Canada’s UBC-based 1964 Olympic Hockey Team, coached by Father David Bauer (front row, fourth from right) and Bob Hindmarch (front, fourth from left).
Don’t be surprised if you hear Hayley Wickenheiser or any of the other sure-fire Canadian Olympians say, “Home, sweet home,” when they arrive at UBC in 2010.
That is because the new UBC Thunderbird Arena, a 2010 Olympic and Paralympic competition venue, is located where Canada’s National Hockey Program was born.
Two legends of our national sport – UBC Hall of Famer Bob Hindmarch and the late Rev. Father David Bauer – established Canada’s first national hockey team at UBC in 1963 in preparation for the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
“Back then, there was no national team and the NHL didn’t share its players,” says Hindmarch, who will be inducted in the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in March along with members of the 2002 gold medal men’s and women’s teams. “So our best junior team would usually represent the country at the Games – whoever won the Memorial Cup.
“The problem was, Russia and other countries were getting organized, sending national teams stacked with pros,” Hindmarch adds, noting Canada returned from the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, U.S. medal-less in hockey. “That was a real kick in the pants and about the time we approached Hockey Canada and got cracking on a national team.”
Built around a core of UBC students, the team was “hard skating and hard-working, with skill to burn,” says Hindmarch, who was general manager and assistant coach. The team residence was the 1963 Pacific National Exhibition showhome, which UBC purchased for $3,000 and had moved to campus.
Bauer, who coached the team and taught at UBC, was Chaplain at St. Marks College, a theological academy at UBC, from 1961 until 1988. The younger brother of NHL legend Bobby Bauer, he was a Catholic priest in the Congregation of St. Basil, which places great value on sport and physical activity.
“He was Catholic and I was Protestant; so we joked that we had an ecumenical coaching staff,” says Hindmarch, who was Chef de Mission for Canada at the 1984 Winter Games and attended every Olympics from 1960 to 1998. “Father was never preachy with us, he just had this great ability to inspire and work with young people. For him, hockey was a medium to make players better people and better citizens.”
“Father Bauer and Bob Hindmarch’s footprints are all over hockey in Canada,” says Bob Nicholson, President and CEO of Hockey Canada. “With their team, they set the values and goals we still have for our game – not just for the national program, but for all hockey in Canada.”
The team helped Canada bounced back from the 1960 debacle, ultimately winning bronze in a controversial three-way tie. “I still remember the headlines,” says Hindmarch, a UBC professor emeritus in human kinetics and former athletics director: “The priest and his flock got fleeced.”
Hindmarch says his former players’ jaws would drop if they saw UBC’s new $47.8 million Thunderbird Arena, a new three-rink multipurpose complex built around the former Father Bauer Arena, where the UBC national team played. “We were playing in a Model T,” he says. “This is a Mercedes.”
Refurbished and expanded thanks to contributions from VANOC, the Governments of Canada and British Columbia, RONA and UBC, the new arena will house Olympic and Paralympic competition for men’s and women’s hockey and sledge hockey in its 7,500-seat competition rink, practices in a second rink, with a third rink converted for Games operations and media.
For sledge hockey, the venue has a number of accessibility features, including iced player bench areas so competitors can easily enter and leave the playing service on their sledges. These and other arena functions will be tested when international sledge hockey teams compete for gold at the Hockey Canada Cup, which will occur Feb. 24 to Mar. 1, 2009 at UBC.
Before and after the games, the facility gives UBC and the community with a world-class legacy venue, housing UBC varsity hockey, a variety of student, staff and community skating and hockey programs and concerts. Bands such as The Killers and Rise Above have been the first to rock the venue.