Share

Image

Barry’s Bay – It was here at St. Hedwig’s Roman Catholic Church where Larry Trader was an altar boy early in the 1970s. It was where he learned to serve funeral masses for people his family knew only too well. But last Saturday, Larry Trader’s ashes were taken from his own funeral service at St. Hedwig’s and buried with dignity in the parish cemetery, alongside his father, Tony. That cemetery is not far from the farm where the Trader family first started to make a name for themselves, a name easily associated with the salt of the earth.

At the graveside, Mr. Trader’s mother, Theresa, talked gently of her son, her middle child among Michael, Gerard, Rosanne and Andy. She said her four boys were all tall lads, all the same height, over six feet, and that Larry was fundamentally “a happy child, smart, honest and kind.”  

Mr. Trader’s two children, Sydney and Jeremy, stood beside their grandmother. They knew Larry Trader basically as dad.

They were all at his graveside, returning his ashes into that good earth. So too, were others — siblings, relatives, neighbours and many who knew him after he rose from the bush leagues to the big leagues. They certainly knew him in 1983 when he was drafted by the Detroit Redwings, or when he played for the Montreal Canadiens, or when he won a medal at the Winter Olympics as a member of Team Canada.

But there were others who knew Larry Trader before all of that; who knew him, even before he was an altar boy. Grade school classmates such as John Briggs and Joe Murray; they were there to say goodbye to a life they had shared with Larry Trader, when they were all still young and innocent, before their famous friend’s curious mixture of extraordinary athletic talent and extraordinary hardship unfolded.

Mr. Trader was no ordinary small-town hero. Just ask Father Jerry Gauvreau, a hockey player himself who played with the Flying Fathers and who is now associate pastor of St. Hedwig’s. He conducted the funeral mass on Saturday morning, and he gave one of the most extraordinary sermons ever given at a funeral in Barry’s Bay. Father Jerry launched into his expected message of eternal salvation in a quite unexpected way. It sounded more like something Don Cherry might voice in “Coaches Corner” during Hockey Night in Canada, that is, if Mr. Cherry had the exceptional oratorical training and moral inclination of a Father Jerry.

“Be proud of Larry,” implored Father Gauvreau, “he played in the NHL; he played in The Show.” The priest then went on to say he wasn’t there to canonize Larry Trader. For all he knew, Larry might now be in a purgatorial penalty box; he hoped not, but who really knows. What he could say with certainty was that there was more to Larry Trader than The Show. Father Gauvreau then spoke of what those kids like Joe Murray and John Briggs already knew. Kids like Renée Herron who knew Larry Trader simply as “a good person” who happened to play hockey but who also shared her birthday.

Father Gauvreau then spoke of Mr. Trader’s mother, Theresa, who spent Saturday doing something no mother should have to do, burying a child of her own. She already had been asked to sacrifice much, letting her 16-year-old son move to Ottawa in 1979 to chase that impossible dream that many boys who once played pond hockey with the ‘west-end gang’ had once dreamed.

Boys from Barry’s Bay who eventually became men like Kevin Chapeskie who remembers playing against Mr. Trader who, he said “was an excellent hockey player who didn’t have that ugly side you might expect — a very talented guy but a very decent guy.”

Mr. Briggs was also at the graveside.

“Larry and I started kindergarten here at St. Joseph’s Separate School in 1967-68,” he said, adding they remained classmates until Grade 10 when Larry moved to Ottawa to play for the Gloucester Rangers.

“That was a sad day,” said Mr. Briggs. “We had just won the Junior Boys Volleyball Championship for Renfrew County and Larry and Steve Amer were our two best players, and so I was looking forward to more championships all through high school — until Larry moved away!”

Mr. Briggs started his hockey career as the same time as Mr. Trader, both pint-sized Tykes.

“I might have been the second-best player in Tykes, but I was still 10 times less than Larry, so it didn’t matter. Other teams had lots of great athletes, but our team had Larry! Whenever we won, it was because of Larry.

“All that aside,” added Mr. Briggs, “he was a genuine person. Everybody was drawn to him because he was not only athletic; he was kind, he was smart, and he played every game, every sport, every recess – hockey, baseball, football – he just loved to play.

Joe Murray, also a classmate, remembers a different Larry Trader.

“The NHL is only a small part of his life. There’s so much more to him,” he said with an impish grin.

“For instance,” Mr. Murray went on, very much like his grandfather, Charlie Murray, might proceed. “It was probably in Grade 8 or 9. It wasn’t our finest hour. We were over at Larry’s place, and I had my new .22 rifle, and we went down by the lake; we’re shooting at empty Javex bottles, throwing them up in the air, taking pot shots. We kept firing round after round, not realizing that there was a cottage across the bay where the bullets were landing. We were just peppering that poor house. So, the homeowners phoned the police. Hours later when the cops finally caught up to us, it wasn’t pretty, but we never got charged. I think the cops figured we were just stupid kids, but still kids.”

Mr. Murray also saw a different, un-hockey side of Mr. Trader.

“He was a very clever fellow and surprisingly artistic,” Mr. Murray said. “In grade school, we’d have to do art and most of us ended up just drawing stick men but Larry, his were real works of art! He was a man for detail.”

Still, Mr. Murray knew from a very early age that Mr. Trader was the biggest, fastest, strongest kid in his class.

“He was cut from different marble than everyone else,” he said. “He had probably about 30 per cent more muscle than the rest of us. Even kids who were three or four years older than him, he was still better at any game than them. He was faster, his shot was harder. Larry was just that guy on skates, head and shoulders above everybody. He was just phenomenal!”

“When Larry Trader played for the London Knights,” said Mr. Murray, he saw his old classmate play in Peterborough where he was in college at the same time. “Larry was a force of nature; he’d score goals, get into fights, and the other guy would end up bleeding all over the ice. And Larry would have this big grin on his face. He had that mentality of win, win, win, win.”

Mr. Trader also kept in touch, long after he left Barry’s Bay. Mr. Murray tells of the time his friend came to Toronto and was playing with the Habs.  “Joe!” he said. “Come down to Maple Leaf Gardens, I’ve got tickets for you.”

And so, Joe went down, got introduced to the full Montreal Canadiens roster and the two of them went out after the game and had a roaring good time. He was also invited to Larry Trader’s wedding.

“I went to that wedding,” he said. “We always stayed in touch though there were gaps when we didn’t get together, sometimes five years would go by.  When Larry became an electrician, we chatted about that. I asked him why on earth become an electrician? I thought you were rich. He said the most he ever made in hockey was $150,000 a year and he wasn’t playing or coaching anymore, so he had to work just like the rest of us.”

So, after Mr. Trader’s professional playing and coaching career ended in 1998, he got his industrial electrician’s license. He moved to the Pembroke area but eventually suffered an industrial accident while checking an electrical panel. The panel shorted out and left him with severe burns. He also had to deal with other mounting health issues including an hereditary heart condition. One way or another, by 2013 when Larry Trader turned 50, his once pristine athletic body began to crumble, if not shut down.

When his father, Tony, passed away in 2017, it took two men to bring Larry Trader into St. Hedwig’s Church for his dad’s funeral. Before the church service ended, those same two men whisked him out again. Mr. Trader did not want his friends to see just how badly his body had deteriorated. Many didn’t recognize him – some did – and those who did, didn’t think he’d survive until the following Christmas. He lived another seven years, albeit much of it in pain.

One who always did know Larry Trader well was his older brother, Gerard. He had long supported his younger brother’s hockey career. When Larry was too young to drive a car, it was Gerard who often got him to his games. And when Larry left his head coaching job with the Brantford Smoke to work as an electrician at the MDF plant in Pembroke, it was Gerard who answered the call.

“When he came back here to Renfrew County,” said Gerard, “I was the one who went down and picked him up in Brantford. And I went to a lot of his doctor appointments with him, to see his heart doctor, that sort of thing. And going there and back, we’d often talk, and after a while, I began to understand, we all have issues, but it really is how well you can deal with them.

“I drive a truck for Ben Hokum,” added Gerard, “and I do deliveries into that MDF plant where Larry used to work, and all the guys there always ask, ‘How’s he doing?” They are so proud of the guy, but they know he’s only human. Larry often said, he didn’t want to be remembered for his hockey career; he only wanted to be remembered for ‘what I’m doing now.’

“Still, I often told him, ‘Larry, you did something — and God knows how many try, but never, ever achieve that. He got to be in a whole different world. His first contract was for $70 or $80,000 with a signing bonus of $25,000. That was back when you could buy a house in Barry’s Bay for $35,000.

Throughout his 61 years on this good earth, Larry Trader made a lot friends, so it was no surprise hundreds showed up for his funeral. Some even weren’t that interested in his hockey career. But there was one very special hockey fan – Ernie P. Coulas.  

He arrived at St. Hedwig’s last Saturday morning, wearing a Montreal Canadiens jersey with No. 28 and the name ‘Trader’ emblazoned on the back. After the funeral service, he took that precious jersey off and handed it to Larry’s son, Jeremy, saying it belonged with the Trader family.

Sydney, Larry Trader’s daughter, and who had worked miracles preparing her dad’s funeral, in the same way Larry Trader used to play hockey, said that wonderful Habs jersey was the only one missing to complete a set the family had been trying to assemble for years.

Larry Trader would have been impressed. He knew Ernie P. Coulas was the salt of the earth.