The end of the Cougars era

I have finally finished writing about all the teams that had the name “Cougars.”  The last few years I wrote about had names familiar to me as I used to attend games in the 1950s and early 1960s, alone or with my parents. I find it much more interesting to write about players who I have actually seen on the ice—it makes them come alive.

I have taken advantage of the unusual winter weather in Victoria to spend many hours reading old game reports and writing about them. It has paid off as I just passed 152,000 words. I know the text will have to be cut down a bit, but it will be difficult to leave all those wonderful names out of the narrative. I realized yesterday that indexing the finished book will be a lot of work as well.

Today I will start writing about the team that stole my heart back in 1964—the Victoria Maple Leafs. I had season tickets and I don’t recall ever missing a home game. I was even in Portland when they won the Lester Patrick Cup in 1966—likely the only Victoria fan in the Portland Coliseum. I had home movies of that game, but my mother was in of her cleaning jags one day and tossed them. To discover this was very disappointing, but I still have my memories.

 

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