My son will be 38 in May. My mom was 38 the year I left home.

I was 15 in early September of 1973 when my friend, Del and I moved to Smithers to play hockey. Our moms took turns driving the ten hours it took to get there from Montney. We sat in the back seat excited and anxious. We were pretty sure that being assigned to the Smithers Nat’s, although only Junior B, was the first step on our journey to the NHL.

When our moms hugged us and said goodbye the next day they were crying. We were too cool to hug too tightly or to shed any tears. Our tears would come later when the homesickness set in.

In that busy first few days we met our billet family, started school and were re-introduced to the other fourteen or fifteen guys who had been invited to Smithers after the main training camp. The camp had been in Kamloops a couple of weeks earlier. While there we had competed against one another for our place on the roster but now we were meeting for the first time as teammates.

The guys were from places like Coquitlam, Vancouver, Quesnel, Kamloops, Yellowknife, Merritt, Prince George, Hythe, Fort St. James, and Smithers. Two of the guys were sixteen-years old, two were fourteen-year olds and the rest of us were 15.

The Pacific Northwest Hockey league spread along Highway 16 from Prince George (the Spruce Kings) in the west to Prince Rupert (the Halibut Kings) in the east. There were ten teams… five were senior teams and five were Junior B. Being in Smithers was handy because we were right in the middle.

Our team, the Nat’s, had won the league championship the year before and the players, it seemed to us, were heroes in the little hockey town. Because they’d done so well, most of them had moved on to play at higher levels, but when we started school at the old Smithers Secondary we were able to ride on their shirttails for a few weeks. We received lots of attention and were treated well. It may have even gone to our heads just a bit.

Once the hockey started in October, however, reality set in. We took some humbling drubbings. I guess our excuse could have been that we were so much younger and smaller than everyone else, but excuses don’t make losing any easier. And being homesick made it even harder.

One Saturday night in late November stands out for me. We played the Houston Luckies at home in Smithers. They were a men’s team who went on to win it all that year. Houston and Smithers have a rivalry similar to that of Fort St. John and Dawson Creek so the pressure was on.

They beat us 16-4.

After the game, our captain who was a fifteen year old from Coquitlam, started the obligatory pep talk. He said, “Every Sunday morning I phone my parents and every Sunday morning I have to tell them we lost again”… and then he started to cry. It was like a contagious yawn… in seconds the whole room was in tears. The losing and homesickness were bubbling over. A short time later we gathered our composure and began the process of “psyching ourselves up” for our Sunday afternoon game against the same team. We came to the rink the next day ready to play.

If Hollywood had written the script we’d have won in front of a cheering home crowd. Instead, we lost 16-4 again.*

The next year about half of us returned to Smithers. The team’s name changed from Nat’s to Chiefs (because we were affiliated with the Kamloops Chiefs of the WCHL). The fact that we were a bit older and a bit bigger, combined with the addition of a few really good rookies, changed our losing ways. The homesickness wasn’t as bad either. Our record flipped from 12-28 in 1973-74 to 28-12 in 1974-75.

Recently I’ve been in touch with a few of the guys. Our conversations have been so great. We all agree it was probably our age, losing and homesickness that brought us together and why, even though most of us would go on to play on several more teams, our time in Smithers had such a unique impact. We shared a lot of “firsts”… first time away from home, first stitches, first plane rides, first girl friends, and first heartaches. In a sense we grew up together.

I realize that I could go on and on… I could talk about the amazing Percy and Greta Benoit who were our billet parents for two years. I could do a bit of name-dropping and talk about the teammates who went on to play professionally. I could talk about how wonderful it was to arrive back in Montney after those first few months away…

Another day, perhaps.

 

*Several times over the years I’ve told the back-to-back 16-4 loss story to students and my own kids when they’ve suffered a tough defeat. (I don’t know if it made them feel any better or if they thought I was just trying to one-up their story!).

PS. I was so lucky that mom saved all of the newspaper clippings and pictures and made scrap books for each year. She must have missed me. 🙂