Hornby's Maple Leafs History Highlights: The 48th pipes up for another opener

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They’ve been lost amid laser beams, curtailed by COVID-19 and have had their set list scissored, while a couple of their best players hit the ice hard with only their kilts as padding.

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Yet the 48^th Highlanders of Canada keep on piping, 50-strong for the season opener on Wednesday. Best to arrive early, though, to see them march in full regalia and hear their oldie, but goodie, ‘The Maple Leaf Forever,’ the oft-forgotten official team anthem.

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For more than 90 years, from the first game at the Gardens, down Bay Street in Stanley Cup parades and making the move to Scotiabank Arena, the puck doesn’t drop on a new campaign until the last skirl from the bagpipes, an echo of a bygone Toronto.

“The band starts asking in the middle of summer ‘when does the schedule come out, when’s the opener?’” said Chris Reesor, the 48^th’s current Regimental Sergeant Major and  its Drum Major up to 2020. “It’s a tradition we value very much, our place in the city’s history and the hockey team’s past.

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“But it’s become harder for us to keep up our part in the ceremony. When the Ducks and the Sharks came in the NHL (during the early 1990s), they brought the big Disney-style light and laser shows. More and more the NHL is controlling events like that.

“Around the Leafs’ centennial year in 2017, we were almost (deleted from the program). There was a big backlash, a call was made from our regiment to someone of great importance in MLSE and we stayed.”

The regiment had begun with a much larger role in the autumn proceedings when politicians, war heroes and celebrities came to centre ice. Just before the brand new Gardens, the nation’s largest tent at the time, hosted its first Leafs game on Nov. 12, 1931, club president Jack Bickell and team manager Conn Smythe brainstormed how to add pomp and ceremony to the gala event. Both were military men, Smythe a pilot in World War I, Bickell long affiliated with the 48^th, which was created in 1891 by proud local Scottish citizenry.

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The invite went out and the Highlanders haven’t missed an opener since, though COVID posed one of the biggest threats to breaking their streak. When the pandemic struck and the SBA was near empty a couple of years, the band appeared via Zoom on the videoboard or a lone piper was allowed in.

“COVID wasn’t kind to us,” Reesor added of a few members who didn’t return out of health concerns.

Some of them never want to miss the big night, but time marches on. While cadets as young as 14 have participated, veterans who reach their 60s and 70s can be reluctant to risk a broken hip out on the ice.

Falls are inevitable, especially in those days when the band came out nearer game time, right after a fresh ice flood. One Highlander went out feet first, prompting much media mirth. Colleague Scott Morrison, in his best Mike Myers’ movie brogue, announced to the press box “there’s a piper down! I repeat we have a piper down!”

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After that mishap, members started fastening Canadian Tire ‘Ice Creepers’ to their boots, elastic bands with small cleats for traction. One trombonist had his come off while in the Leafs zone. When Felix Potvin took up his position for the game, the creeper had frozen into his goal crease and he had to chop it out with help from the officials.

The 48th has a distinctive tartan, The Old Davidson, and a falcon’s head in tribute to its first Commanding Officer, John Irvine Davidson.

Among the first units to ship out in World War I, more than 600 Highlanders were lost in a 1915 gas attack in Ypres, Belgium. More gave their lives at the Somme, Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge, while earning 21 Battle Honours.

In the Second World War, the regiment saw heavy fighting in Italy and during the liberation of Holland. Their original full dress scarlet colours are still worn today.

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Photos of the regiment taking up more than half Gardens’ ice that first night in ’31 inspires today’s players. But the modern program means they no longer stay to perform the national anthems.

“We’re on the clock,” said Reesor, who has participated since 1988 and was Drum Major 14 years before promotion took him out of the mix. “We have to be on a bus, dropped off at the rink and very conscious that we’re working on the television network’s schedule. If given seven minutes or 5:40 to play, we have to make it tight, then be back on the bus.”

No problem for this disciplined group, which practices music and counter marches every Tuesday as part of its Canadian Forces reserve training.

For many of the Leafs’ leaner seasons, such as losing seven home openers in the 2000s, the Highlanders entered from the Zamboni entrance, spread out in perfect formation of pipes, drums and brass and exited as crisply, while the team itself struggled through the night on breakouts. The 48^Th has been augmented many years on opening night by the Royal Regiment of Canada, which is headquartered at Fort York.

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During the rest of the calendar, the Highlanders take part in many military ceremonies, at public schools, their regimental church and of course, their solemn Remembrance Day service. When a Leaf gets his statue on Legend’s Row in Maple Leaf Square, the 48^th is there, too.

Reesor accepted a request from Leafs goalie and avid piper Glenn Healy to join their 1999 parade that escorted Gardens’ memorabilia to the new Air Canada Centre along with Leafs alumni in a motorcade.

“Glenn said he didn’t want to be in a convertible, he wanted to be with us. He was a member of the Highland Creek Pipe and Drums and had a custom uniform made for the occasion, but asked us to bury him in the middle of our band so he wouldn’t distract from us.”

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The 48th is made up from reservists whose day jobs are all walks of life: Infrastructure, trades, office execs, engineers and students.

Reesor was with Yamaha Music for 18 years as a product marketing manager for bands and orchestras and now does contract work as a part-time soldier in the Canadian Forces.

But he laments the band is gradually less a a part of the main event. They go out first, performing in a half-empty rink, prior to team warm-ups, with many patrons still stuck in traffic, security checks or food lineups.

“We do know the people still appreciate us. They see us in the hallway and start hurrying to their seats. And we did play a full house when the Gardens closed in 1999.”

Reesor called that night “a magical experience” where they often couldn’t hear their music with all the cheering.

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“Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Eddie Shack and other players were in the VIP beer tent, they saw us and came over to say how much we meant to them. That was very rewarding.

“Johnny Bower had been in the Canadian Army and that night, as always, he stood up out of respect when we came in. We’d told him ‘please sit, you’ve done your service’.

“Shack being Shack, he was running around on the ice trying to lift the kilts of our male pipers, but one guy told him ‘Eddie, if you’re going up there, it better be to sign something for me.’”

After their few minutes of fame on Wednesday, the band will be back at Moss Park where the game will be on TV and libations opened to toast another opener in the books.

As Sergeant Major, Reesor keeps an eye on seven bands within the brigade’s family and, of course, one day hopes to plan their role in a Cup parade to City Hall.

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“My God, I’d love to be there and so many of us dream of doing that. I was four months old when they won the last Cup.

“I think about what we’d look like coming down Bay with all the people watching.”

ONCE A LEAF

Featuring one of the more than 1,100 players, coaches and general managers who have played or worked in Toronto since 1917.

Centre Doug Shedden

Born: April 29, 1961, in Wallaceburg, Ont.

24 GP, 1988-91

8 goals, 10 assists, 18 points, 12 PIMs

THEN: A 51-goal season with the Soo Greyhounds in 1980-81 validated Shedden being drafted by Pittsburgh, where he spent most of his career. Signing as a free agent with the Leafs in 1988 and starting on the farm in Newmarket, he blew out his knee in the first game he was called up for.

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“Very unfortunate, but at least there was a funny story before the injury,” Shedden said. “I was leading the American Hockey League in scoring and we’d just got back from playing three games in three nights late on a Sunday. We probably had some beers on the bus and I was really hoping to sleep in, when (coach) Paul Gardner called and said ‘they need you in Toronto tomorrow.’ I thought he was kidding. but I believe Gary Leeman had got hurt.

“I checked into at the Westbury (the favoured NHL hotel next to the Gardens), but I couldn’t sleep. We were playing Calgary, one of the best teams in the league at the time and (noted hard-ass) John Brophy was our coach. I didn’t know him before that, but in the dressing room before the game, there’s no video or anything, just John saying ‘listen these guys are f**king good and you’d better not f**king lose.’ That was it. I thought, ‘oh well, never mind about learning the system here.’

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“I was doing well, on a line with Mark Osborne. I’d hit the post, but a Gary Suter hit caught me in a bad position.”

It took Shedden 11 months to recover from the knee mishap, but he did come back strong two years later. Toronto would be the last of his four NHL stops, totalling 416 games, but no playoffs.

A rewarding career in coaching was in store for Shedden, with a decade in non-traditional U.S. markets. He won back-to-back Central League titles with Wichita, a UHL championship with the Flint Generals and two more in the CHL with the Memphis River Kings.

That brought him back on the Leafs’ radar as their AHL coach in St. John’s, Nfld., for two seasons (2003-05). His tenure included one of the longest trips in any hockey team’s history. In January of ’05, the Baby Leafs were gone 24 days for 12 games, crossing four time zones and 18,218 kilometres. He set a record for wins in St. John’s that year with 46, their last campaign before the parent club brought them team back to Toronto.

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NOW: Shedden has become one of the most successful Canadian-born coaches in Europe, starting in Finland with HFIK, then the famed Jokerit club, which led to a job running its national team and a bronze medal at the 2008 world championships. It was on to the Swiss League with Zug and Lugano, with a KHL stop in Medvescak Zagreb. His Lugano side beat Canada among others at the Spengler Cup and Shedden switched roles to help Canada win the tournament in 2012.

After time with Germany’s Ingolstadt Panthers, Shedden’s current home is picturesque Banska Bystrica in the top Slovak league, a town of 76,000 about halfway between Bratislava and Kocise.

“It’s a great lifestyle in Europe, not rush, rush, rush,” Shedden said. “On this team, our games start at 5:30 p.m. and we’re done by 8. Our building is sold out with a soccer atmosphere.”

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FAVOURITE LEAFS MEMORY

“I didn’t think I’d play again after the injury and had a long talk with Dr. (David) Hastings of the Leafs. But when I did return, Tom Watt was the coach and I enjoyed playing on a line with Mike Krushelnyski and Wendel Clark. I have to thank Gord Stellick, who was the GM when I was hurt for keeping me, which later gave me the chance to reach 400 games. That was big for (NHLPA pension purposes) at the time.”

LOOSE LEAFS

Club president Brendan Shanahan and broadcaster Joe Bowen are among the 2023 inductees for the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame with the ceremony Oct. 26 at The Carlu in Toronto. For tickets contact ontariosportshalloffame.com … Last Saturday’s Road Hockey To Conquer Cancer tournament raised $3.15 million for research purposes, with 1,800 participants. Active in playing and promotion during the day were Sittler, Clark, Shayne Corson, Al Iafrate, Carlo Colaiacovo, Lou Franceschetti and Krushelnyski.

THIS WEEK IN LEAFS HISTORY

Next Tuesday marks 76 years since the first NHL all-star game, between the Cup champion Leafs and the best from the other five Original Six clubs … Thirty years ago Saturday, the Leafs beat the Dallas Stars 6-3 in the season opener, beginning Toronto’s record run of 10 straight wins to start a season.

Have a question, comment or want to see a former Leaf profiled? Drop a line to [email protected]

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