By Joe Corrigan
Although
this article is scheduled to be published on March 13th, 2018, I made a point of writing it on
March 9th. That was in order to observe the 60th anniversary of the Whitby
Dunlops' final game of the 1958 International Ice Hockey Federation's (IIHF)
World Championship in Oslo,
Norway. The
team that eventually would become the Whitby Dunlops started life as the Oshawa
Truckmen in October of 1952. Their road to the World Championship included a
number of dramatic twists and turns, the story of which is the subject of this, the second installment in Lang
Pioneer Village
Museum's hockey history
blog.
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| 1952 Smith Transport Truckmen |
Wren
Blair was a part time milkman and hockey promoter who would work his way up to
being an NHL executive with a number of teams. In addition to being the driving
force behind the Whitby Dunlops, he is also credited with discovering a young
hockey player from Parry Sound and putting him on the Boston Bruins negotiation
list. That talented young player was none other than Bobby Orr, someone I grew
up watching play for the Oshawa Generals in the early 1960's. Blair pulled
together a team of players from the Oshawa area to form a Senior "B"
squad consisting of a number of Oshawa Generals Junior "A" alumni.
The Lakeshore Senior "B" league was made up of teams from Kingston, Belleville, Orillia, Stouffville and Peterborough. On this
initial roster was defenseman Ernie Dickens, a former NHL player and member of
the 1942 Stanley Cup Winning Toronto Maple Leafs. The 1942 Leafs are the only
team in the history of professional sport in North America
to be down 3-0 in a seven game league championship series and win four games in
a row to take the title. Also on that 1952-1953 team was forward George
Samolenko, the first of the World Champion Dunlops to join the team. The
Truckmen were sponsored by the Smith Transport Company, an Oshawa based firm with ties to General Motors
and which was reputed to be the largest trucking company in the "British Empire". The Truckmen had a strong season playing out of the Hambley Arena
posting 20 wins against 8 losses and no ties in the regular season. They took on
the Stouffville Clippers in the league's first to 8 points semi-final posting 4
wins and 1 tie to move on to the final against the Kingston Goodyears. The
final went the full seven games with Kingston
edging out Oshawa
4 games to 3. Of note, the Truckmen played the East York Lyndhursts, Canada's
representative at the 1954 IIHF World Championship in an exhibition match on
New Year's Day 1953.
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| 1953 Playoff - Truckmen vs. Clippers |
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| 1953 Oshawa Arena Fire |
The
1953-1954 hockey season looked promising indeed for the Truckmen however fate
was to hand them a cruel blow when their home arena burned down on September
14th, 1953 taking all their equipment with it. The Junior "A" Oshawa
Generals suspended operations until 1960 while efforts began to build a new
arena, the Oshawa Civic Auditorium, which opened to the public in 1964. Wren
Blair didn't let a little thing like not having a home arena and no equipment
stop him from fielding a team for the upcoming season. With a loan of equipment
from the Bolahood Sporting Goods Store, Blair moved the team to Bowmanville
where they played their regular season home games. They achieved a regular
season record of 22 wins, 18 losses and 0 ties but attendance was disappointing
in Bowmanville. They played their first home playoff game in the Lakeshore
Senior "B" League semi-final in Bowmanville. Attendance was so poor,
Blair made the decision to play every-other playoff game in their opponent's
home arena or a neutral site so that the Truckmen could increase their share of
gate receipts. Oshawa went on to beat Kingston 4 wins to 1 in the Lakeshore
league semi-final and Peterborough 4 wins to 1 with a tie in the league final
to claim the title. That allowed the Truckmen to play for the Eastern Ontario
Senior "B" Championship against the Stouffville Clippers which they
won 4 games to 1. They then put their 12-3-1 playoff record on the line to take on the Simcoe
Gunners for the All Ontario Senior "B" Championship. All the final
games were played in Simcoe,
Ontario with the Truckmen winning
the series with a 4-0-1 record. A remarkable feat as they are the only team in
the history of the league to win a championship series without ever playing a
home game.
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Truckmen vs. Lyndhurst 1953
|
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| 1954 Senior B Champs- Truckmen |
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| 1956 Whitby Arena |
Then
as now, only Senior "A" teams can compete for the Allen Cup,
symbolizing the National Senior Hockey Championship of Canada. After the
1953-1954 season, Wren Blair appealed to the Ontario Hockey Association to have
the Truckmen designated as a Senior "A" team he was so convinced of
the quality of his team. The league, which was dominated by Western
Ontario franchises like the Kitchener Dutchmen, turned him down as
a team with such poor attendance wouldn't provide the league with enough
revenues to make it worthwhile. On top of this, the Bowmanville experiment had
proven a failure and the team had lost their sponsorship as well. Searching for
a place to play for the 1954-1955 season, Wren Blair arranged to move to Whitby Ontario
to play in that town's newly built 900 seat arena. The team started play as the
Whitby Seniors while Blair contacted the president of the Dunlop Tire Company,
a British company that had just built a large manufacturing plant in Whitby based on the
town's proximity to the General Motor's plant in Oshawa, to ask for sponsorship. When Dunlop
Tire sent him a cheque for $1,500 he sent it back to the President of the company
with an angry letter. Confused at this stormy rebuff, the Dunlop President met
with the Mayor of Whitby who explained that the Whitby Seniors were equivalent
to a tier two soccer team in England.
On January 19, 1955,
a group of 15 officials from the Dunlop Tire Company were invited to attend a
Whitby Seniors game and have dinner in the Arena. The visiting team was the
Kingston Goodyears, sponsored by a rival tire company. At the intermission Wren
Blair came into the dressing room and told his players that the Dunlop Tire
Executives had raised $200 for the players to split if they beat the Goodyears,
which they proceeded to do. On Tuesday,
February 1st, 1955 the Oshawa
Times headline read "Dunlop Will Sponsor Whitby Senior Team" and the
Whitby Dunlops were born! The Dunlops were edged out in a highly competitive
playoffs series by the Kingston Goodyears to end their initial season in Whitby. It would be the
last playoff series or championship the Dunlops would lose until 1960.
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| Whitby Dunlops 1954-55 Game Action |
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| 1955 Whitby Dunlops vs. Peterborough Petes |
Joe Corrigan has been Museum Manager at Lang Pioneer Village since February of 2003. He has been a lifelong student of history. His specific areas of interest are Canadian and world political, military and sports history with a particular focus on biographical works.
