Wild (and woolly) life department

‘Bear went over the mountain’
with camp cook hot on his tail

Two good “wild life” stories hit
the press this week—the first a
true story of a man anda bear,
the second a fabrication concern-
mg a man and a moose which
Should win a Liars’ Club award.

In the man versus bear story,
hero of the tale is veteran camp
Cook Joe Keenan, a long-time read-
€r and supporter of the Pacific
Tribune who is well known to hun-
dreds of people in the labor move-
Ment. Here is the yarn as it ap-
Peared in a recent issue of the
Nechako Chronicle:

“While camp cook for North-
Western Explorations Limited
Rorth of Germansen Landing, Joe
Keenan anticipated trouble with
ears but did not have any defen-
Slv€ weapon in camp so he let his
genuity cope with the situation.
. Most of the time Joe was alone
M'camp as the crew was working
Miles away from the main camp.

howing that sooner or later a

. : e
Little bears like this one are merely cute — but Joe Js aS
‘Wears that the bear he chased with a flaming torch was “a ¢

ig bear,”

bear would attempt to raid the
camp larder, Joe decided: to try,
something that he had been told
had been used with good results
imany years ago. That something
was a torch. ;

“We made the torch from a dis-
carded red shirt which he tied to a
long pole with hay wire and then
soaked it in coal oil. However, as
a precautionary measure in case
the torch idea would not prove ef-
fective. Joe always kept two pails
of boiling water on the stove and
a double-bitted axe handy in the
cook tent.

“Tate one night Joe heard a bear
at a pail of cherries and decided
that the time for action had arriv-
ed. Lighting the torch he bound-
ed out of his tent and came to
within a foot. of the rear end of
the bear before the bears took off
with Joe in close pursuit. After
covering 200 yards he gave up the

Glasgow Rangers in
three games on Coast

_ Glasgow Rangers soccer team
Play two games in Vancouver
One in Victoria during theit
e : the coast next week. Their
again ‘ree games in Canada were

St Chelsea, Hamilton and To-
Onto,

hace Scottish team will arrive
thes by plane Sunday at 5 a.m.,

ed qc: Tour Committee announc-
this Week,

Visit

PACIFIC ROOFING

Company Limited

SE. 2733

eee West Broadway
"Pitz. - B, Kostyk

chase, well satisfied with his bear

enan

Here is the team’s complete itin-
erary while in B.C.:

May 23 (Sunday) — 5:05 p.m.,
Devonshire Hotel. May 24 (Mon-
day)—7 p.m., VS. Mainland All-
Stars, Callister Park; 9.45 p.m., re-
ception at Palomar Supper Club.
May 25 (Tuesday)—10 a.m., leave
for Victoria (TCA), to Empress
Hotel; 6:30 p.m., civic dinner,
Empress Hotel. May 26 Qyednes-
day)—7 p.m., VS. _ Victoria All-
Stars, Royal Athletic Park. May
27 (Thursday)—10:15 a.m., leaye
Victoria for Vancouver (TCA); 6:30
p.m., civic dinner, Stanley, Park
Pavilion, May 28 (Friday)—10
a.m., Capilano Golf and Country
Club; 8:30 p.m., guests at Lacrosse
Game. May 29 (Saturday)—3 p.m.,
vs. Mainland All-Stars, Callister

.back you’ve got to lean against the

Park. May 30 (Sunday)—9 a.m.,
leave for Calgary.

chasing device.

“The bear did not return. How-
ever, Joe had his regrets. He is
quite happy -the bear did not re-

turn,: but he does feel that if a}:

movie had been taken of his ex-
periment, he could have retired
for life from the proceeds.”

_* * x

So much for the true story. Now
here’s a tall tale of a man and a
moose, reprinted from the Kitimat
Northern Sentinel: Sut

The biggest liar in British Col-
umbia lives north of Terrace and
has a huge moose head on the wall
of his cabin.

Last fall a couple of city fellers,
each carrying about a thousand
dollars worth of hunting equiv-
ment, stopped at his cabin on their

‘way back from an _ unsuccessful

hunting. expedition.

“Holy Old Harry!’ yelled the
fatter one of the two when he
caught sight of the moose head
and its magnificent spread of ant-
lers. “Who shot THAT?”

“Shot ’im m’self,” said the trap-
per.
“What kind of a cannon did you
use?”’ :

The old boy eyed the expensive °
looking leather zippered gun cases
and other gear contemptuously.

“Shot “im with a Flit gun,” he
said.

“Now, listen here
tested. :

“Sure as hell did.» It wuz like |
this. I wuz out in the back of the’
cabin -thar not far from that big,
tree and the black fliés wuz so bad
I took my Flit gun with me. wre
seen the time, y’know, when to git
to that little shack out there and

i
..'.” they pro:

flies and push, they come at a man!
in sich clouds and swarms. :
“Wal, this night ‘I wuz comin’:

F|back pumping me Flit gun ahead |

of me and makin’ pretty good time
because I had killed so many dam’
flies an’ mosquitoes on the way
out when all of a suddint a mad
moose druv to distraction by the
flies comes chargin’ at me out of
that willow grove over there. Wal,
sir, all I could do was run for the
big tree, but the moose didn’t give
me no time to climb if, so I dodg-
ed around t’other side of it and
the moose come around after me
and we went round ‘and round that
tree fer close to an hour, me grad-
ually beginnin’ to get winded and
the moose gittin’ more ferocious all
the time.” © ;

The old boy stopped and lit his
pipe, then pulled on it meditative-
ly for a maddeningly long time. —

“Well, go on. What happened
then?”

“Hey? Oh, what happened? Wal,
I knew I couldn’t keep on runnin’

‘and I didn’t dare stop so I just had

to use me head. By this time me
and the moose was goin’ round
that tree in such a small circle
that his horns wuz right against
my britches and I wuz just about
close enough to his hind end to
grab his tail. So what did I do?
Wal, I up and let ‘im have the
flit right on the rear end. Wal, sir,
that moose he stopped right in his
tracks and looked at. me with such
amazement in‘his face as I never
saw on an animal. Then he backed
up to the tree and started rubbin’
and rubbin’ and rubbin’ so that he
took most of the bark off’n the
trunk. (It just grew back on this
last spring.) He rubbed and he
rubbed and he ground his rear
end against that tree all night and
most of the next day.

“Tt was such a pitiful sight I
couldn’t stand it so I went in to
Terrace and visited with my sister
and my brother-in-law Fred. Wal,
when I went back five days later
first thing I did wuz go out back
of the cabin and all there wuz left
of that moose wuz his head and
horns like you see them up there

a ‘
Be Sah tna &

President W. G. “Baldy” George (left) and Doug Grimston (right)
of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, along with other CAHA
top brass, have mapped out a plan to bring back the world hockey
cKampionship to this country by sending an’ “all-star” aggregation

Whyte in his Sportlight.

Gert Whyte's

_ ’ve got those lonesome wolf blues

One puck too many, so we hadda
lose,

-Couldn’t keep our end up

Went and blew that Allan Cup,

Now | got me those. Sudbury
Wolves blues.

This song isn’t copyrighted and
is offered gratis to Max Silverman,
coach of the Sudbury Wolves,
along with a -large-size crying
towel, inscribed with three little
words—“Go—V’s—Go.”

* * *

Just can’t help it, folks, this has
got to be a hockey column. Sun
is shining bright, babes are on
the beaches, the baseball season
is in full swing—but up Penticton
way the ice chips are still flying.
after that incredible Allan Cup
series in which Penticton V’s,
after being down 3-1 in games,
roared back to take three in a
row, and bring B.C. the first Can-
adian senior hockey title since
Trail Smoke Eaters. won the
bauble in 1938.

* * *

Wish I could have been in Pen-
ticton last Saturday night. You
have to live in a small town for
a while to understand how to
really celebrate a victory. When
V’s whipped Sudbury Wolves in
the seventh game, the lid blew
off and the whole Okanagan Val-
ley went on an historic binge.

First over the boards to em-
brace V’s playing coach Grant
Warwick was Mayor Oscar Mat-*
son. Unfortunately, the ice was
slippery and His Worship took a
pratfall. Unmindful of his injured
ego, Matson completed his mis-
sion.

The fans played the game all
over again a thousand times ‘dur-
ing the night, for celebrations
continued until dawn. There were
snake parades through the streets,
to the honking of automobile
horns; and a bang-up dance in
the armory where the band play-
ed until exhausted.

* *

That blues song for Max Sil-
verman is only in the line of kid-
ding. Actually the Sudbury coach
proved a grand sport, smiling and
shaking hands with the victors
and offering no alibis. Indeed, -be-
fore the crucial game began Max ©
privately predicted that the V’s
would win — not because he
thought they were the better
team, but because they were key-:
ed up for victory and in an un-
beatable frame of mind.
et ae x

First Allan Cup game was play-
ed in 1908, with Ottawa Cliff-
sides the winners. But it wasn’t
until 1936 that the cup came west
to British Columbia, when Kim-
berley Dynamiters turned the

on the wall.”

tc Europe next year. This “master plan” may backfire, says Bert

‘

SPORTLIGHT

trick. Two years later Trail
Smoke Eaters. won it, then came a
16-year famine’ for this province,
until Penticton blazed their way
to victory last week.

* x *

V’s put in a bid to go to Europe
next year and try and bring the
world hockey title, now held by
Moscow Dynamos, back to this
country, where hockey had its

birth.

The Canadian Amateur Hockey _
Association, meeting in Vancou-
ver, decided last week to pass up
the V’s and the Wolves and send
an all-star team overseas in 1955.

The CAHA bigwigs aren’t noted
for their brain power. It may
turn out that they’ve made an-
other horrible blunder. Decision
to send “a well balanced, power-
ful all-star team” looks all right
on paper, but often such aggre-
gations don’t perform too well on
ice. « It. takes months of teamplay
to turn out’ a. smooth hockey
team: all-star squads haven’t time
for such training. So it often
happens that an average team,
made up of players who are
familiar with each other's strong
and weak points and style of play,
will outscore ,a collection of “ali-
stars” who are individually. bril-
lant but haven’t learned to work

‘together.

twee. Sd *

Another thing the CAHA brass
may be forgetting. The Soviet
Union is encouraging tens of
thousands of young hockey play-
ers every year by providing rinks,
coaches and other facilities.

Here in Canada the CAHA,
which is sitting on a trust fund
of $149,000, hates to part with a
nickel for the purpose of develop-
ing young players. And our gov-
ernment is equally parsimonious.

British Columbia has only 2680
registerd hockey players and the
Canadian total is only 65,729.

To produce winning hockey
teams ,you’ve got to spend money
and train boys from the time they
are old enough to hold a hockey
stick and don skates.

That’s what the Soviet Unicn
is doing. Unless Canada wakes
up*and does likewise, we stand in
danger of having to surrender
our place as the world’s leading
hockey country.

* * *

Penticton V’s are a mighty fine
team, as good if not better than
the present Moscow Dynamos.

°

; The thing to remember is — by

next year the Soviet brand of
hockey will probably be better
than it is now. Can we win back
the world title with a hastily-
assembled “all-star” team? The
CAHA moguls think so. I’m not
so sure.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 21, 1954 — PAGE WW