The KSS "Ramblers" - BC Hockey Champions

It seems hard to realize that at one time there was no Minor Hockey League organization in BC as we know it today. In fact there was very little organized hockey activity in BC of any kind for any youths below the official "Junior" leagues, and even they were located mostly on the prairies and eastwards. So in the late 1940's a number of the high schools in BC started to act together to try and get hockey going in the schools. It wasn't easy but fortunately in Kamloops the old and then the new arena had no ice activities scheduled for Saturdays until the afternoon general skating period and the owners were glad to grant KSS full free ice time from 6 am 'til 12 noon for hockey involving the students.

In discussing this offer with Bill Gurney it turned out that I was the one and only staff member that knew anything about hockey having played it at various levels all my life, so I was given the OK to organize and run a KSS school league. Little did I know what I was getting involved in, for a school notice produced some hundred or more names at all levels from Grade VII to XIII and no other staff member offered to help me out. So it was set up by age groups to try and even the teams out but I can not remember how many teams there were at all unless one divides 12 into the full number of interested boys and even this number varied from week to week.

All winter long my Saturday mornings started at 5.00 AM and didn't end until after 12. No other staff member or even outside persons were there to help, so I had to referee as well as coach, change playing lines and even tie up skates on occasion during the first year. After that I had some of the older boys on tap as helpers, which was fine. Eventually Bill McMillan joined the staff and offered to help with the running of this league and that was a major relief for he really helped tremendously.

The school's senior "Ramblers" hockey team came from this organization and in an effort at trying to unite schools in the Interior with those in the Lower Mainland to promote interest in hockey for all school kids. The members of this team were from the upper grades, mostly 12 and 13 but we accepted anyone that could play a good game. It did mean though that for outside games we had to practice often and hard to develop plays and strategy which in turn meant a lot more time down on the ice surface.

It seems that some lower mainland teams had heard that there were teams now in the interior - Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Greenwood etc. and somehow had organized a tournament for senior high schools to determine the hockey champion team for British Columbia, sponsored, I think, by the PE Department of the Ministry of Education, Victoria.

This tournament was to be played in Kelowna and somehow or other the press in Kelowna had chosen Kelowna as the best school team in the province. Nobody in Kamloops knew a thing about our team and even when prompted, we barely got a press mention at all. But we entered the Ramblers none the less and off we went. It was a good week! In actual fact we didn't lose a game and won the tournament, thus becoming the school hockey champions of BC.

Somewhere I have an official photo of our Ramblers hockey team with the names of all the boys on the back but can remember only a few names, such as Eddie Garay, Zeke and Nick Brkch, and Larry Candido but unfortunately the other names have slipped my memory though their faces remain. It was rather humorous to note the pages of publicity for the Kelowna team before they played us in the final game followed by the small paragraph after we had beaten them in that final game.

The following year [about the early to mid 1950's] the Kamloops Minor Hockey organization was strengthened and at a meeting in Bill Gurney's office the new officers outlined their whole program from the smallest and youngest boy to the oldest. They had a good number of active members, guaranteed that all school students at all levels would be welcome and then requested that the school relinquish the arena ice times to the Minor Hockey Association. Eventually after some dickering back and forth the school agreed to the request and both Bill and I were able to breathe sighs of relief. Thus ended the school hockey program for KSS, the provincial program of inter-school hockey tournaments and marked the beginning of a very successfully organized minor hockey league which is still operating today in Kamloops and throughout all of BC.