The Hockey Star Who Vanished
It was 60 years ago that the most famous goal in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs was scored in overtime, to win the Stanley Cup.
It was also the last goal 24-year-old Bill Barilko ever scored, in the last hockey game of his life.
Last week, Lance Hornby wrote a nostalgic piece in the Toronto Sun that nicely captured the magic of Barilko’s personality – an ineffably cheerful young guy, a handsome, hardrock player from the Timmins gold mining community whom legendary Leaf goaltender, Turk Broda, said was the best defenseman who ever played in front of him.
The summer of Barilko’s 1951 overtime goal – winning his fourth Stanley Cup in five years with the Leafs – Barilko flew on a fishing expedition to the Seal river, where James and Hudson’s Bay meet.
His plane disappeared on the flight home.
And mystery prevailed ever since.
Barilko was one of those athletes who comes along only rarely. His own energy and joy of life could lift a team – which he did for the Leafs. Dick Irving, another hockey icon who ran the Montreal Canadiens, said of Barilko: “I hate him so much – I just wish we had him with the Canadiens.”
When Barilko flew north on his ill-fated fishing expedition with a dentist – Dr. Henry Hudson, who was also a pilot – and disappeared north of Cochrane, Ontario on the flight home, it touched off one of the greatest air searches in Canada up to that time.
For 11 years the crashed plane remained undetected. During that time, the Leafs never won the Stanley Cup. The jinx was on.
Rumors abounded. One was that instead of fish, Barilko was smuggling gold Another far-fetched one was that he’d been kidnapped by the KGB to teach Russians how to play defense (Barilko was of Russian stock).
When his plane was spotted in the bush and muskeg, 100 kilometers north of Cochrane, I was a reporter with the Toronto Telegram. Photographer Dick Loek and I were dispatched north to investigate.
Loek and I were the only journalists to visit the scene. I forget how we arranged it, but we were taken by helicopter close to the site, and then slogged on foot a mile over muskeg, swamps, mosquitoes and bugs to the tree line where the plane was nosed into the ground.
The OPP had removed the bodies, but poking around there were still shards of bone. I found a perfectly preserved front tooth. There were rumors that the plane was overloaded with gold hidden in the pontoons.
Sure enough, there were axe slashes in the pontoons (by the OPP) where supposedly 120 pounds of fish had been stored. But there was nothing. Presumably rodents had eaten the fish.
Hockey archeologist Kevin Shea (Hockey Hall of Fame) wrote an intriguing book in 2004 -- Barilko: Without a Trace, which was purchased for a movie that has yet to be made.
Over the years Barilko’s reputation has grown – immortality of sorts, with his jersey (No. 5) retired. The year his crashed plane was found, the Leafs won the Stanley Cup again. The jinx was over.
Versatile Canadian author Shane Peacock has written that Bill Durnan, another legendary Canadien goalie, had remarked before the 1951 Stanley Cup series that he couldn’t figure out how the Leafs even made it to the playoffs. Every game went into overtime, with the Leafs winning in six.
A lot of credit went to Barilko, who led the league in penalty minutes. While not a big goal-scorer, he was adapt at scoring critical goals.
After he died, Barilko was replaced in the Leaf lineup by another legend who, weirdly, was to die in a car crash: Tim Horton. If he were alive today, Bill Barilko would be 84. As it is, he has immortality instead.
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