HOCKEY IN MINESING WHEN FRANK WAS YOUNG
\n(excerpted\/condensed from \u2018A History of Vespra Township\u2019)<\/p>\n
\u2018We didn\u2019t have any ice in the schoolyard so we\u2019d get out and tramp down the snow, an area about the size of a couple of houses, and make a hard surface to play on. There was no limit to the number of players – every boy wanted to play and you just had to take them all in, so there might be 20 guys on each side.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t have any trouble getting pucks \u2013 we\u2019d go to the bush and get a tree about the same diameter as a rubber puck. We\u2019d saw pieces about an inch-and-a-half thick, half a dozen of them so we\u2019d have spares as we lost them.<\/p>\n
At school, we just played in our regular clothes. As we got into games with the senior Minesing teams, we\u2019d have to buy our own sweaters and pants and socks, but if you hadn\u2019t a lot of money, you\u2019d use magazines for shin guards and mostly, we didn\u2019t have knee pads or shoulder pads. We bought ash hockey sticks for 25 or 50 cents \u2013 they were quite durable but we always taped them to prolong their life. And I believe our skates were CCMs, but they weren\u2019t tube skates. Tube skates came into being about 1910, I believe.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u2018Frank was a born hockey player \u2013 rugged, fast, with a wrist shot and a great desire to win. Once, when the old basket factory was still operating in Minesing, the boys who were employed there formed a team they called \u2018The Business Men\u2019 and they challenged \u2018The Farmers\u2019 to a game in the Princess Rink. A local businessman bet Frank 50 cents he couldn\u2019t score ten goals. He scored eighteen!\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u2018Frank started playing with the old Minesing \u2018Green Shirts\u2019 when he was 15 or 16 years old and never turned back. Minesing played against the various small town teams. Minesing and Elmvale were always arch rivals and there were lots of rough battles in those old hockey rinks. The spectators stood along the sides, two or three deep, and many a player was grabbed or slugged by some irate fan. Then the fights began!<\/p>\n
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Oliver Cameron, who was connected with the Barrie hockey club, spotted Frank in one of the local games and had him go in for a tryout with Johnny Dyment\u2019s \u2018Colts\u2019.\u2019
\nThere were no cars in those days and he had to drive the horse and cutter to Barrie twice a week in all kinds of weather to practice. He\u2019d unhitch the horse at the livery barn and often when he returned, the cutter would be half filled with snow on a stormy night. He\u2019d shake the snow off the robes and take an hour or an hour and a half to drive the ten miles home.<\/p>\n
I recall one time the Colts were scheduled to play an important game in Newmarket. It was very stormy and the roads were almost impassable, but Johnny phoned out to tell Dad he\u2019d give him five dollars for the use of the horse if he\u2019d allow Frank to drive it into Barrie. They took a special train on the Grand Trunk down to the game and it was held up with huge drifts on the tracks on the return trip. Frank didn\u2019t get back home to the farm until 6 o\u2019clock the next morning, but Johnny Dyment sent the five bucks with him. That was quite a lot of loot in those days for the use of a horse!\u2019<\/p>\n
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The Princess Rink, built in Minesing in 1902, was a closed rink. The ice surface was 40 feet X 100 feet, with a 20-foot extension at the front to put your skates on and watch hockey games. The first lighting I remember was coal oil lamps, then gasoline lamps and Coleman lamps \u2013 lots of guys got hit in the face with the puck because there wasn\u2019t adequate lighting in those days.<\/p>\n
There were 40-foot pine beams running the entire length of the ice, and many a goaltender could score by lifting the puck over the beams from one end of the rink to the other \u2013 you couldn\u2019t see it coming!<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t have nets when I started to play, just two wooden posts stuck into the ice with iron pegs. The goal umpire stood right on the ice behind the goalkeeper. It was a dangerous spot and as the players became better shooters they had to have some protection for the umpires, so they introduced nets. Some rinks used chicken wire but it wasn\u2019t strong enough and we\u2019d shoot the puck right through it at times.<\/p>\n
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HOCKEY IN MINESING WHEN FRANK WAS YOUNG (excerpted\/condensed from \u2018A History of Vespra Township\u2019) \u2018We didn\u2019t have any ice in the schoolyard so we\u2019d get out and tramp down the snow, an area about the size of a couple of houses, and make a hard surface to play on. There was no limit to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communities"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwatersportsheritage.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}