Warm memories on a cold day in the north

By Jaimie Finch

For readers panting under a tropical summer Ice Hockey may sound the stuff of dreams, and indeed it is for many in the north.

Wonderfully, by the time this is posted and read,  the final game of the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships will have been decided.
Canada, specifically the City of Saskatoon, hosted the international event.. It was a  bone-chilling time , with temperatures outside half a lifetime below freezing.
And as I write most Most Canadians, and many Americans are awaiting the result.. Temptation sorely wants us to predict a winner. This may be natural.
A generation ago Dick Beddoes, a hockey reporter, if ever there was one, made just such a momentous sports prophecy.
Dick usually set himself apart from others by his reporting skills whether he was employed as a writer or a broadcaster. His sartorial flash was recalled in a book by well-known hockey broadcaster Don Cherry who has over years not only adopted but has amped-up Beddoes fondness for style. We can never forget Beddoes hats and natty dress.
In the Summit Series in 1972, Beddoes predicted a Canadian victory. He was so confident of this outcome that he wrote: “So make it Canada, 8 games to 0. If the Russians win one game, I will eat this column shredded at high noon in a bowl of borscht on the front steps of the Russian Embassy.”
To the deep dismay of most, the military-style Soviets won Game One,  very convincingly.  

True to his word, Beddoes appeared at the Soviet Consulate in Toronto and accompanied by a photographer from the Globe and Mail, and a Russian journalist, proceeded to gulp down the awful mix,
Many others like Dick had predicted Canadian victory. And all these oracles were forced figuratively to eat their words. Only Beddoes had given any commitment. He kept his word. This incident is mostly forgotten.
From a student newspaper at the University of Alberta, to reporting for the Vancouver Sun in the early 1950s Beddoes honed his craft.
By 1954, he Dick had worked his way into the Sun’s sports department and in 10 years he moved to Toronto’s Globe and Mail, there to shine for 16 years later before switching into broadcasting for a Hamilton television station. Again we remember those hats.
There, unusual for that medium, he maintained his excellence as a reporter. Until he died in 1991. He had toiled for forty years in the quest for a good story.
In 1972 Canada won the Summit Series. Paul Henderson scored the winner in sudden-death overtime, game eight. This incident is remembered.

“A sportswriter learns early that the best stories are often told on the losers’ side of the dressing room, where former victories lose their shine, and recent defeats turn rotten.” – Dick Beddoes, Greatest Hockey Stories 1990 {jathumbnail off}