In the spring of 1951, Bill Barilko leapt into history. Just twenty four years old, the hard-hitting, poor-sighted defenseman from gold-rush Timmins scored an overtime winner in the Stanley Cup Final—delivering the Toronto Maple Leafs their fourth championship in five years. Four months later, on a return flight from a fishing trip near James Bay, Barilko vanished with his pilot, triggering the largest aviation search in Canadian history.
Marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of that goal and disappearance, sportswriter Ronnie Shuker reconstructs Barilko’s improbable rise—from the rough outdoor rinks of Northern Ontario to the Hollywood Wolves of the PCHL, and finally to Maple Leaf Gardens, where he became “Bashin’ Bill,” a fan favorite known as much for his bruising play as for his clutch performances. Shuker then retraces the route of Barilko’s fatal floatplane journey, exploring the pilot error, bad weather, and overloaded cargo that likely sealed his fate, and the eleven-year mystery that kept a nation wondering.
From the ice to the crash site, and from contemporary reporting to the cultural revival sparked by The Tragically Hip’s “Fifty Mission Cap,” Shuker offers the fullest portrait yet of a Canadian folk hero—his triumphs, his tragedy, and the enduring myth that grew in the silence of the Northern Ontario forest.
In the waning days of the pandemic, sportswriter Ronnie Shuker stuffed his skates, sticks, and backpack into his faithful automobile, Gumpy, named for legendary goaltender Gump Worsley, and set off on a 30,000-mile, coast-to-coast-to-coast investigation of the many ways hockey touches the lives of Canadians.
From St. John’s, home of hockey’s most colorful father-son combo, to a frigid barn in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, and the world’s largest hockey stick in Duncan, British Columbia, Shuker finds the people and places that make hockey an indelible part of the Canadian experience. He hits famous sites of hockey lore, from the cradle of the game in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to Brantford, Ontario, where streets, highways, schools, and much else bear the name Gretzky, to Vancouver, site of the infamous 1994 and 2011 Canucks riots. But he also finds the game in unlikely places—crash sites, greenhouses, houseboats, memorials, backyard halls of fame, even a Hutterite colony—where a seemingly endless and always engaging cast of characters, including pros, semipros, beer-league veterans, family, and fans, share unforgettable stories of how pucks have dented their lives.