| On Friday night we had a presentation from Lefty Reid about his times
with the Stanley Cup and at the Hall Of Fame; one by Richard Lomax on the
number 22 with Chicago during which he had seven game worn sweaters for
players who wore that number and a chat with Bob Wilson, who played for
several years in the Chicago farm system.
Saturday took us to the Peterborough Sports Hall Of Fame, which was well
worth the trip itself. We conducted the business part of the meeting before
George "Red" Sullivan entertained us with stories from his career as player,
coach and scout. After lunch Joey Johnston was in to give us snippets from
his hockey career.
During the Presidents report I mentioned that I had worked on scanning
2500 photos-mostly from my own collection-which were mostly non-NHL players
to be included on the website. The plan is to have evry players picture in
head-waist without a helmet so that you could easily ID that player if you
found him on a team photo without names.
I also mentioned the over 3400 photos donated by the Hockey News which I
listed and are now available for laser copies to members for a small fee by
contacting me. We have another list of 400 such documented by Jeff Sim, but
since I don't have them in hand I don't know what the process would be for
copying those pictures.
I get about fifty E-mails per week that range from helping other SIHR
members with information to helping family members track the careers of
their relatives. The most notable such families I was able to help were the
Hugh Lambe and John "Red" Doran families.
The Lambe family sent me a nice note saying that they appreciated me
helping them ID two team photos for which the Hall Of Fame in Toronto was
unable to provide even one name. I have offered my services to the Hall to
fill out their ID needs, but they have never taken me up on this offer.
I mentioned that one of my priorities has been making the website better
and that Rick Cole and I were just sick because of the troubles we have had
lately.
I helped Paul Kitchen a little bit with the gathering of data for the
Origins Committee report and more so with the Hockey Heritage project we
will be helping the National Archies put together in Ottawa.
Somehow during our deliberations we never got around to having Paul
explain what this project was. If anyone is interested, contact Paul
or myself and we will do our best to explain it to you.
I explained about being an active member of the E-list, but you all know
about that.
Len Kotylo gave the Secretary's report and wanted to emphasize that the
SIHR office had moved from Suite 1203 to Suite 702, still at 415 Yonge St.
in Toronto.
He handled all correspondence and membership inquiries, assisted the
SIHR Executive and worked closely with the Newsletter Editor. As well, he
arranged for meetings of the Toronto chapter of SIHR.
He also was our rep with associated societies like Photographic Society
of Canada, North American Society for Sports History and St. Mary's
University Gorsebrook Research Institute.
He continued to sell SIHR pins at $5 each, assisted others in the
donation of John Paton's Guide collection to the Kingston Hall Of Fame and
did lots more that he didn't mention.
The Treasurers report was given by Paul Bruno and showed that we have a
little over $3000 in the coffers. He also pointed out that his members paid
up figures didn't agree with those that Dennis Gibbons had so there will be
meetings to hash out the discrepencies.
The website committe report was given by myself and Rick Cole. I
explained how I am in charge of content and Rick is in charge of the
Technical end. I told members that we had a lot of info and photos ready to
go on-site when we started having server troubles. We planned to put 25
sample photos on site and have a password so that members only would have
access to thousands of photos and information.
Rick explained that once our previous patron announced to the server
folks that he would be shutting down at years end that our service became
erratic at best. We decided to move to a new server but couldn't start up
without getting approval from the old server to use our SIHR ID, but that
after weeks of detective work they found the old server was in Australia and
manys prods produced no answer from the. It was then that I told Rick to
change the name to sihrhockey.org so that we could get on with it. His last
instructions to the company were to get it back quickly or we would move to
yet another server. Hold your breath on this one, but once back I think
everyone will be happy with the service.
Another item that came up was the Bill Martin Bibliography. An original
member, Bill wrote down every book, Guide, program, Scrapbook, etc. that he
had. We felt that we should expand that to included what all of our members
have so that what we could put on site would likely include virtually
everything every produced on the game.
I announced a statistics/photos committe with me as chairman and
including Charles Roth (Spokane), Ed Sweeney (Winnipeg), Bob Duff (Windsor,
Ont.), Don Andrews (Pembroke-covers the Ottawa Valley), Iain Fyffe
(Fredericton-specializes in early Manitoba hockey and early Lacrosse stats),
Patrick Houda (Sweden), Martin Harris (British stats), etc.
I also mentioned how we would miss John Paton of Toronto who had been my
instigation to gather amateur stats to go along with the Pros.
It is our hope to complete every minor Pro league in the modern way and
include that data on site for the members to share. As for amateur leagues,
we will likely make career records of the better players for the site and
share complete season-by-season data with those who work on the committee.
Not much was said about the photos end, but the plan is to put as many
different team pictures from as many different leagues as possible, along
with a good clear shot of every player. Only original photos will be used at
first until all leads are extinguished, then we will consider using copies.
Photos of Bee Hive, Quaker Oats, hockey cards, magazines, etc. are not good
enough for now. If anyone thinks they have anything to offer please let me
know.
Len Kotylo made a presentation as to why Wayne Gretzky of
L.A. never got a penalty when he cut Doug Gilmour of Toronto. A lively
discussion ensued-you should have been there.
Ernie
Fitz |
