WATSON o@ca.on.grey_county.owen_sound.the_sun_times 2004-12-28 published
SHORTER,
John
Frederick
Suddenly at the Lion's head Hospital, on Monday, December 27th,
2004. John
SHORTER, of Lion's Head, in his 92nd year. Dear partner
of Anne VANDEBYL.
Father of Sharon and her husband, Stan
WEIR,
of Thamesford; stepfather of Art (Carla)
VANDEBYL, of Tobermory
Dick (Debbie)
VANDEBYL, of Bracebridge; Albert (Joan)
VANDEBYL
Clarence VANDEBYL;
Morris
VANDEBYL and John
VANDEBYL, all of
Woodstock.
Special grandfather of Kobi and Ben
WATSON. At
John's
request, cremation has taken place. Donations to the Golden Dawn
Nursing Home would be appreciated. Arrangements entrusted to
the George Funeral Home, Wiarton. Condolences may be sent to
the family at www.georgefuneralhome.com
Page A2
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATSON o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-12-15 published
Hazel Elizabeth
McMULLEN
In loving memory of Hazel Elizabeth McMullen, November 13, 1916 - December 7, 2004.
Hazel McMULLEN, a resident of the Manitoulin Lodge, Gore Bay and formerly of Little Current,
died at the Manitoulin Health Centre, Mindemoya, on Tuesday, December 7, 2004 at the age of 88 years.
She was born in Assiginack Township, daughter of the late Henry and
Mabel (COULTIS)
CHATWELL.
Hazel was a member of the Little Current
United Church, the United Church Women of the church, the Little Current Drop-In
Centre and had a variety of interests such as gardening, knitting and
volunteer work at both the Manor and the Hospital. Having been an active
lady in her community, she will be sadly missed. Many fond memories will
be cherished by her family and Friends.
Hazel was predeceased by her beloved husband William
McMULLEN.
Loving
and loved mother of Carolyn
ELLIOT/ELLIOTT of Almonte, Victoria
WATSON, husabnd
Mike, of Petawawa, Jean
WHITE/WHYTE, husband Terry of Little Current, Barbara
Ellis, husband Jim of Wiarton, Sally
SMITH, husband Steven of Little
Current and Delbert of Espanola. Special Grandma to Kim and Jacqueline
and 5 other grand children and special Great Grandma to Robin and Cole
and 7 other great grandchildren. Dear sister of Raymond
CHATWELL, wife
Faye of The Slash. Predeceased by sister Muriel and brothers Lyman and
Delbert. Also survived by many nieces and nephews.
Friends called at the Little Current United Church, on Saturday,
December 11, 2004 from 1 - 2 pm. The funeral service was conducted at
the church at 2 pm with Reverend Faye
STEVENS officiating. Interment in
Hilly Grove Cemetery. Culgin Funeral Home.
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATSON o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-12-22 published
Sarah Jane
WATSON (née
IRVINE)
In loving memory of Sarah Jane
WATSON (née
IRVINE)
Age 67 years. It is
with heavy hearts her family announces her death on Saturday, the 18th
of December, 2004 at the West Nipissing General Hospital.
Sarah Jane had been suffering with cancer for the past year. She leaves to mourn and
cherish her memory, her beloved husband and best friend of forty five
years, Donald
McDOWELL
WATSON and their children Donald
IRVINE
WATSON
(wife Helene), Donna Kathleen
FOSTER (husband Bob), Gail
MONTRIE
(husband Bill) and chosen daughter Jackie
BURTNYK (fiancee Rick
SMITH.)
She was predeceased by her oldest son Alexander
McDOWELL
WATSON
(Age 7
years) in 1966 and several brothers and sisters. She is survived by her
brothers Bobby and Billy
IRVINE both of England. Sister Joan
IRWIN of
Northern Ireland and sister Sandra
McILWRAITH of Scotland. Also survived
by her grandhchildren Meagan, Samantha and Steven
WATSON,
Kathleen and
Christine FOSTER,
Katlyn
MONTRIE and Angela and Tanya
BURTNYK. Sarah
Jane will be best remembered for her wonderful singing, her quick smile
and her sense of humour. She loved to spend time at her camp on
Manitoulin Island and especially loved spending time with her children
and grandchildren. “Mamma Jane” to many of her children’s Friends, her
hugs and kisses will be missed. She served in the British Army and was a
life member of Branch 225 of the Royal Canadian Legion. She was the Zone
Poppy Chairperson and an avid supporter of our veterans. A memorial
service was held at the Royal Canadian Legion upstairs hall in Sturgeon
Falls on Wednesday the 22nd of December, 2004 at 3 pm.
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATSON 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.
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATSON - All Categories in OGSPI
WATT o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-09-01 published
William Matthew
MATHESON
In loving memory of William Matthew
MATHESON,
February 3, 1924 - August
26, 2004, a resident of Silver Water, died at the Mindemoya Hospital on
Thursday, August 26, 2004 at the age of 80 years.
He was born at Elizabeth Bay,
son of the late Norman and Bertha
(MORDEN)
MATHESON.
Matt had worked for the Department of Transportation, as a mechanic, from
1947 until his retirement in 1980. He was very active in his community,
having been founding Fire Chief of the Robinson Fire Department, had
served on many Boards of the local Service Board for Robinson Township,
and had been a very active member of the Snowdusters, grooming countless
miles of trails. Matt had a variety of interests other than his
community involvement. He enjoyed snowmobiling, boating, flying,
travelling and loved horses and music. He also enjoyed visiting with
people. He will be sadly missed by his loving and loved family and numerous Friends.
Beloved husband of Ollie
(TENNISWOOD)
MATHESON.
Matt and Ollie would
have celebrated 59 years of marriage next month. Precious Dad to Lyla
(Peter) MUNT of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Norman (friend Linda) and
Don (Virginia) of Silver Water. Dear Grandfather of Stephen, Judy,
Robert and Katerina, Greg and Jessica. Great-grandfather of David,
Ashley,
Kathryn,
John, Brittany and Logan. Dear brother of Vera
FALLS,
Anne HOPKINS,
Audrey
HARPER and Rhea
WATT. Predeceased by brother
Charles. Brother in law of Myrtle
MATHESON, Pat (Ken)
RICKARD, Hazel
(Henry) REUBLE, Margaret (Ross)
STRAIN and Don (Venus)
TENNISWOOD. Also
survived by many nieces and nephews.
The funeral service was conducted in the Wm. G Turner Chapel on
Saturday,
August 28, 2004 at 11 am with Pastor Eriwn
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON
officiating. Interment in Silver Lake Cemetery, Silver Water.
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATT - All Categories in OGSPI
WATTERS o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2004-12-22 published
Mark Thomas
STEPHENS
In loving memory of Mark Thomas
STEVENS who was tragically killed on his
way home from Sudbury outside of Nairn Centre on Thursday, December 16, 2004, age 47 years.
Beloved husband of Patty of Bidwell Rd. Loved father of Hugh (girlfriend Amber), Caleb
(fiance Stephanie), Nathan, Marcus and Patrick. Survived by his dear mother Azetta
STEPHENS of Little Current. Predeceased by father Ellwood (1987.) Will be always
remembered by his siblings Hugh (predeceased 1964), Donald and wife Sharon of Sudbury,
Richard and wife
Sharon of Providence Bay, Ruth and Richard
WATTERS of
Tillsonburg, Barbara and Evert
JANSEN of Honora Bay, Luann and Cliff
BUTLER of San Antonio, Texas. Predeceased by Patty’s parents Thelma and
Herb ROWLINSON.
Loved by Patty’s family Joanne and Harold
DAYNARD, Ron
and Alison
ROWLINSON,
Linda
VANDETTE and Rod
PRESTON, Ruth and Bruce
KELSO.
Will be missed by many nieces and nephews. Family and Friends
gathered from 2 - 4 and 7 - 9 pm Sunday at Island Funeral Home. Funeral
service 11 am, Monday December 20, 2004 at Grace Bible Church. Burial in
Mindemoya Cemetery in the Spring. Arrangements in care of Island Funeral Home.
W... Names WA... Names WAT... Names Welcome Home
WATTERS - All Categories in OGSPI