Renfrew native donates Paralympic sledge hockey memorabilia

By

Terry Fleurie


October 29, 2024

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Renfrew – A Renfrew native who overcame huge adversity as a teen and later led his nation to two gold medal performances at the world sledge hockey championship and a bronze medal at the Paralympics has donated some of his hockey memorabilia to the McDougall Mill Museum.

Lou Mulvihill of Ottawa was the captain of the Canadian men’s sledge hockey team for many years, and last week he shared his inspiring story with the Leader at the myFM Centre in Renfrew where his memorabilia will be on display.

One of eight children of the late Dr. Lou and Dorothy Mulvihill, he grew up in Renfrew and attended St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School and Renfrew Collegiate Institute, where he ran cross-country and track.

On August 2, 1971, at age 18, his life was dramatically altered in an accident, but Mr. Mulvihill rallied from the adversity of his injury to represent his country on an international stage and help modernize the game of sledge hockey.

“I was finishing up high school and was working for Bob Skebo Construction as a labourer,” he explained of that fateful day 53 years ago. “I went into work that day, and it was drizzling rain, so nobody was there.

“I decided to take a drive out to Calabogie and come back, because I had my bike (motorcycle) three weeks and I put 5,000 miles on it, and loved driving it,” he added. “And that’s when I had my accident.”

He shared how he had gone over a hill and there was a pick-up truck in his lane, backing up the hill because it had a flat tire.

“I couldn’t pass because there were cars coming the other way, or take the ditch because of the guard rails, so I put on the brakes and slid underneath his pick-up truck. I must have hit his bumper with my back, and suffered an incomplete sever of my spinal cord.

“I can still do some movement in my legs, and they call that an incomplete sever,” he added, noting the medical classification as an incomplete paraplegic. “The upper body from the waist up is fine, but below the waist, only some of the muscles work. I can’t stand but I can grip things with my knees and things like that.”. 

Mr. Mulvihill was going to be sent to Ottawa to see a neurosurgeon, but he was on vacation, so he was transferred to Toronto, under the care of Dr. William Horsey.

“He put me back together again as well as he could, and I came back to live at home for a while,” he recalled. “Then I moved to Ottawa to go to college and eventually got a job in the federal government.”

Inspired By Letters

At first, coping with the injury was difficult, he said.

“I remember after I did the rehab and came back to Renfrew, and I was pretty well on my own then,” he recalled. “You go through different stages after a serious accident like that.

“I was angry, I was depressed, I was lost, and I was even contemplating suicide at one time,” he added. “But I got all these letters of support from people I didn’t even know from Renfrew, over 200, and I said I couldn’t let these people down or my family down. So, I had to man up and do what I needed to do to be successful in life.”

He defined success as getting a job, getting married, and having children, all of which he has done.

“The support of the people of Renfrew really helped me a lot to get me over that hump of feeling sorry for myself and getting me back on the right track. I didn’t want to let anybody down and I was using that as motivation to do the work that I needed to do to get an education, and it’s been good. If I reached out for support, it was always there.”

When asked if  the fact his father was a doctor had any impact on his recovery, he replied: “After my accident, I was lying on the ground thinking my father’s a doctor, he’ll be able to fix me and put me back together again,” he recalled. “But then when I was in the emergency room in the hospital and he came in, I saw by the expression on his face, he couldn’t, so I had to live with that.

“But he was like an inspiration for me as well, because he had been so successful in his life, that I wanted to be successful in my life.”   

Mr. Mulvihill said there were many low points in the early days as he attended college, with breaking wheelchairs, walking and breaking cutches, and falling down.

“But these are the trials and tribulations you have to go through to be successful, and I’ve been lucky in that regard. I was good with numbers, so I went into the accounting field for 25 years.”

Mr. Mulvihill shared the joy he has from his three children and eight grandchildren, who are the entire focus of his life.

Looking back on what he accomplished in terms of his recovery, he said it somewhat amazes him because he never really pushed himself prior to that, admitting that life was good being the child of a physician.    

“Even though there were eight of us, we were still well taken care of,” he said. “If someone had told me I was going to have this really serious accident, I would have freaked out and said I couldn’t handle something like that.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe it. I’m almost humbled. In fact I’m getting all these accolades now,” he added. “I fought and played at things I wanted to pursue and I wanted to make sledge hockey a sport that could be played around the world but I knew the equipment wasn’t good enough, ” he added of  what he accomplished. 

Mr. Mulvihill was introduced to sledge hockey while at college, after playing wheelchair basketball for some time. 

“A lady from Medicine Hat got a grant to take her program across Canada,” he explained. “They got in touch with the wheelchair basketball people and they first showed sledge hockey at the Tom Brown Arena back around ’79.”

The equipment was very rudimentary at the time  with players sitting in a sort of bucket on runners that they really had no control over.

“You were sort of sliding all over the place, but the thing that got me with that was the gliding, and it gave me a sense of freedom. Even when you’re pushing your chair, there’s still rolling resistance, but when you’re gliding along the ice, I found that so exhilarating I just wanted to keep going.”

He quickly thought of ways to improve the game, noting the first sticks were straight with no blades on them. Unable to raise the puck with them, he added a notch on the end of the stick which allowed him to raise the puck about an inch. Not satisfied, he took a junior stick, cut the heel off it, and the front of the blade, which proved successful. 

He started manufacturing sticks himself and tried to get someone to manufacture them in Renfrew, but that never materialized. He moved into improving the sledges, which resulted in a re-writing of the rules because they were more manoueverableand how they would enhance the sport.

His earliest sled was made of Russian Baltic birch plywood and 2x4s, with CCM skate blades underneath, but they didn’t prove very durable. He found a company in Montreal that could bend aluminum tubing for the frame, and another company there made the polypropylene buckets players sat in, in small, medium and large.

“Then I came up with a narrower frame for an amputee because they only have the one foot coming down. So the sledge has to be a little bit lighter and a lit bit more manoeuverable. I was always thinking of ways to get an edge.” 

Mr. Mulvihill said a company he started with a friend was hired to make all the sledges for Team Canada for the games in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994.

Named Captain

Despite being a mediocre athlete, he was one of the first people to play sledge hockey. He noted unlike the wheelchair racing he also did, one is pushing to move forward, whereas with sledge hockey the player is pulling himself with his sticks.

He was training at the Ottawa Athletic Club to improve his upper body strength and being one of the first to try it, he was one of the better players on the ice. The head coach in Ottawa, who went on to coach Team Canada, appointed him captain because of his abilities and knowledge of the sport.

He went on to win gold medals at the world championship in Sweden and Oslo, Norway, in 1991 and 1992, and bronze at the Lillehammer Paralympics in 1994, where he was flag-bearer for the Canadian team. The team won bronze in 1996 World Championship and followed that with a gold at the 2000 Paralympics.

“It was amazing, it was surreal,” he said to represent his country on an international stage. “It was such an honour to be out there playing, knowing you and your teammates are representing your country.

“So, you want to put your best face forward,” he added. “It always brought a tear to my eye when the Canadian anthem came on.”

His most memorable goal came in the bronze medal win over Sweden when he blocked a shot by the opposing defender, gathered up the loose puck, and sped down the ice.

“I’m left-handed, and you can trick the players by passing the puck back and forth under the sledge. I didn’t stop and just one-timed it into the top shelf for the winning goal.   

Mr. Mulvihill, who played centre, started every game by offering to shake hands with the opposing centre as a sign of respect, noting at times he had to leave his hand out until the opponent complied. He said part of the gesture was to try and make the game less serious than the one played by the able-bodied athletes. 

“I didn’t believe in fighting or anything like that,” he remarked. “I thought it was stupid to be fighting someone else in a sledge, but they seem to be doing it more and more now.

“The game has gotten so aggressive that I left at age 50,” he added.

He said the Canadian team introduced the international teams to body contact, which they were not previously familiarwith but have now incorporated into their game.

Over his 12 year career, he separated one shoulder and broke a foot.

When he began playing, there were only five or six countries playing the sport, but it is worldwide now.

Mr. Mulvihill said he wanted to attract better athletes who were playing wheelchair basketball and competing in track, knowing if better equipment was available, they might try the sport.

He noted he is currently a member of a peer support group for people with spinal cord injuries, encouraging them to do the best they can with what they have despite their injuries.

While in Renfrew, he met the convenor of the local sledge hockey program and accepted her invitation to join them on the ice some week.

Retired now for about 20 years, he is focused on his family. Recently diagnosed with Stage Four colon and prostate cancer, he has not allowed the diagnosis to slow him down.

His donation to the museum came about through his friendship with Renfrew native Andy Boldt, who had a cottage on Calabogie Lake. He suggested to Mr. Boldt that he had some equipment he could donate and the rest, as they say, is history. Mr. Boldt contacted Glen Charron, curator of the McDougal Museum which is operated by the Renfrew District Historical Museum Society.

“A couple of the councillors thought it was a great idea with the new rink,” Mr. Charron said of the display that is to be established there. “I talked to the society and they were interested in working with the NHA/NHL and we’re going to find a piece we can put in here from the collection too.

“We acquired Lou’s collection, along with his racing wheelchair,” he said.    

Mr. Mulvihill proudly noted he believes he invented the first three-wheeled racing wheelchair in the world, adding when he was playing the sport, the rules mandated that the chairs had four wheels. He admitted only being mediocre in that sport, recalling how Rick Hansen lapped him one time in a race in Vancouver.     

“I’m very excited; it’s going to look great over there,” Mr. Charron said of the display. 

It’s going to tell a story a lot of people don’t know and we’re going to have the wheelchair on display next year at the McDougall Mill Museum.”