It’s April 21, 1951.
On the ice, playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, is a young hockey player that accomplished what so many others have dreamed of.
Tonight, would be one of the greatest nights of his life.
The last goal he ever scored.
Won the Leafs the cup.
They didn’t win another till nineteen sixty-two…
The year the young player’s body was discovered.
He had disappeared that summer on a fishing trip.
And no, I didn’t steal this tale from a hockey card.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx,
Today I bring you the story of a man that inspired the lyrics to one of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip’s most famous songs.
This is The Mystery of Bill Barilko!
Timmins is a mining city in Northern Ontario.
It is the hometown of the most famous Canadians in the world.
Maurice LaMarche, the voice of The Brain on Pinky and the Brain, and Kif Kroker on Futurama, grew up there in the 1960s and 1970s.
Paul Bellini of Kids in the Hall fame often called himself the most famous person from Timmins, and he might’ve been until someone else rose to fame in the 1990s.
Shania Twain.
For hockey fans the most famous player to be born there was Bill Barilko.
He was born on March 25, 1927.
His parents were both immigrants who arrived in Timmins because of the abundant work the mines provided.
The couple had three children, Alex was first, followed by Bill and then Anne.
Like many young Canadians, Bill Barilko fell in love with hockey as a kid and his favorite team were the Leafs. Despite being 550 kilometres north of Toronto, every Saturday night he was transported to Maple Leaf Gardens through Foster Hewitt’s legendary radio play-by-play.
He listened to the on-ice heroics of Syl Apps, Joe Primeau and King Clancy.
By the time he was four he was celebrating along with the team when they won their first Stanley Cup
That ignited the spark to a dream.
Before going to sleep every night, Little Bill Barilko imagined himself hitting the ice wearing the Leafs jersey and lifting the Stanley Cup after winning hockey’s ultimate prize.
On those cold winter nights around the radio, Bill acted out the game he heard over the airwaves with his older brother.
For many kids, the dream ends soon after. But Bill Barilko was different.
He had talent.
When he first joined a hockey team, coaches made Bill Barilko a forward.
To succeed he needed strong skating, including speed and agility, something Bill lacked at that time, so coaches moved him to the net.
He hated being in goal.
This was the era before masks, and more than a few goalies stopped the puck with their faces, so it isn’t hard to see why he didn’t like it.
He wanted to play hockey, and by the time he was put on defense he knew he was running out of options, so it didn’t take him long to excel in the position.
He moved up community leagues and soon became one of the best young defencemen in northern Ontario.
He not only had the skills to succeed, but he had also an edge.
A fierceness and courage that meant he could take the worst opposing teams threw at him.
Funny enough, those skills were on display the first time that Bill Barilko made national news.
But it wasn’t for hockey, it was for an attempted rescue gone wrong.
In November 1937, Barilko was out riding his bike alongside his pal Donald Beauseigle near Gillies Lake which is just outside Timmins.
They went on to the frozen lake, trusting the ice was thick enough.
They were wrong.
Beauseigle disappeared when he went through the ice.
Barilko ran out to his friend’s rescue but in his attempt broke through as well.
A man nearby heard Barilko yelling for help and raced out with a ladder as another boy ran toward and fell through.
Three children were now fighting for their lives in the frigid waters.
The man hurried to save them, but the ice gave way under him too. Thankfully, the fire department arrived at that moment to save all four and Barilko was spared from a watery grave. (BEAT)
Apart from that near-death experience, Barilko’s early life was otherwise happy.
That is until the sudden death of his father left his mother Faye to raise the three children alone.
The loss caused Barilko to become closer to his mother, who, in turn, worried for his safety whenever he hit the ice.
That was because it was clear he was going places.
The Timmins Daily Press reported in 1944,
“Chuck Jemmett, who handles Timmins Air Cadets, made no mistake when he picked up Bill Barilko after Holman Plumbers found they couldn’t make best use of his services. The bespectacled rearguard, a brother of Army’s Alex, is a real ice general, something the Airmen have lacked so far, and adds size to the lineup that has a lot of midgets.”
Barilko proved himself as a defenceman in the Northern Ontario Hockey Association through the early-1940s.
And after he conquered the north Barilko left home to begin his professional career in sunny California
Before the San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings… hockey in California centered around the Hollywood Wolves.
It was common to see Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in the stands cheering on the team along with the team’s mascot Vera-Ellen.
The actress and dancer would go on to star in White Christmas in 1954 but at the time she was already one of the biggest stars of the era.
She would be at the rink rooting on the team that only existed for five years from 1942 to 1947 with great hockey talent including Cowboy Tom Anderson, Eric “Doc” Prentice and…Bill Barilko.
Even though they had star power and good players, when Barilko joined the team, they were one of the worst in the league.
With his skills and talent, they quickly became a winning squad.
Henry Hilliard was a teammate and said that Barilko could skate faster backwards than any man he ever saw playing defence.
In his first season with the Wolves, the team rebounded to a winning record and made it to the league final and Barilko had nine points and 103 penalty minutes in 38 games.
His grit and offensive output impressed everyone and soon his favorite team as a kid came to call.
Bill Barilko had caught the eye of the Maple Leafs.
This was all happening during the Original Six Era of the NHL, when teams had the rights to prospects in their geographical area.
Montreal pulled from all of Quebec and parts of Eastern Ontario.
Toronto had much of Ontario and other western parts of Canada.
Most American teams could only access prospects in the United States.
The only one that could dip into the Canadian talent was Detroit who could select prospects from southern Ontario.
This system gave Canadian teams a huge advantage since nearly every player in the NHL at this time was Canadian.
From 1942 to 1967, Montreal, Toronto and Detroit won every Stanley Cup except in 1961 when Chicago took it.
That’s because American teams were left to pick up Toronto and Montreal’s scraps.
And those scraps were incredible because Canadian talent was stacked as well with players like Stan Mikita, Glenn Hall and Gordie Howe finding their way to American teams t.
But Bill Barilko wasn’t a scrap, he was a coveted prospect and the Maple Leafs who were in the process of rebuilding it seemed a no brainer… they needed to scoop him up…
As the Maple Leafs prepared for the 1946/47 season, they were feeling the pressure.
It had been four years since they won the Stanley Cup, an eternity in those days.
At training camp, six rookies were signed to the team, including future Hall of Famer Howie Meeker and a young Bill Barilko.
For Barilko, it was a part of a dream come true.
It must’ve been surreal to sit in the dressing room at Maple Leaf Gardens. He had been glued to the radio as a kid, playing out each game, now here he was, about to take the ice at one of hockey’s main cathedrals.
A few stalls down from him was the legendary Syl Apps, who some call the greatest Maple Leaf in history.
Across the room, Turk Broda put on his goalie pads.
Both men had led the Leafs to the Stanley Cup in 1942.
Barilko had cheered them on from his living room in Timmins and now he was their teammate.
But it wouldn’t be for long.
He only played 18 games with the Leafs before he was sent down to Hollywood to finish out the season.
In that brief time, he impressed the team by scoring 10 points, which was a respectable output for a rookie defenceman.
The Leafs won the Stanley Cup in 1947, but Barilko wasn’t there to hoist the majestic trophy.
He watched from afar wondering if his time would ever come.
At the start of the 1947-48 season the Maple Leafs were beset by injuries.
By January, they were down to just three healthy defencemen.
So, Leafs owner Conn Smythe turned to the stellar young man who shined at training camp and the few games he played with the Leafs the previous season.
Barilko was returning to the big leagues.
And that meant traveling 3,500 kilometres east by plane, train and automobile some of which during a terrible snowstorm.
As he walked into the Toronto dressing room on Feb. 3, 1947, he proudly announced,
“Boy, the sun is shining.”
Barilko, the young and confident rookie, immediately became a favourite.
In his first game he tormented Montreal’s Maurice Richard and their captain Butch Bouchard who eventually had enough.
He went after the Toronto rookie.
But Barilko had something, other rookies didn’t… that edge… of someone who had grown up in the tough mining town and did not back down.
It not only impressed his teammates, but fans as well.
Over the next 57 games, he scored 14 points, but a more impressive stat were his 147 penalty minutes.
Which meant he led not only the team but the entire league in penalty minutes and with that he sent a message to the league.
He might be young, but he was not one to back down from a fight.
The team made the playoffs and Barilko scored three goals in eleven games while spending 18 minutes in the penalty box.
His efforts helped the Leafs blow past the Detroit Red Wings then the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup Barilko captured hockey’s greatest prize, just like he had always dreamed of and across Canada, a new generation of hockey hopefuls listened to Foster Hewitt name Bill Barilko as a champion.
Barilko went into the 48/49 season with the Leafs full of confidence.
It seemed like every player wanted to test him and he was ready to answer every push or shove with a thunderous bodycheck that rocked the fillings in his opponent’s teeth.
“Boop Boop”
Was the last thing they heard before they felt the bone-crushing hit One teammate said,
“If he got a piece of you, you hurt for a week.”
Barilko was despised by players and coaches around the league.
Dick Irvin, coach of the Montreal Canadiens, said” I hate that Barilko so much. I sure wish we had him with the Canadiens.”
By the time his second full season in the NHL came to an end the Maple Leafs were in fourth and Barilko had only 95 penalty minutes putting him 9th in the league Toronto was still in the playoffs though and the Leafs barrelled through their opponents losing only one game on their way to a third-straight Stanley Cup.
For Barilko, it was another taste of glory.
(PAUSE MUSIC TRANSITION)
In 1949-50, Barilko had his best offensive season.
He scored 17 points in 59 games, while only spending 85 minutes in the penalty box.
The Leafs made the semifinals that season but lost in game seven to Detroit in overtime.
The winning goal by the Red Wings bounced off Barilko and went into the net.
Detroit would go on to win the cup, but this would not be the last time Barilko would be involved in a championship winning goal.
Despite no one blaming him for scoring on his own net by mistake. He was, after all, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Barilko wanted to make amends.
He went into the 1950/51 season with a vengeance.
He was hungry for another Cup. (BEAT)
In 58 games he scored 12 times and spent 96 minutes in the box as the Maple Leafs finished second behind the Detroit Red Wings.
In the playoffs they downed Boston four-games-to-one in the semi-final to face Montreal for the Stanley Cup.
It would be considered one of the greatest Stanley Cup Finals as every game went into overtime.
By game five, the Leafs were up three games to one.
The nation was glued to the radio on April 21, 1951, as Montreal and Toronto took to the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens which was packed to the rafters with cheering fans.
It was a thrilling game.
Montreal was leading the game 2-1 going into the final minute.
With 32 seconds left, Tod Sloan tied the score with his second goal of the game and fourth of the playoffs.
The crowd was on its feet, and were blowing the roof off the gardens as the Leafs hit the ice for overtime b.
At just under three minutes Howie Meeker took a pass from Harry Watson and rushed into the Canadiens end.
He fired a shot at their goalie Gerry McNeil, who stopped the puck and fell over in the process.
Meeker grabbed the puck as Canadiens defenceman Tom Johnson was ready to knock him into the boards, he sent the puck through the crease to Watson.
But it was not a clean pass.
The puck bounced through various players until it seemed to magically appear in front of
Bill Barilko.
With a hard slapshot t he had become known for, he shot the puck towards the net.
And for a split second it was like time stood still.
The puck soared over McNeil’s shoulder and went in.
Barilko had scored the winning goal, and the Maple Leafs were champions once again.
The third Stanley Cup in four years for Barilko and the Leafs fourth in five.
Barilko was lifted onto his teammate’s shoulder to the roar of Maple Leaf Gardens.
It was the greatest moment of Barilko’s life.
And one that would become a fabled part of hockey lore [PAUSE MIDROLL FOR SURE]
Bill Barilko had three loves.
hockey.
his mother.
And fishing.
His Maple Leafs were at the top of the hockey world, and Ontario had 250,000 lakes to choose from.
Back in the 1950s, players had a longer off season. playoffs ended in April, but most players didn’t make enough money to take a full summer off.
The highest paid players brought in only $20,000 a year, or about $236,000 today.
A lot had jobs, or side businesses, to bring in extra cash.
When a player could get away for some rest and relaxation during the summer, they took full advantage.
That is what Bill Barilko did at the end of August 1951.
If you’re Canadian you’re probably familiar with what happened next.
But one person in this tragedy is often forgotten — Henry Hudson.
He was a dentist and Barilko’s close friend.
They had planned a weekend fishing trip.
On Friday Aug. 24, 1951, Barilko was preparing leave, as his mother Faye begged him not to go.
Her husband — his father had died on a Friday, and she worried something bad would happen to him if he left on the same day of the week.
Barilko laughed off her worries, but she didn’t find it funny.
When he left, she was so angry, she refused to say goodbye.
She said later,
“I always make him a lunch but this time I was so angry with him, I had his sister Anne make his lunch. At 8 a.m. Friday, he came into my bedroom and for the first time in my life I didn’t say goodbye or ask him if he had warm clothing, matches and a flashlight. I was so angry. I told him I would rather die than see him take this trip, he doesn’t know that country. My poor Billy.”
She would regret that moment for the rest of her life because two days later on August 26, 1951, Barilko and Hudson boarded the dentist’s Fairchild 24 floatplane to travel to Rupert House in northern Quebec to fish along the shores of Hudson Bay.
Three hundred and forty years earlier another Henry Hudson was also exploring along the same coast.
They would both have a similar mysterious fate.
On June 23, 1611, Henry Hudson was cast adrift by his mutinous crew and soon Henry Hudson and Bill Barilko would vanish as well. But I’m getting ahead of myself because for two days the pair had a great time.
They fished at Seal River, which bridges Ontario and Quebec.
Then on Sunday, Aug. 26, they boarded Hudson’s plane with 70 kilograms of fish and left to make their way to Fort George which is located midway down the eastern coast of James Bay.
It had a small Hudson’s Bay Company depot where they unloaded their sleeping bags, tents and cooking equipment.
Their huge catch onboard was weighing them down and they needed to lighten the load somehow.
Dan Wheeler, a clerk at the depot, told Hudson that a storm was approaching from the south, but Hudson replied that they wanted to get home before their fish spoiled.
As the two men prepared to leave, Eva Williams, the wife of local Anglican missionary Albert Williams, was on a hill overlooking the dock where the plane was waiting for them.
Eva called out to Barilko and asked him if he enjoyed the back country He replied,
“I sure do.”
Eva didn’t know it then, but she would be the last person to see Barilko and Hudson alive.
The floatplane laboured to get off the water as it took off from Fort George.
It barely cleared the trees as it flew into the distance to storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
Bill Barilko and Henry Hudson were expected home on later that day, but Aug. 26 turned into Aug. 27, and no word from the two men.
Family and friends started to worry.
Pilots in Northern Ontario took to the skies to try and locate the men.
They hoped to find the men had made an emergency landing and needed to be rescued.
Before long, Barilko’s disappearance made national news.
On Aug. 28, the Toronto Daily Star ran the headline “Barilko Lost in Northern Wilds.”
In the effort to beat competitors, some newspapers reported rumours. The Evening Telegram printed assured that Barilko was still alive in their headline. Before long, stories from the north began to spill adding to the murky mystery surrounding the men’s disappearance.
A hydro crew working north of Cochrane along the Ontario Northland Railway stated they saw a light in the sky on the evening of Aug. 26 that they now believed to be Barilko’s plane.
A bush pilot reported that in the same area, he saw smoke rising from the bush the following day.
Near Kapuskasing, a piece of plexiglass was investigated on the hope it was a piece of their plane.
It wasn’t.
Yellow clay on a riverbed was confused for the lost yellow aircraft.
Dr. Lou Hudson told authorities his brother buzzed his house several times on Aug. 27, but a search near Timmins found nothing.
James Bay Inuit were also asked to search along the shoreline for any traces of the plane Meanwhile, Barilko’s mother flew to Timmins to aid in the search for her son.
It was her first flight.
The Windsor Star printed that she said at the first sight of her son she would hit the bush to find him by the beginning of September, search efforts expanded.
20 planes were now in the air eventually searching 500,000 square kilometres of dense forest.
It was like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Spain.
G.J. Ruston was on the search, and he said,
“With so much territory to cover, it amounts to looking under every twig.”
At one point, a teepee next to a canoe and gasoline cache near Kapuskasing was searched hoping it had been a refuge for the men but there was no evidence Hudson Barilko were ever there…
On Sept. 7, an RCAF Dakota plane crashed during takeoff, injuring two men.
Less than two weeks later on Sept. 18, 1951, an RCAF helicopter crashed near Ruperts House along James Bay.
All three men in the helicopter escaped injury.
Back in Toronto, the mood was solemn as the new hockey season approached A banquet to celebrate the Stanley Cup the Leafs had months earlier was supposed to be held on Sept. 28 but was cancelled out of respect for the missing defenseman.
A 1000-dollar reward posted by the men’s families was offered for information that could lead to clues.
The directors of Maple Leaf Gardens added their own money to boost the reward to $10,000 for any information.
Near the end of September, there was a report of a yellow floatplane that suddenly appeared in the sky over Timmins.
Witnesses said it stalled briefly and then turned towards Porcupine Lake.
When Hudson’s wife heard about the plane, she quickly hopped in a car and drove to Porcupine Lake believing that her husband and Barilko were waiting to be picked up.
No yellow plane, and no sign of the two men were found.
It was another dead end.
By the end of September, everyone was certain that Hudson and Barilko were dead.
Conn Smythe, owner of the Maple Leafs, said,
“Little hope is held for the safety of Barilko.”
Smythe was not known for sentimentality in the best of times, but he was deeply impacted by Barilko’s disappearance.
Throughout September, he watched films of the team’s Stanley Cup victories and Barilko’s shining moments.
Finally, after a month the search was called off and two weeks later the hockey season began.
There would be no Stanley Cup for Toronto that year.
In the semi-final, they were swept in four games by the Detroit Red Wings.
It marked the beginning of a very long dry spell.
The dynasty team that had won four Stanley Cups in five seasons would miss the playoffs three times and only made the Stanley Cup Final once in 1959.
In that final, they were quickly tossed aside by the Canadiens who celebrated their fifth championship in a row.
Through all those years, no Maple Leafs player wore Barilko’s number.
A decade after Barilko disappeared, everyone had moved on but his family.
Rumours spread. Some said he wasn’t dead and that he was just living the high life.
He had smuggled gold out of northern Ontario with Hudson to some tropical destination.
Others claimed he defected to the Soviet Union where he was teaching the Russians to play hockey.
As time passed, the mystery grew until April 22, 1962, when Toronto defeated the Chicago Black Hawks to win the Stanley Cup
It had been 11 years and one day since Barilko scored that famous goal but there was little mention of him in newspapers.
His story had long since faded from the papers.
But Barilko, refused to be forgotten and a few months later in June Gary Fields was in the air in his helicopter 100 kilometres north of Cochrane, Ontario doing a routine flight for Lands and Forests
He had done this similar route dozens of times.
It was a beautiful late spring day when he saw something in the trees glinting in the sunlight.
Almost as soon as he saw it, it vanished.
It seemed like an illusion, but something told Fields there was more to it.
He was sure he had seen what looked like a crash site.
It nagged at him and that night and he had trouble sleeping.
The next day, Fields told some friends what he saw and few days later he had convinced enough people for a new search of the area.
On July 6, 1962, searchers reached the site and found a half-buried and heavily damaged Fairchild 24.
Inside, there were two skeletons.
Hudson and Barilko.
Both men had been killed on impact still strapped into their seats.
No smuggled gold.
No defection to the Soviets.
Just two men who died in a plane crash.
What puzzled those who found them was that the plane was facing north, when it should have been facing south.
The instruments showed it was in a nose-up position, which was characteristic of a take-off, not a landing.
The pontoons, which were supposed to be full of fish, or at least the remains of fish by that point, were completely empty.
This is still a mystery.
(PAUSE)
In Timmins, Barilko’s mother was staying with her daughter and son-in-law when she got the news her son was found. Her daughter said,
“When Bill disappeared, mother never gave up hope for a moment.”
It wasn’t a happy ending, but it was finally closure.
His body could finally be laid to rest.
The funeral for Barilko was attended by 100 his loved ones, including several hockey players.
His pall bearers included two former teammates, Allan Stanley and Harry Watson.
On Oct. 18, an inquiry into the crash was held. The cause of the crash, according to the Department of Transport, was pilot inexperience combined with bad weather.
As for the Leafs, they returned to their winning form throughout the 1960s. From 1962 to 1967, they won four Stanley Cups to establish a new dynasty.
For years, Bill Barilko’s #5 was one of only two numbers to be retired by the team.
Other Maple Leaf greats were simply “honoured numbers” and not retired again until 2016.
Leafs goalie Turk Broda, later in his life, stated that Bill Barilko was the greatest defenceman who ever played in front of him. He said that only the surface of Barilko’s true potential had been scratched when he died.
But in his disappearance and subsequent death he managed to inspire one of the most famous Canadian bands of all-time.
[TRANSITION]
The Tragically Hip didn’t just record great music; they also taught Canadians about their history and culture through song.
While working on the band’s album, Fully Completely, Gord Downie came across Card No. 340 from the 1991 Pro Set Hockey Card Series which told the story of Barilko, and one sentence that caught Downie’s eye.
quote,
“It was the last goal of Barilko’s career. He disappeared that summer on a fishing trip, and the Leafs didn’t win another Cup until 1962, the year his body was found.”
With his lyrical flair, Downie was inspired write the song 50 Mission Cap with the following lyrics quote “The last goal he ever scored (in over time) \ Won the Leafs the cup,
They didn’t win another till 1962 \ The year he was discovered.”
On Dec. 16, 1991, The Tragically Hip played 50 Mission Cap for the first time at Maple Leaf Gardens.
The following year on Oct. 6, 1992, Fully Completely was released and three months the single became one of the band’s most popular songs.
Even people who do not care about hockey now know Bill Barilko and it’s all thanks to Gord Downie.
[OUTRO]
