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