It’s Family Day weekend. Sports have a way of making most weekends about family; parents pack up vehicles to take area kids to the rinks, fields, pools, and ski hills around Barrie and the surrounding area.
For more than century, families have had a way of defining and producing some of Barrie’s best athletes.
Historically, let's start with the Plaxtons. Barrie brothers Hugh and Bert Plaxton and their cousin, Roger, helped Canada win gold in men’s hockey at the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1928.
Hugh Plaxton later became a lawyer and MP, in which role he helped create Canada’s federal sports ministry, the forerunner of today’s Canadian Olympic Committee.
Around the same time as the Plaxtons, the Dyment clan was making a name for itself around town. Herb Dyment was a standout athlete is many sports, but was best in boxing. He is in both the local sports and national boxing halls of fame for his exploits.
Herb’s brother, Bill, was also an excellent athlete, especially golf. Like his brother, he is also an honoured member of the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame. Previous generations of Dyments were leading figures in horse racing.
Hockey, as you may expect, is the sport of choice for most Barrie families. Where things get especially interesting is when a hockey player and figure skater get together, and Barrie has seen a few instances of those unions producing notable athletes.
Bep Guidolin had a long run as a player with Detroit, Chicago and Boston in the NHL. His debut with the Bruins came just shy of his 17th birthday, a record both then and now, a result of so many established players of the day having enlisted during the Second World War.
Guidolin later enlisted himself, returning after missing more than a year serving in the Canadian Army.
While playing for the Bruins, Guidolin met a young ice capades skater named Ellie, who would later become his wife. Ellie and Bep settled in Barrie after Guidolin spent time behind the bench as head coach of the Bruins and Kansas City Scouts.
While here, Guidolin was always a source of local curiosity because of his National Hockey League playing/coaching career (and it starting at such a tender age) and for his wife and daughters helping the Barrie Figure Skating Club’s development over the years.
Back in the late 1960s, local man Jim Short was putting together a senior team that would eventually win the Allan Cup and one of the first players he recruited was Ray Cyr. Cyr had been playing pro hockey for more than a decade around North America and would eventually settle in Barrie.
He and his wife raised a gaggle of hockey-playing sons and figure-skating girls, including boys who played for the Junior 'B' Colts and earned U.S. college scholarships. One daughter, Karen, and her husband Steve Graves, have their own athletic family: Jacob Graves won the Memorial Cup with London Knights and his brother, Josh, also played in the Ontario Hockey League.
Daughter Brittany ran track at the University of Nevada.
Another cross-generation hockey family, the late Jon Weeks was Ray Cyr’s teammate on the Flyers and his grandson is Mitchell Weeks, who has been one of the OHL’s best goaltenders this season with the Sudbury Wolves.
Like Ray Cyr and unlike junior players who mostly passed through town while playing for the old Flyers and Colts, many men from those senior Flyers teams came to Barrie, stayed here and continue to live in the community. (Full disclosure, my own father was one of those players.)
With the passage of almost 50 years since the Barrie Flyers won the Allan Cup, a whole column could be written about the tentacles the championship team has left in the community. But I cite just one more here: the Flyers goalie was Ernie Miller, whose son Greg was a standout softball/fast-pitch player for which he earned induction in the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame.
There are many other Barrie hockey families, but the most prominent are likely the McCanns and Bowens, both of whom have a century-long tradition of coaching, organizing and playing the game here.
Mike McCann (not to be confused with the city councillor of the same name) coached the Junior 'B' Colts and was GM of both that club and later the OHL team. From ice to snow, it may seem unbelievable given its topography, but Barrie can claim a direct connection to the development of alpine skiing in this country.
From humble roots – Mount Jimmy in the city’s south end that is now the Ardagh Bluffs neighbourhood – a ski culture took root here after the Second World War.
One of those responsible was a man named Jim McConkey, who became an innovator in how the sport was taught around North America. He even has a run named after him on Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, where he started that iconic resort’s ski school more than half a century ago.
On the gridiron, brothers Paul and Joe Nastasiuk are probably the best examples of family exploits at football. Both starred at Wilfrid Laurier University in the 1980s after stellar careers at Innisdale. Paul later won a Grey Cup in 1991 with the Toronto Argonauts.
Paul’s son, Zach, became an elite hockey player and suited up for the Owen Sound Attack and was a draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings.
Another local football family of note is the Garlands. Father Dave was a star running back at Western University and an Argos draft pick. He later helped build the Barrie Central high school dynasty that fashioned a long championship streak in the 1980s. That dynasty was snapped by Barrie North, where Dave’s sons Bradley, Rob and Tony played before becoming stellar university players.
Folks tuning into the Olympics from Beijing recently likely have noticed some of the advertisements teasing the upcoming Paralympics. One such athlete who is featured is Alex Massie, a para-snowboarder in the midst of a successful career on the mountain. Alex is the son of Jamie and grandson of the late J.C., the father-son Massie combo who brought major junior hockey back to Barrie after the Flyers left for Niagara Falls.
The Massies are no longer involved with the Colts, but their stewardship of the team is still fondly remembered here, just like how the Emms family is happily recalled for their time running the Flyers and winning two Memorial Cup titles.
Lastly, researching this column was not meant to be a definite list of sporting families in town. That’s an impossible task (or at least one best done in a book of considerable heft); you can’t possibly cite every family who has helped create the rich sporting culture that this city enjoys.
It was an odd feeling writing a column illustrating the achievements of some people, knowing you were leaving out many more worthy of mention. We digress and we hope no offence is taken.
Happy Family Day weekend!
