After his replacement, Hap Day had very little to do with the Maple Leafs. He moved to the small town of St. Thomas, west of Toronto, where he bought a struggling firm that made axe handles. He had offers from other teams, but stayed out of hockey. He had been close to Harold Ballard for years, but Ballard quickly, and characteristically, dropped him once his value waned.
Smythe felt guilty about the end of their thirty-year relationship and tried to ease the guilt with an extravagant parting gift: a fourteen-inch replica of the Stanley Cup in gold, inscribed with the names of “the players and associates in the years of your greatest triumphs.” It was delayed when the elderly man hired to do the intricate inscribing fell ill.
Day wouldn’t have felt very comfortable with the new atmosphere anyway. Stafford was appointed to head the new committee on May 9, 1957, and immediately disparaged Day’s work: “Under the present cut and dried system, you can win a game and they still check how many goals a player had scored against him. It’s time we put a little enjoyment back in the game for the players.”1
Stafford fired Meeker as manager on October 3, a month before he could manage his first game. “He didn’t have the kind of experience needed for that kind of job and needs to learn more about it. We don’t have the time to let him gain that experience,” Stafford said.2 Meeker, observed the Star’s Gordon Campbell, “is probably the only general manager in hockey history who was fired before he could find out whether he could manage.”3
The first season of the new administration was anything but enjoyable, as the Leafs sank to dead last. But redemption was at hand. In mid-July, a four-paragraph item partway down an inside page announced, “IMLACH APPOINTED LEAFS SECOND AGM.” The hiring of the little-known George “Punch” Imlach had been rumoured for some time. He’d spent the previous season as general manager of Eddie Shore’s Springfield Indians and would be the first Leafs boss since 1927 – other than Conn Smythe himself – who had never played in the NHL. His hiring would prove the catalyst that reversed the club’s slide, as the Leafs went from sixth place to fourth to second in just two years.
As Smythe had promised, he left Stafford to sink or swim on his own, confining himself to financial matters and league-wide affairs. The players who would turn the club into a Stanley Cup winner were mainly in place in any case: the last-place 1957 team included Dick Duff, Billy Harris, George Armstrong, Ron Stewart, Frank Mahovlich, Bob Pulford, Tim Horton, Bob Baun, Carl Brewer, and Bob Nevin, all of whom would feature in Cup winners to come. Imlach rescued Johnny Bower from the minors, traded for Red Kelly and Allan Stanley, and added twenty-year-old centre Dave Keon to complete the transformation.
Smythe busied himself with more prosaic matters. The NHL was growing up, and governors were concerned with an array of vexing bureaucratic preoccupations. They debated an “emergency rehabilitation plan” to take effect should some catastrophe strike them, produced a report on roster sizes and whether they had grown too large, mediated scheduling disputes, plunged into an interminable debate over TV broadcasting policies, and even considered the sliding characteristics of pucks.
He found plenty of opportunities to argue. In 1961, St. Michael’s College announced it would withdraw from the Junior A circuit, citing too many games, too much bad publicity over roughness, and too many complaints about the pressure hockey put on academics. The decision set off a chain reaction. If St. Mike’s wouldn’t play, said Stafford, neither would the Marlboros. Instead, he organized a new Metro League including St. Mike’s, the Marlboros, and three former Junior B teams to play a much shorter schedule. Sam Pollock, director of the Montreal farm system, exploded when he heard the news, as the withdrawal of the two talent-heavy Toronto teams would remove a rich crop of future NHLers from the league.
Smythe defended Stafford’s action and started a separate battle over formation of the Eastern Professional Hockey League, a semi-pro circuit that had the backing of the other five NHL teams. Toronto was adamant it would not participate.
“We are entirely against this new league,” he told Clarence Campbell, predicting it would be a financial disaster. There was a bitter exchange of letters between Toronto and Montreal, as Smythe insisted Metro League teams should be allowed to play interlocking games with OHA teams, but refused to allow EPHL teams anywhere near Toronto. He sent off a series of increasingly irate letters to Selke and Senator Hartland Molson, the Habs’ president, accusing them of mistreating the Leafs.
Selke replied wearily that he’d long ago decided not to engage in letter wars with Smythe, and it had been Toronto’s own decision to pull out of the OHA. Smythe appealed to Molson, with a thinly veiled threat to make trouble for its beer interests “unless the Canadien organization changes their attitude and acts in a friendly manner towards us.” Molson responded that his family had been selling beer in Ontario since 1824, and he could see “no reason these people should have their interests threatened by any difficulties … between our two great hockey teams.” In the end, neither the Metro League nor EPHL lasted long, and harmony was restored.4
Despite that aggravation, Smythe’s relations with Selke had steadily improved, largely through co-operation in establishing the Hockey Hall of Fame. Selke had done most of the legwork and had patiently massaged Smythe’s ego to get him involved. Smythe remained aloof until a site had been approved at the Canadian National Exhibition, when he agreed to supervise construction. The design contract went to Roper Gouinlock, who had built Smythe’s home in Baby Point and been a teammate on the 1915 Varsity team that defeated Selke’s Union Jacks.5 Nonetheless Smythe engaged in a drawn-out dispute over the exact size and location of the lettering for the sign to be placed on top of the CNE building, which he wanted to be visible from a distance, but not unsightly or large enough to overwhelm the Hall itself. When Selke worried that the costs were coming in above estimates, Smythe told him, “Who cares?” and pledged that he and Norris would ensure the money was raised.
The official opening ceremony took place August 26, 1961, with a speech by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who, to Smythe’s aggravation, included a reference to “my colleague and one of the greatest of Canadian goalkeepers in amateur hockey, Senator Joe Sullivan” – the same Joe Sullivan that Smythe considered a “skunk” for ruining his plans for the 1928 Winter Olympics.
Smythe had been named to the Hall when it existed only on paper. He and King Clancy were approved as members in 1958, along with Dick Irvin, Frank Boucher, and Ching Johnson. Once construction was completed in 1961, he and Selke engaged in friendly back-channel plotting to ensure their favoured candidates were approved by the selection committee, anticipating the demands of the other members and planning tradeoffs they could make in return.
“I know Red Dutton will shill for Harry Oliver. I can name dozens with better records,” Selke observed archly one winter from his farm outside Montreal. “Winnipeg will bring up Dick’s brother Alex Irvin – a very fine man [but] no better hockey player than a hundred you knew in the senior and Intermediate OHA.”6
Smythe responded that when a player like Ted Kennedy had to wait his turn after Harry Oliver – who had scored 127 goals in ten years with Boston and New York Americans – “there isn’t any sense in having a Hockey Hall of Fame.” That brought another burst of flattery from Selke: “It’s easy to see why you have been such a success in life as against my near failure. I have always worried about Public opinion – you decide what you want to do and to hell with the fault finders.”7
Smythe lobbied hard to have Red Horner admitted, even though he was best known for spending time in the penalty box. Horner made it, but Toe Blake missed out on his first attempt when some of the members misunderstood the voting procedure. They demanded a new vote when Blake failed to get the required support, but Selke refused. Blake had to wait another year to gain entry.
Almost from the beginning there was controversy over Busher Jackson, who Smythe was determined to block from entry. Jackson’s decline into alcoholism had left him a sad and broken figure, the object of pity and frustration among many who had tried to help him, but failed. “Busher Jackson was a wife beater,” said Smythe. “He was thrown in and out of jail a dozen times. He didn’t work and he never paid for anything. He had several friends who bailed him out a hundred times.”8
Smythe, along with Selke, Charlie Conacher, and Joe Primeau, had tried more than once to set him up in business opportunities, but his drinking always got in the way. In 1958, Clarence Campbell had written Smythe a note suggesting the Players’ Emergency Fund might also help out. Smythe wrote back that he would support any effort, but contacting Jackson proved difficult. His wife had fled with their seven-year-old son and was working at a garage. She refused to provide an address or any details “on account of her fear that Busher would turn up and do them some violence.”
Campbell reported that a job had been arranged for Jackson to act as “front man” for a new gas station, but he had started “hitting the bottle again around Christmas and nobody is interested in assisting him any further.” He also discovered his wife’s whereabouts and turned up at the garage, almost costing her the job.9
Campbell sent Jackson’s wife money for clothes and her son’s education. He also paid off Jackson’s debts and sent an allowance to the elderly aunt with whom he lived. Campbell agreed that he did not deserve membership in the Hall of Fame but Smythe attracted most of the criticism when Toronto papers mounted regular crusades on Jackson’s behalf.10 He sent them a copy of the Hall’s selection criteria, which specified that candidates would be evaluated “on the basis of playing ability, integrity, character and their contribution to their Team and the Game of Hockey in general.” Jackson, he argued, failed on at least three conditions.
The dispute would run for years. In a characteristic contradiction, Smythe tried to help Jackson quietly while abusing him in public. Jackson was still a familiar figure around the Gardens, a garrulous and sociable man who sometimes cadged broken sticks to sell for drinking money.11 He was seldom required to pay for anything. Hugh Smythe acted as his personal physician, checking him into hospitals and trying to keep him there after his many alcohol-fuelled accidents, taking away his pyjama bottoms so he couldn’t flee.12
When he wasn’t arguing over league issues or Hall of Fame matters, Smythe pursued his passionate opposition to the federal government’s plan to introduce a new Canadian flag. The proposal was a personal priority of Lester Pearson, who became prime minister in 1963. Smythe had known Pearson since his days at the University of Toronto, where Pearson had succeeded him as Varsity coach.
He called the prime minister by his nickname, “Mike,” and they exchanged polite but deeply felt arguments over the merits of the Red Ensign versus Pearson’s new Maple Leaf flag. The Ensign had represented Canada in both wars in which Smythe fought, but Pearson saw a new flag as a crucial matter of national unity. Quebec was in the early stages of the Quiet Revolution, asserting its individuality as never before, and Pearson considered the flag an essential step toward holding the country together.
Veterans were among his fiercest opponents, arguing that consigning the Ensign to history was a betrayal of the men who had fought for it. The debate was an echo of the conscription crisis Smythe had helped bring about in 1944, with Quebec eager to eliminate symbols that reminded them of English domination. Pearson was accused of aping Mackenzie King in currying favour with Quebec in the face of English opposition. When he appeared at a Royal Canadian Legion convention in Winnipeg in May 1964, he was booed and hissed by two thousand angry members.13
But Pearson was adamant, and public opinion was on his side. He assured Smythe Canada could have its own flag while maintaining its links to England. “The official adoption of a national flag for Canada … surely need not mean any disrespect to the Mother Country and nothing will be done to show such disrespect while I am the head of the Canadian government,” he wrote.14
Smythe wasn’t mollified and never would be. His hostility to Quebec increased as the debate heated up. “It is hard for me to realize that anybody would consider the pulling down of our flag a means of promoting good will among men,” he wrote Pearson in one letter,15 adding in another: “Do you honestly expect that you will get one more volunteer to fight for our country under a new flag?”16
For more than a year he campaigned feverishly. He had a letter printed up and sent out three hundred copies to MPs, senators, cabinet members, and other opinion-makers. Each envelope included a stamp of the Red Ensign and the slogan: “This is Canada’s Flag. Keep it flying!” He tried buttering up Pearson with flattery at the same time he was regularly sending telegrams to Diefenbaker with messages of support. In March 1964, he wrote Pearson that he appreciated “how lucky we are to have you as our Prime Minister,” and that Canadians were “blessed to have you take on this onerous job for us all.”17 But not long after he wrote Diefenbaker urging him to step up the battle, pledging that “you will find that the loyal, solid millions of Canadian citizens will see you re-elected Prime Minister of this country.”18
His campaign was for naught, however. The country had changed since 1944 and he was on the wrong side of national sentiment. English Canada was no longer the British bastion it had once been, and talk of the glories of Empire had become a relic, like the white-haired men in the Legion halls who spoke of it with such feeling. Unlike King’s divided and quarrelsome cabinet, Pearson’s supported his plan. Just two days after his legion ordeal, Pearson said his 127 MPs had “almost unanimously” agreed on a new design. Although he promised to hold an open vote in Parliament, he was confident of success: “We’re not going to have much trouble in the Liberal party on that vote, I can assure you.”19
It was no small irony that the symbol he had settled on, the maple leaf, was the same one Smythe had plucked from his wartime experiences to represent his team and the depth of his patriotism. Many times he had spoken of its importance to him, yet now he was denouncing it as an insult to the values he believed in.
As Pearson had predicted, Parliament approved the flag by a wide margin, and the new red and white banner was unfurled in February 1965. Smythe refused to give in. “His” flag was still the Red Ensign and he flew it wherever he had control of the flagpole. He hounded Bassett into agreeing to fly the old flag at the Gardens alongside the new one and was pleased when Ontario adopted the Ensign as its provincial flag soon after. He never changed his mind about the issue, “but I had run out of battlefields,” he noted ruefully.20
His failure in the flag debate was like a harbinger of a changing tide. His long string of luck suddenly seemed to abandon him, and he was about to experience the better part of a decade in which the tragedies and disappointments seemed to flow ceaselessly from one into the other. While he was sincere in his feelings for the Red Ensign, the debate also served as a diversion, allowing him a respite from the much greater tragedy enveloping him at the same time.
Late in 1963, Irene had begun experiencing lingering pain. Tests found she had cancer. It was terminal and would be painful. Although she might survive a year or more, it would be a time of slowly progressing incapacity, as the cancer spread through her bone marrow. Typically, she did her best to cushion the effect on her husband. “Now, Daddy, don’t worry about me,” she’d tell him. “It’s something we have to put up with.”21
Her suffering was excruciating, however, and Smythe agonized at his inability to help her. They moved into separate rooms, but he would hear her moaning in the night and lie in his own bed chafing at the injustice. While he had bulldozed his way through life impervious to his effect on others, Irene had charmed the same people who considered her husband a bad-tempered bully. She was kind where he was gruff, friendly where he was cold. Patricia’s death had brought them closer together, united in their grief, and Smythe’s wounds made him appreciate all the more the care and affection she provided him.
The cancer worsened through 1964 and by year-end Irene was in agony much of the time. Conn, wanting to give her the emotional support she had always given him, concluded it was inhuman to allow people to endure so much. “I can’t imagine a good God asking a lovely person like my wife to suffer that much when a doctor could give her something that would end it forever.”22 On a night when she confessed she was near the limit of her endurance, he offered to use his old army revolver to end her suffering.
“If you can’t take the pain any more, and want to end it, you tell me. I will stop your suffering myself,” he told her.23 A few nights later she asked if he still had the gun. Taking a deep breath, he said he did and was prepared to use it. But Irene decided that was “a coward’s way out” and steeled herself to endure a while longer.
She died early on a Sunday in June 1965. A notice in the paper stipulated: “If you plan to attend the service, please wear cheerful colours, as that is the way she would like it.”24 More than two thousand people attended and paid heed to the request. “Women were in bright dresses and gay colourful hats, men wore summer suits, bright ties and matching socks. All had felt the warmth of this gracious lady’s smile and the genuine friendliness in her greeting,” the paper reported. Her casket was draped with the Red Ensign.
Her death opened an enormous hole in Smythe’s life. He was seventy. He wasn’t exactly alone in the world, but he had lost the one woman he had allowed himself to love. His children were long since grown and embarked on their own lives. Hugh, the youngest, was immersed in a career in medicine. Miriam, age forty-two the year her mother died, was married and following a path that bore unnerving reminders of the one that had claimed Smythe’s mother at a too-early age. She drank too much and was in the process of ruining her health. There had been car accidents and other mishaps due to alcohol. He tried to help her and ensured her husband was well paid at the Gardens, but father and daughter weren’t close.
Which left Stafford, and a relationship that hadn’t lost any of its tension after Conn turned over his team and his arena to his son.
In hockey terms, the Silver Seven experiment had been a success. Punch Imlach had proved to be just the tonic to mould and motivate the mix of youth and veterans in the Leaf lineup, and after the first desultory season there had been rapid and regular improvement.
Success only served to exacerbate the friction. It was one thing for Conn to keep Stafford on a short leash when the team was struggling just to make the playoffs, something else altogether when they were challenging for first place and a spot in the Stanley Cup finals. In 1961, the Leafs came within two points of topping the league, and while Detroit kept them from making the finals, they were clearly a team on the rise. Stafford could claim much of the credit: although many of the top players had worked their way through the system while Conn was still titularly in charge, a solid core had been developed by Stafford via the Marlboros network or brought in by Imlach.
It rankled Stafford that his father treated him as no more than a hired employee. If he wanted to spend any money, he had to call someone on the board of directors and get permission. If Imlach bought a player, the cheque had to be approved by Conn. His father kept such tight control that even a new typewriter had to have his okay.
Frustrated, Stafford threatened to quit and go back to the sand and gravel business. He and Conn bickered at board meetings – over hockey, over the antics of the Silver Seven, over Conn’s sense that he was being pushed aside. Stafford, Ballard, and John Bassett were all accumulating shares, just as he had done when planning his own takeover after the war. Finally, Conn had had enough and challenged Stafford at a board meeting: “If you think you’re so smart why don’t you buy my stock?”25
He knew Stafford had no way to do so on his own. His son was in the same boat he’d been in when he lacked the money to buy control. Stafford needed a modern version of Percy Gardiner, the broker who’d sold Conn his stock on the installment plan. Stafford’s version of Gardiner was Harold Ballard, and Ballard knew that if you wanted money you go to where they keep it – in the bank. After a feverish period of plotting with Stafford, Ballard turned up one morning at his local branch and informed the manager he needed $2 million to buy Maple Leaf Gardens. Within hours the loan was approved. From a drugstore, they called John Bassett, who they agreed to cut in for a third of the deal.
It all happened in a whirlwind. On November 23, 1961, a Thursday, the deal was announced: Smythe would sell all but 5,000 of his 50,000 shares for $40 each, a premium over the previous day’s closing price of $34. The trio had hoped to pay just $30, but Smythe was doing them no favours. They would split the shares in three equal divisions, giving them control of about 60 per cent of the stock.
Once again Conn faced the press and pretended everything was fine. “It’s a great satisfaction to me that my son, who not so long ago as a stick boy congratulated me on winning the Stanley Cup, now has a chance to do the same thing as president,” he said.26 He almost certainly didn’t mean it. He was happy Stafford would succeed him, but he insisted, then and later, that he thought he was selling to Stafford alone and was unaware his son had brought in two partners.
It was, he thought, a stupid thing to do. “That’s the worst business mistake you could ever make,” he roared at Stafford when he learned the truth. “You have the whole pot, and now you’re going to get a third instead, so that every time this place makes a million dollars, you’re going to give two-thirds of it away.”27
It was even worse than that. Unbeknownst to his father, the trio had agreed that if any of them decided to sell, the others would have first claim. In Conn Smythe’s mind, the Gardens was a family business he had built for Stafford, to be passed on to Stafford’s son, Tommy, when the time came. But unless both Ballard and Bassett agreed – unlikely as they both had children of their own – that could no longer happen. In one disastrous transaction, Stafford had given away two-thirds of his legacy and all but ensured the eventual loss of the hockey team his father had spent his life assembling. The best Tommy could aspire to would be a fraction of the club he might have owned.
It remains unclear just how much Smythe really knew about the details of Stafford’s dealings. He knew Stafford lacked the money to buy him out on his own and was well aware of the close relationship with Ballard, and Ballard’s ambitious nature. While he may not have realized Bassett was also involved, he had certainly learned the facts by the time of the public announcement and press conference, but still went ahead with the sale. He never explained why, insisting he’d been caught off guard by the whole thing.
The new owners immediately set about altering much of what he’d done. Stafford was made president and put in charge of the hockey team, Ballard was executive vice-president, in charge of everything else. It was Ballard who came up with most of the money-spinning ideas that turned the Gardens from a profitable but humdrum business into “the Maple Leaf Mint” and “the Cashbox on Carlton Street” as it became known. But Stafford more than went along. On the day of the sale he announced one of the first moves would be to find a way to install more seats. The team had two thousand names on its waiting list for subscribers, and he was eager to accommodate them. Imlach, he said, would be given “more freedom than ever” as he and Ballard concentrated on boosting profits.
They found all sorts of ways to do so. They took down the picture of the Queen that for decades had dominated the end wall and removed the balcony where the military bands had entertained fans between periods. They added seats right away and continued to squeeze in more and more wherever they could find room. When necessary, they made them smaller while simultaneously raising prices. At one point they applied to extend the building over the sidewalk on Carlton Street for even more seating, but couldn’t win approval. Eventually they found ways to pack in thirty-five hundred extra fans for every game.
Both were keen to get moving on a plan for a suitable watering hole for sportsmen-around-town, like them. They calculated the Hot Stove Lounge would cost just $190,000 to build and bring in a profit from food sales alone of $142,000 a year. On top of that they would sell $100 “memberships” to one thousand lucky patrons, then charge them another $50 a year once they were in.28 (It would, of course, sell alcohol – lots of alcohol, they hoped – which was yet another slight to the thirty-five years of temperance enforced by the previous owner.)
Smythe wasn’t pleased. So much of it went against everything he’d represented for so many years. The drive to make money as rapidly as possible, the treatment of customers as just so many rubes to be soaked on a regular basis, the disregard for tradition, and the downgrading of hockey to just another entertainment product among many. One of his reasons for resenting Selke had been the frequency of the ice shows and other attractions he’d booked into the building. Now Ballard put Selke to shame, tracking down and booking every rock ‘n’ roll group able to fill his seats with screaming teenagers. They sold advertising on everything, including the steps of the escalators.
It was all very profitable. Income tripled, while share prices almost quadrupled. The money they’d borrowed was paid off in four years.29 When the shares reached a peak and split five-for-one in 1965, the stock Smythe had sold for $2 million was worth close to $6.5 million. Even better, the Leafs were winning: three Stanley Cups in a row, in 1962, 1963, and 1964. Parades to City Hall were becoming so commonplace the fans were growing blasé. Toronto had an entire new pantheon of heroes: Mahovlich, Bower, Kelly, Horton, Keon, and nothing, it appeared, but more good news on the horizon.
But the temperature of Smythe’s temper was rising, and less than a year after he’d buried Irene it exploded. The spark was the Gardens’ agreement to host a heavyweight fight between champion Muhammad Ali and challenger Ernie Terrell. The bout had been turned down in several other locations in protest over Ali’s conversion to Islam and his controversial statements about race, religion, and the Vietnam War. When he was classified as eligible for the draft he said he would refuse to serve, as war was an offence against the teachings of his religion.
To Major Conn Smythe, wounded veteran of two wars, Ali was no better than a coward and a draft dodger. “A fight that isn’t good enough for Chicago or Montreal certainly isn’t good enough for Maple Leaf Gardens,” he said.30 But the Ontario government had approved it, and the Gardens was determined to put it on. The top tickets were pegged at $100 each, the first time any event had commanded that much anywhere in the city.
Smythe, who was at his winter home in Palm Beach, telephoned Bassett and resigned from the board. Bassett refused to accept it, but Smythe persisted. “I cannot go along with the policy of present management to put cash ahead of class,” he said.31 “I have no control over the policies of present management so the only alternative is to dissociate myself from it.”
Stafford was also vacationing in Florida, but several hours farther south in Delray Beach. He refused to intervene in the quarrel, saying, “Mr. Ballard has complete authority to act on our behalf.”
Thus was severed Smythe’s last official link to the team and the arena he’d built, named, and turned into a nationally known monument to hockey. The fight went ahead – though Terrell pulled out, complaining Ballard had altered the contract, and Ali was left to pummel Canadian favourite George Chuvalo instead. A few months later Smythe delighted a raucous audience at a Hall of Fame luncheon with a comical rendition of his departure, telling them: “You fellows know what it is to be traded. I was traded for a black Muslim minister and $35,000.” Stafford and Ballard, he added, had made Gardens seats “so narrow only thin young men can sit in them and only fat old bankers can afford them.”32
Smythe retained an office, car, and secretary at the Gardens, but he no longer had an official position and even less clout. For long periods, in fact, he and Stafford were not on speaking terms. When Jammed Lovely, a Smythe horse whose name had been inspired by Irene, won the Queen’s Plate in 1967, Stafford didn’t turn up at the celebration.33 At a testimonial dinner for Frank Selke in the mid-sixties, his son delivered an emotional tribute he’d had prepared as a booklet. Afterward, Stafford approached Frank Jr. and told him: “You know, I wish I could write that kind of story about my father, but I can’t.”34
Whether deliberate or not, the timing of his departure was apt. The NHL was going through a period of wrenching change, having determined to double in size in what would prove to be just the beginning of an extended period of growth. Six new teams would be added for the 1967–68 season, the first alteration in the league’s makeup since the New York Americans – renamed the Brooklyn Americans in their final season – had disappeared in 1942. Franchises were awarded in Oakland, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Toronto embraced expansion, not least because the Leafs would receive almost $2.2 million in fees, in return for exposing more than twenty players in the draft organized to stock the new teams. The schedule had also been expanded, adding four more games, which meant two more home games for Staff and Ballard to cash in.
Smythe wanted no part of it. At one time he had backed expansion as a means of keeping the league alive and vibrant, but that was years ago and he’d only figured on adding one or two teams. Six, all at once, was too much, and he predicted a sharp dilution in talent and competition.
“You’d think it was something new,” he said at the Hall of Fame gathering. “We expanded forty years ago. And I say this to Clarence Campbell: If you knew what was coming, you’d wipe that grin off your face.”35
The new, improved NHL would be a much bigger and more complex operation than anything Smythe would have cared for. Salaries exploded, and a wave of lawyers, advisers, and agents arrived to help negotiate and complicate contracts on behalf of both sides. The Players’ Association was re-established and placed under the malevolent leadership of Alan Eagleson, a man of voracious ambition and flexible ethics who would spend two decades lying to, cheating, and betraying the players, helping himself to their money while hobnobbing with the owners.
Smythe was better off away from it, and had other things to do. His stables were among the most successful in the country. His charitable operations were extensive and time consuming – in 1962, a decade’s worth of fundraising had culminated in construction of the $4 million Ontario Crippled Children’s Centre in Toronto, the most modern facility of its kind in the country. The society also operated a network of summer camps, a vocational school for severely disabled children, an educational and rehabilitation centre near London, and a fleet of mobile clinics.36 As treasurer it was Smythe’s task to keep the money flowing in to operate it all.
Irene’s death had inevitably drawn his mind to his own mortality, and he began distributing sums of money to friends and relations, writing out notes informing them he saw no reason to wait until he was in the ground.37 His files began to fill with thank-you notes for surprise gifts and timely cheques, sometimes from acquaintances he had not seen in years, but had heard were going through tough times.
There was still plotting to be done at the Hockey Hall of Fame. In 1966, he and Selke became embroiled in a long-distance snit fit with Ted Lindsay, who had been absolved of the sin of launching the Players’ Association and was to be honoured at a luncheon. Strictly speaking, Lindsay should have been ineligible for inclusion, as he had played his last game just a year earlier, but Smythe and Selke had arranged to have the rules changed to ensure his early entry. Lindsay, however, had refused to turn up when he learned the lunch would be men only.
The exclusion of women was a tradition. The get-together was meant as a sentimental affair for former players and their teammates. “It would not be as heart warming if ladies were in attendance,” Selke wrote. “They naturally steal the show – common chivalry demands it.”
But Lindsay wouldn’t budge. He dismissed suggestions there were plenty of diversions for Mrs. Lindsay at the CNE for the hour or two of the lunch and dodged repeated calls from Selke – who, if anything, was angrier than Smythe – imploring him to attend.
“It’s just typical of the man that after I spent hours justifying the rule change which makes him eligible he won’t come because the CNE will not make a special ruling in his case,” he fumed to Smythe.38
Smythe continued to veto Busher Jackson from membership, suffering a new round of criticism when Jackson passed away at age fifty-five. The stories were heavy with sentiment, excusing his frailties in a haze of nostalgia: “A weakness for alcohol and the bright lights led to two unsuccessful marriages and a succession of failures in the business world,” wrote Red Burnett. “Several times he swore off the grog but always, until his final years, he found his way through the swinging doors to swap yarns with cronies and sample a glass of cheer.”39
He was, they noted, the only member of the Kid Line not in the Hall. Old-timers called him the greatest left winger of the era. “He was poetry in motion,” remembered Alex Levinsky as former stars gathered for his funeral. Smythe and Selke were among the mourners, and between them could have assured his election in a moment, but wouldn’t budge. Selke later said he would have approved Jackson if Smythe had agreed, but Smythe was adamant. To anyone who complained he quoted the same paragraph from the Hall’s entry rules, requiring candidates be evaluated on “integrity [and] character” as well as hockey skills.
One obituary writer huffed: “If every candidate for the shrine met its demanding moral standards, no human could have qualified.”40
With all his activities, he barely noticed when federal income tax officials raided the Gardens and seized reams of documents. Stafford was in Vancouver with the team and shrugged it off as a dispute over Toronto’s expansion fees: “We got $2 million in fees when the league expanded and we’ve been negotiating with the tax people ever since. We say it’s capital gain, they say it’s income.”41 Gardens lawyer Ian Johnston added, “I don’t understand why they’d go after any books, because we made full disclosure about the expansion deal at the time. However, who knows what bureaucrats are up to.”
Smythe was ready to believe the worst of the bureaucrats, who had been hounding him personally for much of the decade. After selling the Gardens he had reorganized his finances in a complex scheme designed to minimize taxes and provide an immediate payout for him, Stafford, and Hap Day. Tax authorities ruled it was improper and assessed taxes amounting to more than double the payout, sparking a lengthy legal battle that Smythe lost.
That tussle had barely concluded when Ottawa launched a new one. Smythe’s original sand and gravel pit in the city had finally been exhausted, and he had moved operations to the collection of farms he’d bought in Caledon. His extensive breeding and racing operations were located on the same property, as was a large country home he had built for himself and Irene, complete with gardens, fruit trees, pool, and a large artificial pond. One of his largest customers was a firm called Armstrong Holdings in nearby Brampton. In 1967, Smythe agreed to sell Armstrong 1,072 acres containing his gravel operations for $2.5 million, to be paid in installments over ten years. Once again, however, tax officials declared the deal was improper, this time because Smythe wasn’t charging Armstrong interest on the delayed payments. They ruled the “fair market value” of the land was just $1.35 million and informed Smythe the rest would be treated as interest, at a hefty tax, plus 12 per cent interest and penalties.*
His lawyers recommended he settle, but Smythe was livid that Ottawa would consider him dishonest and collected a series of bible quotes condemning usury, to fling at his accusers. He rejected his lawyers’ advice, “which I think was predicated on my age and the effect this contest would have on my health,” and instructed them to prepare for a fight to the finish. It would drag on for several years before Smythe was exonerated, at which point he complained to his victorious lawyers at the size of the bill they sent him.42
He became convinced he was being hounded because of his high-profile battles with Ottawa. He claimed the finance minister, John Turner, was hoping to use the much-publicized tax dispute to further his political career. When word trickled out that Stafford’s problems were far bigger than just a disagreement over expansion fees, he was more than willing to accept that his son was being persecuted as part of the same conspiracy.
It was much worse than that, though. Once again Stafford had left him in the dark about the truth of his actions, and there was nothing his father could do now to save him. Buoyed by the overwhelming success of the early years of their ownership, Stafford and Ballard had begun pilfering money for personal expenses. At first they stole trivial amounts, submitting personal bills as business expenses and having the Gardens pay for them. For years Stafford had seen his father use staff from the Gardens or the sand pit to shovel his driveway or paint the house, which wasn’t strictly legal, but offended nobody. It wasn’t hard to justify writing off travel bills or auto costs in the same way. It proved so easy that they took it further and crossed a line into blatant fraud, ordering extensive renovations to their homes and charging it to the Gardens. Stafford bought a company plane and used it regularly to commute to his cottage. They set up a separate account in the name “S.H. Marlie” and transferred almost $150,000 to use for their own expenses, which included chasing women and lots of drinking.43
When the truth became known within the company, Bassett moved to distance himself from his two partners, fearful his other business interests at the Telegram and CFTO-TV would be harmed. In June 1969, a board meeting was called, to be held at the headquarters of Imperial Oil in the vain hope it would attract less press interest. Stafford and Ballard were fired as president and executive vice-president, though they would remain on the board. The vote against them was tied, until Bassett used his deciding vote as chairman to oust his two friends. A financial controller was hired and an audit committee established to try to clean up the mess.
Conn told reporters he was “absolutely thunderstruck” at his son’s firing and had known nothing about the situation. He repeated that he’d never meant to sell his shares to Ballard and Bassett and had thought the Gardens would be Stafford’s alone.44 While Ballard seemed disinclined to fight for his job, Stafford threatened to force a vote of shareholders to overturn the board decision.45 When he spotted a clutch of reporters waiting for him outside the Gardens after the board session, he drove up over the sidewalk, sending them scattering. Ironically, news of the conflict sent Gardens’ shares soaring in the next few days, netting Stafford and Ballard $1 million each.
Stafford did eventually succeed in rallying shareholders behind him and was reinstated as president. Bassett resigned and sold his partners his one-third share, giving them overwhelming control of the company. But it was too late for Stafford: in July 1969, he and Ballard were charged with fraud and income tax evasion – $278,920 for Stafford and $134,685 for Ballard. There were five counts each, and the Crown announced that it would try them by the tougher of two routes available, which meant the possibility of heavier fines and a longer jail term if convicted.
Stafford’s drinking increased sharply. “He couldn’t sleep. And to help him sleep, he would drink,” said his brother, Hugh.46 His health declined precipitously. Conn spent more time with him, as did Hugh and Tommy, Stafford’s son, trying to bolster his spirits, but in November 1971 he collapsed at his office and was rushed to Wellesley Hospital with a bleeding ulcer. The initial operation appeared successful, but four days later he began bleeding internally and a second emergency operation was undertaken to remove part of his stomach. Doctors warned he might not survive the surgery, but Stafford told them to go ahead. He died early on the morning of October 13, at just fifty years of age. The trial had been set to begin twelve days later. “See Dad,” he told Smythe near the end, “I told you they wouldn’t put me in jail.”47
Even in death he elicited little sympathy. An obituary in the Globe and Mail noted:
“Stafford Smythe was called arrogant, autocratic, ruthless, mendacious, domineering and numerous other things by people who didn’t know him and by some people who did. He insisted he was immune to what people thought, but this might have been a facade. Those close to him say he was extremely sensitive to public opinion. However, even when he was unjustly maligned he seldom took the trouble to correct the record … He was aware that he provoked instant antagonism in many, but he accepted this as inevitable because he was Conn Smythe’s son.”48
He was buried near his cottage on Lake Muskoka, under a plaque – written by Tommy – declaring he’d been “persecuted to death by his enemies.”49 Conn inserted a notice in the papers declaring: “To the friend who wrote that Stafford was brutalized by the press unnecessarily and unfairly, I would like to say those are my sentiments too.”50*
Although Smythe later spoke of the depth of his grief at his son’s death, it was often with a sense of conflict. “Poor Stafford, the little guy went wrong. But he should have lived to be treated in the courts like anybody else,” he told one interviewer not long afterwards.51 He told another: “Because of his name, he was cruelly treated by all the publicity. Hundreds of fellows got more out of tax or were caught with more in that position and got off with paying a fine. But they were going to make an example of Stafford and Harold and, well, maybe they should have, because they had positions of trust.”52
In his memoirs he suggested Stafford “gave up the fight to live because that was the only way he could spare his family, his son and daughters and grandchildren, the stigma of jailbird.”
He argued the decision “did not lack courage,” but sounded noticeably more impressed with Ballard’s very different approach. “Ballard … stood his trial, went to the penitentiary, did his time, paid his debt, and joked about it while he was doing it … He did good things and bad things, as before. But he went on, faced it all, and Stafford could not.”53
Stafford’s death did not end the turmoil at the Gardens. In the months leading up to the trial, he and Ballard had replaced the rebellious members of the board with allies, including Hugh Smythe as vice-president. The surviving Smythe family members were uncertain whether they could hold on to Stafford’s shares. He died with substantial debts, and Ballard was executor of his will, giving him immense power over any purchase offers.
Hugh Smythe quickly concluded there was a limited future for him on a board that included Ballard and his new directors. Friction developed, especially after Hugh began considering a bid to buy out Ballard. Hugh’s photo suddenly disappeared from the Gardens program, an early show of the boorishness for which Ballard would become famous. When Tommy Smythe returned to work from the funeral, he found his belongings piled on the sidewalk.54 Ballard asserted that a sharp drop in the Gardens’ share price on the day Stafford died “saved them a million” in estate taxes and bragged that Stafford’s widow had been “taken care of.”* “Right off the top she got $125,000 in cold cash from the Gardens and a few other frills.”55
Hugh seriously considered the buyout plan. “I was trying to buy a car at the time and I had to borrow $5,000, and they sent a private detective out to this area to see from the neighbours whether I was good for it. But to borrow $12 million, no question, just a handshake, that would have been easy. I had a lot of people who thought that would be a good idea.”56 His father was not involved and played a large part in scuppering the plan. “He knew it was going to be difficult. They were in the middle of that expansion and overexpansion and the shift in power away from Toronto and Montreal towards the United States.” The world, Conn said, would be losing a good doctor if his last remaining son abandoned medicine to take on the headaches of hockey.
“Of course he did me a favour,” said Hugh. “I was good at medicine, I would be totally new [in the NHL] and would have to start at the bottom in learning hockey, and the only reason in doing it was to get Tommy to get the Leafs going again.”
Instead, Ballard borrowed another $7.5 million from the bank to buy Stafford’s shares, and the last Smythe holding a job with the Toronto Maple Leafs walked away from Maple Leaf Gardens.
* In 1977, Smythe’s original sand and gravel pit received a bronze plaque for rehabilitation after being turned into a local park and recreation centre.
* Tommy Smythe remained angry at his father’s treatment until his own death in June 2009, after a lengthy and painful battle with cancer. Just two months before his death he posted a comment on a cottage website in Muskoka, where his father and mother were buried, reading:
If you read my book you will understand my life of upset that my father is not in the Hockey Hall of Fame. A young owner of the Leafs between the ages of 40 to 47 he won four Stanley Cups. Four years later at 4:44 in the morning he died very unexpectedly and the Leafs have not won since. When Harold Ballard stole the Leafs from the Smythe family he put a curse on the Leafs that will not disappear until his accomplishments are recognized and he is in the hall of fame beside my grandfather where he belongs.
… It is time for the Leaf fans to stand up and correct this curse and have Harold removed and Stafford inducted. I’ve had a tough life since then and I hope I live to see that day.… By the way – I wrote the original headstone with my mother and a few years ago my younger sister changed the stone without consulting me. To this day I still strongly feel what I wrote then.…” (www.cottageblog.ca/2008/11/28/conn-stafford-smythe-rip-in-beautiful-muskoka/)
* Hugh Smythe was originally reluctant to challenge Ballard as Leaf boss. He told The Globe and Mail shortly after Stafford’s death: “I am deeply interested in hockey, but I would have doubts about leaving medicine … [All] my long-term goals are in medicine.” Though open to the possibility of becoming president, Smythe continued, “There are people more interested than I am … I would prefer handing it over to Harold. He has 40 years of effort behind him. He deserves the presidency.” He changed his mind as he grew more familiar with Ballard’s leadership in ensuing weeks, and as it became evident that Tommy Smythe would not get his chance to head the Gardens as his father and grandfather had.