IMLACH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-09-20 published
George MARA,
Hockey
Player And Executive: (1921-2006)
Well-born amateur player who became the captain and key to Canada's
gold-medal success at the 1948 Olympics later ran the Toronto
Maple Leafs
By Tom HAWTHORN,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Victoria -- In 1947, the Cold War was chilling Europe. The Royal
Canadian Air Force desperately sought recruits. They needed skaters,
not pilots. The Olympic hockey tournament was just weeks away.
Canadian officials had balked at sending a team, a decision that
outraged senior Royal Canadian Air Force medical officer Sandy
Watson. He persuaded the officials and his superiors to allow
him to recruit a team from scratch.
The Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers, as they were dubbed, were
whipped in their first exhibition game by a lightly regarded
varsity team. The air force feared being humiliated on the world
stage. The call went out for reinforcements, and George
MARA
was asked to sign up.
Mr. MARA, who had just turned 26, was a Toronto businessman and
a navy veteran. He moonlighted as a forward for the Barker's
Biscuits team in an amateur league in Toronto. A hard-skating
player known for shifty stickhandling, he had a touch with the
puck.
Mr. MARA answered his country's call. In doing so, he would add
to hockey lore.
George Edward
MARA was the namesake
son of a well-known Toronto
sportsman. The elder Mr.
MARA had been a star inside wing with
the Argonauts football team until a broken ankle ended his playing
days. He then became a shareholder in the Ontario Jockey Club,
and he belonged to the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. His brothers
were Bay Street stockbrokers. At one time, the family's liquor
import business boasted the largest wine cellar in the Dominion,
occupying almost an entire city block in downtown Toronto.
George Jr. grew up in privilege with a Cadillac in the garage
and his own private rink in the backyard of the family home.
He first won notice as a hockey player at Upper Canada College,
where he was coached by retired Leafs star Gentleman Joe
PRIMEAU.
Mr. MARA led the prep-school circuit in 1939-40, recording 16 goals
and five assists in six games. He scored two goals, including
the winner, in a 6-1 victory over Saint Michael's to give his private
school an undefeated season and its first hockey championship
in more than 20 years.
He graduated to the Toronto Marlboros, where his skills attracted
the attention of National Hockey League teams. The Detroit Red
Wings' Jack Adams, who had him on the club's negotiating list,
thought the prospect could find a starting role with the club
in 1942. Instead, Mr.
MARA joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer
Reserve.
He skated for a stellar navy team in the senior Ontario Hockey
Association, served aboard a corvette and two minesweepers, and
saw sea duty on the Newfoundland-Ireland run. He was promoted
to lieutenant.
After the war, Mr.
MARA attended the training camp of the Toronto
Maple Leafs at Owen Sound, Ontario He turned down an offer to
play for a minor-league team in the Leafs' system. He wound up,
instead, on the roster of the Ontario Hockey Association's Toronto
Staffords while tending to the family business, which had suffered
with the death of his father on Christmas Day, 1942.
In January of 1946, the New York Rangers announced he had signed
a contract. He was to play a game with the minor-league New York
Rovers before joining the parent club. Mr.
MARA suited up as
a spare for a Rovers game against the Boston Olympics, but he
never did join the Rangers, or play an National Hockey League
game.
By the time the desperate Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers came
looking for help, Mr.
MARA was playing on the Barker's Biscuits
team of the Toronto Hockey League. His recruitment happened after
a chance meeting at Maple Leaf Gardens with prominent hockey
official W.A.
HEWITT, the father of hockey broadcaster Foster
HEWITT.
When
Mr.
MARA returned to his office, he found a message
saying that Mr.
HEWITT had called with an invitation to join
the Olympic team. Mr.
MARA balked, suggesting they try teammate
Wally HALDER, a sales director for a chocolatier with whom he
had also played in the navy during the war.
"I put the phone down and realized I was missing an exciting
opportunity," he once told National Hockey League writer Mike
Wyman. "So I called
HEWITT back and said that I'd managed to
make myself available."
When the Flyers goalie failed the physical, Mr.
MARA suggested
the Barker's goalie, Murray
DOWEY, who would need a leave of
absence from the Toronto Transit Commission.
The trio, with Mr.
MARA as team captain, would be vital to a
Canadian triumph.
The Olympic tournament, the first since the end of the Second
World War, took place at a time when Europe was still suffering
from the deprivations of war. The Canadian players were advised
to pack their own bars of soap, as the item was still being rationed
overseas.
The games were played on an outdoor rink in the winter playground
of St. Moritz, Switzerland. The ice used for the skating surface,
which was open to rain and snow, was poor. The rink had boards
so low a skater could step over them as easily as climbing a
sidewalk.
The Canadians struggled to adopt to rules forbidding hip checks,
hitting near the boards, and playing the puck with a knee on
the ice. As well, a player leaving the penalty box was expected
to skate to his own blueline before returning to the play.
"They're not used to bodychecking there," Mr.
MARA said on his
return, "but how they hook and slash! We used to sizzle. Every
game we played, we were determined not to get mad. Ten minutes
after we'd start, we'd be boiling."
In one game, the incensed centre bowled over two opponents before
poking another in the nose with his fist. A female fan tossed
sand in his face and he was temporarily blinded. A teammate got
hit by a snowball as he rushed the puck.
The Flyers cruised through most of the tournament, recording
a 15-0 win over Poland before steamrolling over Italy 21-1. The
team had six wins and a 0-0 tie with Czechoslovakia before meeting
the Swiss in the gold-medal game before a partisan crowd. Canada
won 3-0, as Mr.
DOWEY recorded his fifth shutout in the tournament.
The top scorers were Mr.
HALDER (29 points) and Mr.
MARA (17 goals
and nine assists).
The trio rejoined the Barker's Biscuits team, but one can image
that industrial-league hockey was less attractive after the excitement
of the Olympics. Mr.
MARA accepted the entreaties of Montreal
Canadiens general manager Frank Selke. The centre was to play
for the Montreal Royals before moving up to the parent Canadiens.
He had collected eight points in seven games when an injury ended
his season, as well as his playing career.
Stafford SMYTHE, the
son of Conn
SMYTHE, the owner of the Maple
Leafs and Maple Leaf Gardens, invited Mr.
MARA to join a committee
to operate the hockey club and its namesake building in 1957.
In 1961, Conn
SMYTHE sold control of the team and eight years
later, after a power struggle, Mr.
MARA found himself elected
president. He held the post for a year before resigning.
During his tenure in Leafs management, Mr.
MARA was known to
skate with the team at practice. He was also involved in one
of the more famous incidents in club history. During the 1964
Stanley Cup finals, defenceman Bobby Baun suffered a broken leg.
In the dressing room, Mr.
MARA and coach Punch
IMLACH got into
an argument about whether he could return to play. Mr.
MARA counselled
caution for an athlete whose livelihood depended on his good
health, while the coach profanely made the opposite case. As
it turned out, Mr. Baun skated on the broken leg, scoring the
winning goal in overtime of Game 6. The Leafs completed their
comeback with a victory over Detroit two nights later to claim
their third consecutive Stanley Cup.
Mr. MARA was long associated with the family firms and other
industrial concerns, including the William Mara Company, founded
in 1871, importers of wines and spirits, including such brands
as Teacher's, Beefeater, and Hennessy, and Jannock Ltd., a diversified
Toronto manufacturing company with operations in the sugar, brick,
tubular steel and electrical products businesses. He also served
on the boards of many charities.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to the nation's sporting history
came not on the ice but in the boardroom. Mr.
MARA was one of
the founders and inaugural chairman of the Olympic Trust of Canada,
launched in 1970 as the fundraising arm of the former Canadian
Olympic Association (now Canadian Olympic Committee).
Mr. MARA was named a member of the Order of Canada in 1976 for
his tireless work in raising funds to support Canadian Olympians
competing at the 1972 Munich and 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was
inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1989 as both
an athlete and a builder, while Canada's Sports Hall of Fame
enshrined him in 1993.
The
Hockey
Hall of Fame has in its collection Mr.
MARA's captain's
sweater from the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers. So far, however,
it has not seen fit to include him among the inductees.
George MARA was born on December 12, 1921, in Toronto. He died
on August 30, 2006, while undergoing heart surgery. He was 84.
He was predeceased by his wife, the former Margaret
RODDICK,
whom he married in 1947. He leaves a son and a daughter.
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