Old Hounds are all Dunn
My old high school shut its doors as an education facility about six or seven years ago. Venerable Sir James Dunn Collegiate was then used as a community center and a movie site before the building was demolished within the past year.
Now just an open space where a few trees remain just north of the old track and football field, Sir James Dunn may cease to exist as a high school but there are memories that will never fade away.
Included in the tens of thousands of students who graced the hallowed halls of the Dunn over decades in time are several hockey players who went on to a high degree of succcess.
Indeed, among those who came from out of town to play for the Soo Greyhounds and attend the Dunn are some of the best to ever skate in the Ontario Hockey League — and beyond that, to the National Hockey League.
In fact a couple of former Sir James Dunn boys not only starred in the OHL with the Greyhounds but went on to win Stanley Cup championships as teammates with the Edmonton Oilers and eventually get inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Needing no formal introduction, the dynamic duo who ascended from the classrooms of the Dunn to legends of hockey are center Wayne Gretzky and defenseman Paul Coffey.
Gretzky, the highest scoring player in NHL history and Coffey, the highest scoring defenseman known to hockey mankind, were back to back first round picks of the Greyhounds, though they never did play together in the Soo.
Gretzky racked up 70 goals and 182 points during his only season in the OHL after being the Greyhounds first round draft pick in 1977. As the Great One left the Greyhounds — and Sir James Dunn — after one year to turn pro in the defunct World Hockey Association, Coffey was drafted by the Greyhounds in the first round of the 1978 OHL lottery.
Coffey scored 89 points as a rookie defenseman with the Greyhounds only to later be traded to the Kitchener Rangers before embarking on a stellar NHL career, once scoring 48 goals in a single season from his blue line position. A handsome, good-looking guy who was a heart throb to many a high school girl at the Dunn, Coffey is as modest an individual who I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and talking to in the 42 plus years that I have been writing about hockey.
To be sure, Gretzky and Coffey are far from the only two hockey stars who walked the halls and sat in the desks of our old high school, the Dunn.
The Greyhounds first round pick at the 1973 OHL draft, center Jack Valiquette, is another SJD alum.
Valiquette only played one season with the Greyhounds, the 1973-1974 campaign, but it was a memorable one as he led the OHL in scoring with 135 points before leaving the Soo as an 18-year old to play in the NHL for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Valiquette would have a modest NHL career of just over 370 games but the “aw shucks” farm boy from Aylmer, Ont. made a lasting impression on me as an all-around nice guy who shared the same high school that I did.
Craig Hartsburg is another hockey standout who called the iconic Dunn his high school after the Greyhounds drafted him in the first round in 1975.
With long blond hair and pure offensive skills from his defensive post, Hartsburg spent three years on the Greyhound blue line and had a season of 93 points that won him the OHL’s best defenseman award.
Hartsburg would move on from the Greyhounds and from the green and gold school colours of the Dunn to wear the green and gold of the NHL’s Minnesota North Stars and become team captain.
Forced to retire from the NHL and the North Stars at age 29 because of major knee issues, Hartsburg was far from done with hockey. He would go on to spend the next 27 seasons as a celebrated coach in the OHL and the NHL before retiring just over a year ago. Included in his long and notable coaching career were a pair of successful stints as bench boss of the OHL Greyhounds.
Hartsburg may have left the Soo as a player as a 19-year old but he never ventured far away from his adopted home town for more than the length of a season. Hartsburg married a local girl, Peggy Hill, and they have since maintained a home in the Sault Ste. Marie area and still reside here.
Craig and Peggy are now grandparents and they remain a couple that one rarely sees without the other as Sault Ste. Marie area residents. Oh, and as Craig called Sir James Dunn his high school, so too did Peggy.
As Hartsburg remains one of my favourite Greyhounds of all time, so too does yet another Sir James Dunn high school alum, John (Snake) Goodwin.
Goodwin arrived in Sault Ste. Marie in 1978 as a lowly sixth round draft pick of the Greyhounds. But Goodwin would quickly rise to stardom as OHL rookie of the year for the 1978-1979 season and two years later, win the league scoring championship with a 166 point campaign.
On the quiet side but very friendly and personable, Goodwin would go on to coach with success in the OHL before, during and after a career with Ontario Power Generation in the Oshawa area.
Like Hartsburg, Goodwin married a Sault Ste. Marie girl, the former Joanne Davey, and the two are grandparents — and one-time high school mates at the good old Dunn.
There are others — many others — who played for the Greyhounds over the years while carrying school books and being taught by the teachers of the iconic Sir James Dunn Collegiate.
And as all who went to the Dunn have their memories of the grand old east end school, I will say that it bothers me that the Algoma District School Board chose to first close — and then demolish — SJD.
Really, as I walk and drive and look around town, I see century old church buildings that have been well maintained over the years and still stand tall and proud as part of the history of Sault Ste. Marie.
If old churches can be kept up and running, why can’t old schools?
Why did the school board have to tear down so much history?
Oh well, that’s on the bright minds of the geniuses who made such decisions.
On our bright side, many of us who called the Dunn home have memories that a wrecking ball can never take away.
RIP, MIKE BOLAND
I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of former Greyhound defenseman — and Sir James Dunn grad — Mike Boland.
Mike was a hard rock defenseman with the Greyhounds from 1972 to 1974 and attended the Dunn while I was finishing up my “stellar” gig at SJD. Mike went to a long pro career that included a couple of dozen games in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres.
I remember Mike as a friendly, down-to-earth guy who generally wore a smile on his face. Mike would have turned 63 years old later this month.
RIP, “Bo.”
PHOTO: Craig Hartsburg moved on from the OHL Soo Greyhounds — and venerable Sir James Dunn Collegiate — to play in the NHL for the Minnesota North Stars.