GRAHAM
GRANVILLE
GRAY/GREY
GRAVELLE
GRAHAM o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-02-18 published
George
Hine
(Bud)
THORBURN
In loving memory of George Hine (Bud)
THORBURN,
August 22, 1926 - February 9, 2004.
Bud Thorburn, a resident of Gore Bay, died at the Sudbury Regional
Hospital, Memorial Site, on Monday, February 9, 2004 at the age of 77
years. He was born in Gore Bay,
son of the late George A. and Annie
(Hine) THORBURN. In his early years, Bud had been a baker for Mac's
Bakery, owned and operated Bud's Grocery for 5 years and then he took
a job with Community and Social Services where he worked for over 30
years, retiring in 1988. Bud was a member of Lyons Memorial United
Church and had many interests. In his younger years, he enjoyed
playing ball, badminton and curling. In fact he enjoyed all sports,
fishing and playing cribbage, where he was the self proclaimed, and
sometimes disputed, best cribbage player in the family. He also
enjoyed reading and poetry. Since Bud's retirement, he kept quite
busy working at Brookwood Brae Golf Course and Cottages. A wonderful
and loving husband, father and grandfather, he will be sadly missed.
Dearly loved husband of Elaine
(GRAHAM)
THORBURN, loving and loved
father of Cheryl and husband John
SEABROOK of Mindemoya, Mary Ellen
of Toronto and Chris of Mindemoya. Proud grandfather of Sarah,
Jenny, Ben, Tait and Reace and great grandchild Teigan. Dear
brother-in-law of Floyd and Jessie
GRAHAM of Kagawong. Also survived
by many nieces and nephews. Predeceased by sister Dora and brother Alex.
The funeral service was conducted at Lyons Memorial United Church on
Thursday,
February 12, 2004 at 1: 00 p.m. with Pastor Maxime
McVEY
officiating. Cremation to follow. At Bud's request, there will be no public visitation.
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GRANVILLE o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-02-18 published
Gilbert Arthur
PELTIER
(ZHAA_BAA_DEH)
In loving memory of Gilbert Arthur
PELTIER
(ZHAA_BAA_DEH,) 67 years,
who passed away Wednesday afternoon February 4th, 2004 at the Manitoulin Health Centre.
Mr. PELTIER was a farmer, and enjoyed hunting and fishing. He loved his horses.
He loved going to church and hosted prayer meetings in his home. Beloved husband of Lavina
(RECOLLET) of Rabbit Island. Loving father of Dennis
PELTIER of
Wikwemikong, Rhonda
PELTIER-
CHIBLOW (husband Bob) of Mississauga
First
Nation,
Liz
MAKADEBIN (husband Leo) of Manitowaning and Gary
PELTIER (predeceased.) Cherished mishomiss of Amanda, Keegan, Kayla,
Dylan and Mackenzie. Dear son of Leo and Sophie
PELTIER (both
predeceased.) Loving brother of Yvonne (husband Jerry
SMITH) of
Magnetawan, Joe
PELTIER (wife
Linda) of Wikwemikong, Norman and Shawn
PELTIER (both predeceased,) Loretta
OKIMOW and Violet
FLAMAND (also
both predeceased.) Dear brother-in-law of Annie
PELTIER of
Wikwemikong.
Special nephew of Georgina
FOX. Dear godfather of
Cindy MANDAMIN and Carie-Lee
PELTIER-
GRANVILLE.
Rested at the Rabbit
Island Community Centre, Rabbit Island. A funeral mass was held at
the Holy Cross Mission Church, Wikwemikong. Saturday February 7th, 2004. Lougheed Funeral Home.
also linked as linked as
PELLETIER
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GRAY/GREY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-03-17 published
Lloyd George
HANER
In loving memory of Lloyd George
HANER,
Thursday morning March 11,
2004 at Manitoulin Health Centre, age 88 years.
Former resident of Burpee, Manitowaning and in retirement Spring Bay. Cherished husband
of Mae (predeceased Dec. 29, 2003). Married on December 2, 1939.
Loving father of Bill and Marion of Thessalon, Gertrude and Evan
MORRELL of Massey, Marilyn of Providence Bay, Frank and Anne of
Mindemoya,
Mary
(June 5/2003) and Roy
McCULLIGH (both predeceased,)
Charlie of Sudbury, Nancy and Dale
SAGLE of Sudbury, Susan and Derek
Stephens of Providence Bay. Beloved granddad of 21, two predeceased,
Sharon GIBSON (1985,) Bob
MORRELL
(Sept. 25 2003.) Great granddad of
36. Survived by youngest brother Everett and Dorothea
HANER.
Predeceased by Estella and Lorne
RAYMER,
Alexander and Ida
HANER,
James and Marjorie
HANER,
Audrey and Clarence
PIPHER, Leona and Henry
VANCLEIAF,
Gladys
HANER, Mary and Claude
STEVENS. Remembered by
surviving members of Mae's family: Charlie and Merle
GIBSON,
Yvette
(GIBSON)
GRAY/GREY. A funeral service was held Monday, March 15, 2004 at
Spring Bay Pentecostal Church. Burial in Burpee and Mills Cemetery
in the spring. Arrangements in care of Island Funeral Home.
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GRAVELLE 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.
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