Last year I wrote this and I’m delighted that MacWilliams’ son emailed me and let me know about his dad. Here’s the original story and the email I received a couple of days ago.
He wasn’t big, this John MacWilliams of Huntsville’s Squirt, then Peewee, and later, Bantam teams, all of which played Orillia on a regular basis [...]

I’m not around for awhile and look what happens – Canada wins more medals – this time on the speedskating track, and so I’d better warm up the keyboard.
Charles Hamelin won gold and Francois-Louis Tremblay bronze in men’s 500 metre short-track, and then Hamelin teamed up with his brother Francois, plus Tremblay and Olivier Jean to [...]

I phoned Terry Harper this morning, just to say hello and also to take him up on his invitation from several months ago to call him again after I’d had a nice long chat with him back then. Shooting the breeze with Terry Harper
He said “call me again” and so I did.
He was a tall, stay-at-home [...]

He had all the things I knew were good in life – a big talent and one who could skate like the wind, a great brush-cut, a lovely wife, was a heralded phenom when he was a kid, and he wore the sweater of the Montreal Canadiens. What could be better than all that?
He was Ralph Backstrom, [...]

It began with heart-warming moments. Onto the ice in full uniform came Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, Pete Mahovlich, Larry Robinson, Bob Gainey, Steve Shutt, and a host of others. It was like seeing a 1976 pre-game warmup.
And the best was yet to come. Others were introduced, and for me personally, seeing Ralph Backstrom, Bobby Rousseau [...]

He played during a time of legends, when Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau and Bobby Hull roamed the ice; when Jacques Plante, Terry Sawchuk and Glenn Hall stopped pucks; and when Toe Blake and Punch Imlach pulled strings from behind the bench.
He’s Terry Harper, the lanky, stay-at-home defenceman for the Montreal Canadiens from 1963 to 1971, and I [...]

That’s me on the right during some sort of minor hockey tournament. It represented the top goal scorers from atom, squirt, and peewee. I was the peewee. All I wanted to do was grow up and become a Montreal Canadien. I wanted to be like Ralph Backstrom. Instead, I grew up and became a factory worker, [...]

He wasn’t big, this John MacWilliams of Huntsville’s Squirt, then Peewee, and later, Bantam teams, all of which played Orillia on a regular basis in the early 1960’s. In fact, he was small. But regardless of his size. he looked like a hockey player. And did he ever play like one.
We were constantly told by our [...]

When I was seven or eight years old, my father and mother bought me a book for Christmas called “Let’s Play Hockey” by Lynn Patrick. Normally this wouldn’t be news. Normally it would’ve been just another hockey book.
 
But my father got the bright idea to send it to the Montreal Canadiens in Montreal, asking if [...]

One of the most important players on the Habs of the early 1960’s, and a third and fourth line grinder at that. Dave Balon and his beautiful wife.
Sadly, Balon passed away several years back, and it was way too early.
Balon was one of those guys who was never a star, but was a hard worker, a checker, and he [...]