While wandering rinkside through the corridors of North Bay’s Memorial Gardens, scouring yesteryear team pictures for players of prominence, I encountered a window-framed view of the 1982-83 Centennials. Its odd footnote, “Absent Ray Flaherty,” amused me to no end for its errant punctuation.
Who knew? The former Orillia Travelways player and Terriers coach went by his middle name?
On a roundabout way south, and home, I stopped briefly in Parry Sound, chatting casually with a realtor, more about hockey than chattels. He was a former CHL and AHL referee with some intriguing insights — gleaned from this rarely surveyed vantage — into the evolution of the game
He now transacts in places, not penalized players.
Places that come with people’s pasts and their pasttimes in these places, where makeshift, 2-by-10 wooden benches still freeze into northern lakes from mid-December to mid-March, with a litany of fathers and long-ago grandfathers, lacing up skates. Glance through your winter window over any expanse of “Cooch” or Carthew Bay, and you’ll see several such skaters, though, strangely, for some magic, there are fewer whenever binoculars are raised.
One night back in October, when wrapping up one of these pieces, I edited out that arcanity above, as per Ray. I was informed of his passing early the next day.
Make light of another one minute, then, they’re gone the next.
I lapsed into some musings as per Remembrance Day services, with their processions of stooped, little, blue men, struggling to trudge through November slush; these weary, regal, old souls. Then, suddenly, I saw them at 30, not 90, … marching through conditions more forbidding, to perils more foreboding; these wary, robust, young soldiers.
I stared blankly at the picture of Ray in that classic O-Pee-Chee hockey card pose.
He was a regular patron of a pizza and pasta emporium I once presided over. Our exchanges were friendly but brief — typically about the state of the game in general, or, about a game in particular, had some item of note occurred. He was a man of deep voice, but few words.
Over time, they added up.
One evening Ray shuffled in leaning awkwardly over a walker, like that that he may have learned to skate with. He struggled navigating it through a fairly wide aisle, which I dismissed to the athlete’s advanced odometer, invariably evident in a failed knee.
We exchanged syllables, my “Knee?” for his “Nope.”
That I found him wide-eyed and talkative, though haltingly so, forewarned me. He had been lying on his couch watching TV, when he dropped the converter, not comprehending his inability to pick it up. Then, finding himself inert on the floor, only confused the matter further.
This, all clarified when the doctor diagnosed a stroke.
I remember Ray Flaherty.
He played three seasons in the OHL, with three different teams, but, with stats suggesting that he was sought after, not discarded. He tallied 15 goals and 147 minutes in penalties, in a half-season on Belleville’s Olympic ice where P.K. Subban used to figureskate. He put up better numbers still, with Orillia’s 1984 Travelways powerhouse.
A distant past, charity, old-timers game, with former NHL’ers versus an assortment of similarly skilled Orillians, came to mind. This, however, more so, for an odd moment within it.
Ray, normally a left winger, was assertively quarterbacking what appeared to be a power play, from the right point, except that it wasn’t. Such was the Orillia squad’s dominance.
Just as awkward was giving way to embarrassing, the whistle blew, signaling a stoppage in play. The ensuing line change provided an unplanned pause, and, with it, perhaps, some sudden sense of the night’s cause. No coach took a timeout, no words were spoken. Jack Valiquette, qualified to play on either roster, did then, don a well-flowing wig, and, were there any angst, it eased.
I was compelled to attend Ray’s celebration of life, not to a sense of obligation, but, for the recency of such intentions regrettably unspent, and, as said, our exchanges, over time … they added up.
Arriving at the club, I smoothed out my blazer and gathered myself mentally, as one customarily does at such occasions, noting, too, the over-flowing parking lot, barely 20 minutes into the three-hour ‘drop-in.’ In the foyer I was greeted by a teary-eyed Erin, Ray’s daughter, and her children, Ray’s grandchildren.
With my first step up the short flight of stairs, I was taken aback some by an aura, lively and even reminiscent of a long-ago game at the boisterous barn, at Penetang and Patrick. The chatter was amplified and animated, and no doubt, exaggerated, just like that perfectly great between-periods state with corridors filling, beers flowing, and the home team winning. Only Mike Dodd waving his way through a haze of cigarette smoke was missing.
It was a celebration after all.
Yes, I remember Ray Flaherty, though my perspective is considerably narrower than that of those who knew him longer; some, for a lifetime. That said, is it not the varied viewpoints — a flash of colour here, a shadow shortened there –— however boundless or brief, cast from diverse vantages, at different times, in different places, that purify the panorama?
A year or so ago I ran into Ray at Zehrs. Some time had passed, sadly some deterioration had set in. Our exchange was pleasant but briefer.
Our baskets contained an assortment of groceries, but Ray’s was affixed to the front of a too-small, motorized scooter, though his considerable bulk was still formidable and burly, better-fit for a Harley. So blunt was the contrast between these two images, I instantly grasped that odd term, “juxtaposition.”
At an All Saints Day service, how peaceful, then, was the prescient priest’s, “Life has not ended, it has but changed.”
I smiled warmly, now seeing only the two images above, but, more broadly still, recalling the perfectly apt punctuation perused beneath that ’83 Centennials window-framed view.
Ray is not lost, just absent.
Merry Christmas.
John Epstein is a former, 25-year Orillia business owner who left southern Ontario for the north years ago, and has never been back. He is now a freelance writer, whose column will appear monthly in OrilliaMatters. He can be reached at [email protected]
