiring as a press operator in 1982. After retirement,
he and Barbara spent a great deal of time doing charity work, especially with the children, and over
the years fostered several children. Barbara passed away on April 2, 1993.
When Ivan was younger he played a little hockey and enjoyed hunting and fishing. While living in
Little Current, he had been a member of the Manitoulin Legion Branch 177. For 11&1/2 years he was
the President of the Warsaw Legion Branch 511 where he was a Charter and Life member.
Ivan received much love and enjoyment from his own family and all the children he had helped over the years.
Ivan is survived by his children Judith HENDREN (Howard), Arlene
WEBSTER (Don), Jay
EADIE, Debbie
HORN (Bob)
and Jackie Moore (George), siblings Ruby CHAPMAN, Margaret
LONSBERRY, Kathy
PURVIS, Joyce
BROWN, Ted,
Orville, Jerry and Melvyn
EADIE, 13 gandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild
and many foster children. Predeceased by his parents Mary and John
EADIE, wife
Barbara and brother Ross
EADIE.
The memorial service was held at the Warsaw Legion on Tuesday, June 1,
2004 at 1 pm with Reverend Peter Bishop officiating. Interment held at
Saint Mark’s Cemetery followed by reception at the Warsaw Legion.
B... Names BR... Names BRO... Names Welcome Home
BROWN - All Categories in OGSPI