Dan Robson - Quinn: The Life of a Hockey Legend

Quinn

Quinn

The Life of a Hockey Legend

DAN ROBSON

For my father, Rick Robsona builder and a fixer.

With me, always.

Whoever came in took a lot of pride in their street.

They took a lot of pride in their lives. But thats what Hamilton is.

To me, it was always a city that was full of pride.

Pride in who they were. Pride in the work that they did.

PAT QUINN IN THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SHORTLY AFTER WINNING OLYMPIC GOLD AT THE 2002 WINTER OLYMPICS IN SALT LAKE

Contents

Glennie Avenue

T he stories grew in time, distilled in early accounts then gaining flavor in the casks of their minds. Pat Quinn, the boy from east Hamiltonthe boy they knewbecame the man who laid out Bobby Orr, who steered the longest winning streak in the history of sports, who gave life to the game in Vancouver the coach who ended the nations fifty-year drought. The tales pour out, rich and full-bodied, varied slightly with each taste.

Heres one that has been told before, many times, in many ways. Pat Quinneight, maybe ninewas hiking home from St. Helen Catholic Elementary School one afternoon, past the white bungalows planted in the fields near the steel plants that sprouted industry in postwar Hamilton. His black hair, almost certainly, was combed and perfectly parted. His eyes punctuated by a wide brow. A steep nose, sharply cut, with a matching chin. His shirt tucked in, slacks neatly pressed. Shoes shined, as they always were. Trailing behind him, a pack of three older boys, tossing insults like darts.

Pat was big then. And that was the point the bullies hoped would prick himthat he was the boy too big for his age. He walked on for blocks, saying nothing, passing the white houses one by one, until he reached the corner of Glennie and Melvin Avenues, across from the kelly-green house with its matching fence.

Jack Quinn, the story goes, was working on his patch of lawn and saw his eldest son running from the jackals that snapped at his heels. He whistled. Just a curve of the lips, no fingers required. It was a mighty burst, piercing, and locally famous. The kind of beacon that reached tiny Quinns for blocks, announcing chores and bedtimes and sometimes this: Pat looked up at his father. Jack opened his hand wide and smacked his other fist into the flat palm, making a loud clap. Pat nodded. He spun aroundAlways pick the biggest guy. Hell go down. The rest will run. Eye contact. One, two. Boom, boom. The big one hit the sidewalk. The others ran like hell.

In the many lessons of Jack Quinn, fists were not necessarily the first option. But they were a tool, employed when needed. And they were often needed to settle differences on the scrappy streets and playgrounds near the bay in east-end Hamilton, where slate-colored stacks reached for smoky clouds.

If you were there today, youd find the same tiny house on the corner of Glennie and Melvin, backing onto the old yellow-bricked Imperial Bank of Commerce. The house, now inhabited by Pats younger sister Carol, has been revamped somea few interior walls removed, the rooms redone, a potbelly stove long gone. The once-green panels are now white, matching the neighboring homes that line the streets like markers in a cemetery of soldiers. There are pieces of a past still lingering there, at 252 Glennie. Dusty tools in a workshop. Hockey sticks stacked in a basement corner. There are puck marks behind the drywall with the outline of a hockey net, painted black. The phone number is the same as it was when it was first assigned to the Quinns seven decades back.

Outside on the corner, above the sign for Glennie, another touts the streets new name: Pat Quinn Way. Its named for the boy whose story began here, building into legendtold, and retoldexpanding, and perhaps embellished, with time. From the table in the narrow kitchen, you can still see the faint marks where the coal stove sat and picture the lounger where a grandpa slept and a yard with once-worn base paths. There are plenty of ghosts in this house, says Carol.

The table is pretty much where it was then, when Jack Quinn sat in the same spot at its head, always. Pat, the oldest, was directly across from him. Jean Quinn loaded the table with a hot meal fresh from her stove. The bowls emptied quickly, but the family rule was strictly enforced: Take some, but always remember theres someone at this table behind you. That didnt mean you didnt have to keep your wits about you, though. Pat would tap Carols shoulder and steal her milk when she looked the other way. Another Quinn family rule: Turn your head, and its gone. And before the plates were cleared, always, Jack Quinns quiz would begin: Addition. Subtraction. Multiplication. Division. Spelling, s.p.e.l.l.i.n.g., spelling. Each question geared to age and grade, ensuring that before the dinner plates were cleared Jack was certain his children were well on their way to a different kind of life.

The lessons of life were simple to Jack Quinn. It took everything he and his wife had to own the roof above them and put the food on those plates. Everything. If there was a different path to take, he knew it came with the education hed never had the chance to earn. Learn, learn, learnnever stop learning, hed preach. He carried a dictionary in his pocket, everywhere he went, looking up words he didnt recognize. Whenever a manual chore earned a groan from his kids, Jack was quick to remind them that they held the keys to their own futures. Thats why I say get an education, Jack told his eldest son, who grumbled about chiselling out a coal chute for the furnace. You can pay somebody to do this.

A black-and-white photograph of Jack and Jean on their wedding day sits on the counter, wrapped around a candle, with a wick that burns into smoke and lingers. It represents a flame that started in 1940, in a dance hall perched at the top of a steep set of steps off Wentworth Street on Hamilton Mountain. There, with music spilling from the hall, falling over the city, Jean Ireland met a handsome young man named John Ernest Quinn. He was a terrific dancer. His friends called him Jack.

Jack was from the north side of town, the third of four kids, born on the kitchen table of Arthur and Mary Quinns home on Ferry Street in 1916, in the midst of the War to End All Wars. (Arthur came to Canada from Liverpool in 1908. His father was a merchant seaman from Dublin. Mary was also Irish, but had been living in England. They were known as the Scouse, what Irish people living in Liverpool were called. All of Marys brothers were six-foot-four or -fivea gift that would be passed on to her eldest grandson.) At the start of the Great Depression, Jack graduated straight from the eighth grade at St. Josephs to the TH&B rail yards. He didnt have much time to play sports when he was younghe and his brother delivered groceries or sold newspapers. He played the ukulele and loved to sing. He was a regular at local dances on Friday and Saturday evenings and was known to carry a couple of extra shirts because hed sweat through them.

As Jack and Jean danced on Hamilton Mountain that night, the world around them was crumbling into another war. Shortly after they met, Jack walked down to the HMCS Star on Catharine Street on the Hamilton Harbour and signed up for the navy. He was immediately sent to Halifax, where he was assigned to sail the North Atlantic Run, guarding supply ships traveling to Great Britain. Jack would become the kind of war vet who was damn proud to have served, but never spoke much about life as a petty officer guarding rations and civilians from German U-boats as they snuck across the North Atlantic Sea.

The pair married two days after Christmas in 1941, while he was on leave. They traveled through Quebec on their honeymoon and visited the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupr on the St. Lawrence.