The Gordie Bell hockey sweater

Strangely, the first thing I did after opening a much-anticipated Canada Post parcel was smell the contents, hoping to find a hint of my father’s scent.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise after almost 84 years there is none of my late father Gordie Bell’s DNA attached to his 1942 Portage Terriers Memorial Cup jersey I had been gifted. It wasn’t all bad though. More than eight decades have passed since that celebrated national championship and none of the foul odour often attached to used hockey sweaters is detectable either.

In contrast history and nostalgia almost drip from the woven wool jersey.

That ’42 Memorial Cup isn’t the only national title claimed by Junior Terriers. The club won the Centennial Cup in 1973 and the RBC Cup in 2015. But the Memorial Cup team holds special significance, especially if your last name is Bell.

Patriarch Staff-Sgt. Addie Bell was the team’s coach. Son Joe was a high-scoring winger and my 16-year-old father guarded the Portage net while his younger brother Bryan served as the team’s stick boy.

The sweater came to me from Dave Young, a former Terrier goalie who had played much of his minor hockey in Portage la Prairie with my cousin Cameron. More often than not, uncle Bryan coached those teams. He passed the sweater along to Young during a visit at his Koko Platz home in 2010. Young, in turn, thought the sweater might hold more significance to a member of Gordie Bell’s family. He could not have been more right.

And if only the sweater could talk.

Would it tell the tale of newspaper articles questioning who should pay the mighty Oshawa Generals’ expenses to travel to Manitoba to surely claim the Memorial Cup in a best-of-five series played in its entirety at Shea’s Amphitheatre in Winnipeg?

Would it tell the stories of teammates like Joe, Gordie, Lin Bend, Billy Gooden and a few others who turned pro the following season only to have blossoming careers interrupted or cut short because of the Second World War.

Probably not. But the sweater does represent the enormity of 13 Manitoba boys — mostly from Portage and Poplar Point with a couple of Winnipeg imports — stunning the hockey world with their conquest of the Generals.

My father was lucky to wear the sweater. As my uncle Joe loved to tell the story, had it not been for a cheeky goaltender, my father may have spent the 1941-42 season playing his fourth or fifth year of midget hockey.

Apparently after winning one of their opening games by a high score, my grandfather told the goalie to get his act together because, “Joe’s little brother could have stopped most of those goals.”

Telling an army staff-sergeant, “Well maybe you should go find Joe’s little brother then,” likely wasn’t the most well-thought-out answer

After going 15-3 in the regular season, Portage swept St. James and St. Boniface to capture the franchise’s first Turnbull Cup. They kept the brooms out to sweep both Fort William and Edmonton to claim the Abbott Cup as Western Canadian champions.

The Terriers took an undefeated playoff streak into the Memorial Cup and after capturing the first two games, only a Game 3 Oshawa win prevented a Portage sweep in the best-of-five final.

Captain Jack MacDonald was determined to hoist the Cup after Game 4, scoring a natural hat trick to lead the Terriers to an 8-2 win, forcing local schools and businesses to close the following day as the town’s 7,500 residents broke into wild celebration.

The Generals roster included Bep Guidolin, who remains the youngest player to play in the NHL after suiting up for the Boston Bruins the following season. There was no way of knowing at the time, but the Portage-Oshawa series would eventually have a huge impact on our family

Gently cradling the sweater — it’s almost too fragile to hold — it’s as if it has shed light on our family’s journey.

A decade after that Memorial Cup win, my father — along with Gooden — teamed up with Guidolin on the Syracuse Warriors of the American Hockey League. No doubt the Portage boys would have had a season of fun at Guidolin’s expense but a lasting friendship was born.

A few seasons later, my father was toiling for the Trois-Rivière Lions in the Quebec Senior League and was sold to a team in Ohio. While en route, the family stopped in Buffalo, N.Y., to pick up a new pair of goalie skates and it was there my father received a message to contact Guidolin in Belleville, Ont.

After a couple of days of phone negotiations, my parents and two older siblings were back in the car heading east where my father would soon suit up for the Belleville McFarlands.

Nothing much happened in the 1957 season but the following year the club would travel by train to British Columbia to battle the Kelowna Packers for the much-esteemed Allan Cup.

The entire series was played in Kelowna and after falling behind 3-1, the Macs reeled off three straight wins to capture the national senior title. A year later, they would represent Canada at the 1959 World Championships in Prague and won the world title after beating Russia 3-1.

Ironically, the series in Kelowna had a very real Portage component. The head coach of the Packers was Gordie’s Terrier teammate Jack O’Reilly.

On their way back to Belleville, the team managed to get the train stopped in Portage so my father could have a short visit with his mother, Edith. The following day, a picture appeared in the Portage Daily Graphic showing my father and grandmother beaming from ear to ear, while Mrs. O’Reilly (Jack’s mother) looked somewhat disgruntled.

In January, my mother celebrated her 100th birthday and with the sweater tucked neatly in her lap you could see her drifting down Memory Lane. A little teary eyed, it was easy to see she could almost feel my father’s presence in her lap.

Hailing from a farm outside Portage in Macdonald, she was well aware of the hoopla surrounding that particular Terrier team.

Apparently my aunt Babe (Ramsay) set her up on a blind date with my uncle Joe while my father was partnered with one of her girlfriends. As the story goes, they weren’t long switching dates.

My parents would spend much of the next two decades chasing the dream, spending a season or two in various American cities, before finally settling in Belleville.

He didn’t win a Stanley Cup, but his resumé included not only the Memorial Cup, Allan Cup and World Cup, he is still considered the youngest starting goaltender to win the AHL’s Calder Cup when he suited up for the Buffalo Bisons at 17 years old.

After that magical Memorial Cup run, he failed to come to terms on a contract with the New York Rangers the following season and led the Eddie Shore-owned Bisons to the AHL championship. He set a shutout record (nine) that stood for 61 years, until Jason LaBarbera smashed it with 13 in 2003-04.

He played ten games in the NHL — appearing in eight games with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1945-46 season and suiting up twice for the Rangers in the 1955-56 season ten years later.

My father’s been gone a long time, succumbing to cancer in 1980. He didn’t much like talking about his hockey career — he always said it was better to let others talk about it.

There are so many things I would like to ask him. But oddly enough, with this Terrier sweater in my hands, I don’t need any more answers.

Thank you David Young — what a wonderful gift.