Although there have been a great many athletes, professional and otherwise, and not as many entertainers I have had the good fortune to meet and interview over the years, there are only three individuals who I confronted, shook hands with and thought, “Omigosh, this is so cool”
The first was at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for some type of sporting gala and as I walked through these big doors, my sports editor at The Oshawa Times, Eric Wesslby, said, “Wally, meet Frank Mahovlich.”
Even though I was about 25 at the time, visions of sitting in front of the family black and white television on a Saturday night as an eight year old kid and watching this huge No. 27 fly down the left wing at Maple Leaf Gardens unfolded.
I was truly in awe.
My second was at a fancy hotel restaurant in Toronto when I sat down and broke bread with Gerry Marsden, a gifted musician who headed up Gerry and the Pacemakers, a big part of the British Invasion in the 1960s.
I vividly recalled tunes like “Ferry Cross the Mercy” and “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying.” The one confession I must make was that even though I recalled his band and appreciated his wonderful contribution to music, I was even more mesmerized during this interview with the fact that even at that time, I was sitting across the table with a person who was a good friend of the Beatles.
The third individual was a well-known hockey star who kept the heart of hockey in Canada following a thrilling 4-2 victory by the Whitby Dunlops over the Russians in Oslo, Norway in 1958 at the world championships.
The fact he scored the winning goal and could tell the story 50 years later like it occurred yesterday truly impressed me.
What I found most astounding was his gift personified as an athlete on the hockey ice would in later years be replaced by a marvelous political intellectual mind as he would go on to serve as Whitby’s longest running mayor.
This was Bobby Attersley.
As hockey superfan Terry Kelly often waxed poetic, “I know of three great Bobby’s. There is Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull and Bobby Attersley.”
Attersley, as we know by now, passed away on Friday in his 77th year at the Ajax-Pickering General Hospital. The funeral was yesterday.
The fact Attersley had the credentials to ply his skills in the NHL with the Boston Bruins, but elected to create a tire business in Whitby is another story to be told. And when he sat in the mayor’s chair from 1980 – 1991, Attersley, although groomed in Oshawa, was Mr. Whitby.
He helped nuture the return of the Dunnies and was a lacrosse fan, especially when the senior Brooklin Redmen left the Luther Vipond Memorial Arena for the more upscaled Iroquois Park facility.
Attersley did play with the Generals, but it wasn’t until 1989 when he took on a part ownership role with the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs with Wren Blair and Don Anderson, a venture that lasted until 1998.
Prior to that time, however, Attersley did get a taste of professional hockey while playing in Kingston and the Fronts from 1960-62. In his 122 games in the Eastern Professional Hockey League, Attersley compiled 50 goals and 150 points.
“He was a nice person. Nobody ever said a bad word about Bobby Attersley,” said Frontenacs head scout Dick Cherry in the Kingston Whig-Standard. “He was the first one we saw around here with a slapshot. He was small, probably weighed 150 pounds, but he could really handle the puck. He was just a really smart centreman who handled himself pretty well in what was a rough league.” |
