BURST
On March 2, 1980, New Westminster Bruins coach Ernie (Punch) McLean became incensed after referee Ken Wheler missed a tripping call.
In protest, he tossed a large metal garbage can onto the ice.
McLean was a very successful coach, known for overseeing rough teams that fought their way to back-to-back Memorial Cups in 1977 and 1978.
But he was also infamous for his antics, such as in a 1976 game in Saskatoon when he leaned over the boards and ripped linesman Harry Hildebrandt’s toupee off his head.
Still, hurling the garbage can is what people remember most.
“I looked around, and there’s a garbage can there, right behind me,” recalls McLean, still feisty at age 93. “I grabbed it, threw it at (the ref), and I told him, ‘You’re like the garbage in the can.’ ”
Wheler picked the can up and returned it to the Bruins’ bench. According to a Province story by Jack Keating, the raucous crowd at the Queen’s Park Arena chanted: “One more time! One more time!”
So, McLean hurled it back.
Craig Hodge photographed the game against the Portland Winter Hawks for the New Westminster Columbian. Unfortunately, he missed the first garbage can toss, because it was spontaneous.
But he figured McLean might do something else, so he focused his camera on him. Sure enough, McLean threw it back. Hodge got the photo, it went out across Canada on The Canadian Press wire, and a legend was born.
“The folklore of Ernie was how he used to throw his garbage can out onto the ice whenever he got mad,” said Hodge with a laugh. “It really only happened once, but because I took the picture and it ran nationally across the country, he became known for throwing the garbage can.”
Hodge is now a Coquitlam city councillor. Recently he was talking to Gordy Cartwright of Woody’s Pub on Brunette in Coquitlam, and Cartwright brought up the garbage can story. Hodge said he had photographed it, searched through his photo archive and found the original print.
On Thursday night, Cartwright held a small gathering at the pub to present McLean with a print of the incident, 46 years after it happened.
McLean doesn’t dwell much on the garbage can toss — after all, he only did it once. But he has enough stories for a miniseries.
Legend has it he’s blind in one eye, the result of a small plane accident in his native Saskatchewan.
McLean had a construction business at the time, and was flying solo from The Pas, Man., to Yorkton, Sask., when he crashed near Kamsack, Sask., 300 kilometres northeast of Regina.
McLean was badly injured.
“There were over 50 pieces of wood on the side of my face,” says McLean, who lives in Coquitlam with his wife Fern.
But he walked out of the bush to a farmhouse to get help.
“I heard a dog barking,” he said. “I could go just so far, and then I’d lay down and pass out. Finally at eight o’clock that night, I got to the place. I had a pair of shorts tied under my face, and a shirt holding my jaw up.
“It was a little cabin, there were two brothers. I banged on the door, and (one) opened the door. Oh my God, he jumped back. He didn’t know what to expect.”
McLean was transported by air ambulance to Regina, and says it was “touch-and-go” for 11 days as to whether he would survive.
“They took (out) one piece of wood, it went up in behind my eyes to my brain,” he said. “The doctor said, ‘If it went another eighth of an inch or so you wouldn’t be here today.’ ”
It left him with limited vision in his left eye, but he says he isn’t blind.
McLean was one of the founders of the Western Canadian Junior Hockey League in 1966, coaching his hometown Estevan Bruins. In 1971, he moved the team to New West, after being turned down in Kamloops and Vancouver. He sold the team to Nelson Skalbania in 1980 after attendance started to fall.
His nickname is Punch, which people usually attribute to his combative nature and teams. But it actually came from another famously combative coach.
In a game in Regina in the mid-1960s, McLean yelled at a ref: “Who do you think you are, Frank Udvari?” He was the top referee in the NHL at the time when there were six teams. “And (the junior referee) hollered over to me: ‘Who do you think you are, Punch Imlach?’ ” (Imlach was then-coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs.)
McLean came back for a second stint as Bruins coach that ended in 1987. For the last four decades he’s been living in Coquitlam and mining for gold up north in places like Atlin and Dease Lake.
His last brush with notoriety was in 2009, when he got lost while surveying near Turnagain Lake, 80 kilometres east of Dease Lake. He fell down a crevasse in the remote, mountainous area, but got out and was found by a helicopter five days after a search was mounted.
He’s still looking for gold at 93 — this summer he plans to take a mining crew up to Barkerville. And he’s still in good shape.
“I played hockey at 175 pounds, and I’m 180 (today),” he said.
The best score in his mining career was finding 75 ounces of gold in one day. Gold is now worth over $5,000 an ounce, but it wasn’t in the heyday of his mining career.
With the way the price of gold has gone up, he said, “I wish I had kept everything.”
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