Lorry Moffatt

Lorry Moffatt became a Golf Ontario Tournament Official in 1980, a Level 4 rules official in 1990 and referees to this day. He continues to help at many Provincial and National Championships and Qualifiers, offering his knowledge and experience to people at every level and has provided over 40 years of officiating at National and Provincial golf tournaments on behalf of Golf Canada. Moffatt continues to contribute his knowledge of the game of Golf through club seminars on the rules of golf and provides support to junior golfers at the Weston Golf and Country Club, he also officiates Provincial & Club tournaments. He is a remarkable source of Canadian golf history and has had experience with most of the Canadian golfers currently on tour.

In 2018, Lorry was awarded The Dick Grimm Distinguished Service Award which is considered the highest honor recognizing individual service to the game of golf in Ontario. The award is named after Richard H. Grimm, who was affectionately known as “Mr. Canadian Open” for his service to the event from 1965 to 1993. Golf Ontario’s Dick Grimm Distinguished Service Award recognizes an individual’s meritorious service as a volunteer. Recipients of this award embody the principles of integrity, dignity and commitment, which are central to the volunteer experience and to Mr. Grimm’s persona. As a point of interest, Moffatt caddied for Fred Hawkins in the famed 1955 Canadian Open Championship at Weston Golf and Country Club finding himself in the last group on Sunday, a front row seat to watch the “King” Arnold Palmer hoist the Seagram Cup for his 1st PGA Tour victory.

Lorry can be found at Weston Golf Club most days for a late lunch. He has a broad range of friends at the club and is an avid enthusiast for sport in general. He can also be found at Woodbine Race Track and is an avid horse racing fan. He continues to run a trophy business Classic Awards Ltd that keeps him engaged with most of the private golf courses in Toronto, as well as some of the private and public high schools where he officiated basketball for a number of years.

Valerie Jones

Born and raised in Long Branch, Valerie Jones-Bartlett is a Canadian former figure skater who learned to skate at Lakeshore Lions Arena in Etobicoke. In 1962, Jones was the Junior Lady Champion of Canada and between 1965/66 competed internationally. In 1967, she was a silver medalist at the North American Championship and Senior Lady Champion of Canada. Jones has been involved in directing seminars and training camps for skaters, coaches and officials all over the world with Skate Canada and the International Skating Union since 1980.

Jones – Bartlett is the recipient of the Skate Canada Billie Mitchell Award and the Syl Apps Special Achievement Award. In 1979 -/97, Jones was the Founder and Director of the Sport Seneca Competitive Skating Program and Professor and Director of the Figure Skating Diploma Program. Jones – Bartlett has made significant contribution to popularize participation in the sport of figure skating. She is renowned for her motivational qualities and leadership and communication skills and admired for her dedication to the sport as an athlete, long term coach and builder.

Gord De Laat

On behalf of all of us from the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame, we are saddened to hear the news of Gord’s passing. He was a Canadian golf icon. A Legend.

And I am truly honoured that I was able to present Gord with his induction award last year” says Joanne Noble, President Chair of the Board of the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame.

Lorne Rubenstein called him a legend. Arnold Palmer counted him as a friend. And his children cherish him as an extraordinary parent and mentor. No matter how you slice it, Gord De Laat can rightly be considered a gentleman of Canadian golf.

De Laat, who turned 99 on April 11, 2016, is famous for his dedication and love of the game, a passion that has only grown over the decades. “Dad has both lived and witnessed a very large part of Canadian golf history,” De Laat’s son Chris told Rubenstein, the Globe and Mail’s golf columnist, in 2012.

De Laat’s early years did not lack for drama. He was born in the Netherlands in 1917 as the Battle of Vimy Ridge raged on in northern France. Seven years later, his family sailed for Canada, landing at Halifax’s Pier 21, virtually penniless. “He had to use sports as a vehicle to get out of his situation,” Chris De Laat said. “That’s where golf came in, because that’s where he excelled.”

The slender De Laat was a junior hockey teammate of Punch Imlach’s and no slouch himself on the ice, once scoring nine goals in a single game. He played on the Toronto Maple Leafs practice squad with stars like Charlie Conacher, Busher Jackson and fellow Etobian Joe Primeau. But it was on the golf course that De Laat would distinguish himself, despite not starting out with the most natural ability. “He was persistent,” said Chris. “If there’s anything you can say, it’s his willingness to attack a situation. He never gave up.”

On July 1, 1927, De Laat got his big break when A.B. Fisher, a member at Lambton Golf and Country Club, needed a caddy, and head pro Willie Lamb tasked the 10-year-old Dutch kid hanging around the pro shop with the job. “I told Mr. Fisher all I could do is carry the bag, and that’s what I did,” De Laat told Dave Perkins of the Toronto Star, adding that Fisher paid him 20 cents for his trouble. “He played nine holes and I don’t think I impressed him too much. But my career had started. I’ve enjoyed every single day of it since.”

De Laat did any job he could at Lambton, becoming an A-list caddy and then the club’s junior assistant professional. He would go on to win the 1938 Ontario junior championship and compete in the Canadian Open ten times. At the 1944 Millar Trophy Match-Play Tournament at Islington, the local press called De Laat the “giant killer” after he outplayed what Chris called “the royalty of golf at the time—people who had played at the Masters. He came to that tournament in the back of his father’s pickup truck, while the other kids were coming in the back of their father’s Buicks.”

Though he lost the Millar Trophy final to his good friend Bill Kerr, De Laat parlayed his strong showing into the head pro job at Etobicoke’s Pine Point Golf Club, where he witnessed road engineers driving stakes into the second fairway for what would become Highway 401. His next move took him down the road to the Weston Golf and Country Club near Royal York and Dixon, where De Laat was head professional for 30 years.

He settled in the Kipling and Burnhamthorpe area with his wife Mary, a university-educated, third-generation Canadian from the well-to-do High Park neighbourhood. Mary and Gord, an uneducated immigrant, met at a golf clinic Gord was leading at St. Cecilia’s Church, and the unlikely couple hit it off. “My Dad gave my Mom a ride home, and the next thing you know they’re building a house together,” Chris said.

The De Laats and their nine children could be found in the pews of St. Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church at Rathburn and Kipling every Sunday. Gord hosted parish groups at Weston, while Mary mentored young mothers through the Catholic Women’s League.

Weston hosted the 1955 Canadian Open, where a rookie named Arnold Palmer won his first of 62 PGA tournaments. “De Laat wisely took down the hole-by-hole accounts of Palmer’s four rounds,” Rubenstein wrote. “He kept the scorecards in the Weston pro shop for more than 25 years, and later sent them to Palmer,” a kindness for which “the King” was most grateful. De Laat finished the open at two under par, holding his own in the first round against none other than golf legend Sam Snead. While that result was respectable, De Laat realized his destiny was to be a career club pro. “He was always competitive, always posting good results, but he was never going to be a Tour pro,” Chris said. “But he was good enough to be in those circles.”

De Laat rubbed shoulders with top golfers and frequently welcomed celebrities like actor Bob Hope to Weston. But he never forgot his roots, or his experience growing up with eight siblings in a small wartime house. Ever humble, De Laat would write to sports reporters, thanking them for their coverage—a rarity among pro athletes. “His mother (Antonia) was very influential in reminding him that he always had to be a gentleman,” Chris said. “He was always kind, considerate and even-tempered, and always fair.”

The week after the ‘55 Open, motivated by a desire to provide a good life for his family well into the future, De Laat bought a parcel of land in Caledon East on which he would later build Mayfield Golf Course. De Laat said he designed Mayfield, which opened in 1978, to be an everyman’s course. “It’s the type of club I think people like to play, that the ordinary person likes to play, something they can afford to play.”

Today, De Laat’s children run Mayfield, though Gord remains a fixture on the links and in the clubhouse, sharing his stories. “I can remember my father coaxing us to play with him in the summer twilight,” Chris recalled. “Even now, in his 90s, Dad is often the last player to leave the course.”

Even after the family moved near their new golf course, Mary returned to Etobicoke to buy groceries and get her hair done, and she and Gord often visited their many friends there. “Etobicoke is still part of how we define our family,” said Chris, a family that has grown to include 19 grandchildren and three great-grandkids.

Gord De Laat is widely considered to be Canada’s oldest golf pro, likely of all time. His 81 years as a pro golfer are the longest anyone has ever been a pro in Canada. He won an Ontario PGA Seniors title back in 1972 and is still at it, playing in an exhibition at the Canadian PGA Seniors Championships on September 2, 2016, at Tangle Creek in Barrie, alongside longtime friends John Henrick and Bill Kosak. “He’s a competitor, and he hasn’t changed—he still talks about how he has to make improvements,” Chris said admiringly. “He knows he can’t necessarily perfect it, but he has to do the best he can.”

As a golf instructor, de Laat stressed the game’s strategic side, teaching his many students—among them 2016 Canadian Golf Hall of Fame inductee Warren Sye—how to adapt to whatever situation they encountered.

ScoreGolf magazine noted that de Laat’s career began when golfers used clubs made of hickory wood and continued into the age of steel and graphite. “He’s nearly 100, and he’s still hitting the ball,” Chris marvelled.

“The clubs have changed, the balls have changed and certainly the calibre of players has changed a lot,” Gord de Laat told the Brampton Guardian in 2012. “It’s even tough trying to earn a spot on the Canadian Tour now because there are so many good players coming up.”

Speaking about his own longevity on the links, de Laat drew a simple conclusion: “There’s no better game than golf.”

Annis Stukus

Over the course of his 50-year career, Annis Stukus was a standout quarterback, a brilliant marketer, the founder of two professional football teams and the general manager who lured NHL superstar Bobby Hull to the World Hockey Association. And that is only a snapshot of a gregarious sports lifer who also worked for basketball and soccer clubs and lent his outsized personality to the airwaves and newspaper pages.

Football fans of a certain vintage will remember “Stuke” as the eldest of the Stukus brothers, who formed a fearsome presence on the backfield for the Grey Cup winning Toronto Argonauts teams of 1937–38. With help from brothers Bill and Frank, Annis was named an all-star in 1938, the year he led the lead in scoring.

Stukus honed his promotional abilities at an early age. While an Argo he had a day job reporting for the Toronto Star, an arrangement that sometimes saw him play in a game and then write about it in the sports section.

After his seven-year CFL career was cut short when the league suspended operations at the outbreak of the Second World War, Stukus became a player-coach with the Toronto Indians and Balmy Beach of the Ontario Rugby Football League, as well as the HMCS York Bulldogs, a navy team he played with while in the service.

Back from the war, Stukus consulted for the Toronto Huskies basketball team during its lone season. In 1949, with his pro playing days behind him, he went west to make his mark on two future CFL clubs as an executive. He first took on coaching and GM duties for the Edmonton Eskimos, overseeing that club’s return to the Western Interprovincial Football Union. “Stuke” recruited top players and added some flair to the proceedings when he came out of retirement to handle the Eskie’s place kicking.

Having resurrected football in Edmonton, Stukus next headed for the coast. He was coach, GM and promotions director for the B.C. Lions from 1953 until 1955, and his energy and drive laid the foundation for the club’s future success. His efforts to revive the sport in Western Canada earned Stukus a spot in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a builder. The CFL’s coach of the year award is named in his honour. The versatile executive ran the Western Hockey League Vancouver Canucks before moving to the Winnipeg Jets, which offered Hull a then-unthinkable million-dollar contract to jump to the WHA. Stukus’ flashiest gamble yet stunned the sporting world and gave the nascent league instant credibility. For a man called “the loquacious Lithuanian,” commentary was a natural fit.

Stukus wrote for the Vancouver Sun and worked the sports desk at CFUN Radio in Vancouver among other broadcasting jobs. Newspaperman Peter Worthington called his one-time Toronto Telegram colleague “arguably the most colourful sports personality in the country…with a gift for making headlines wherever he went.” The Toronto native and Canadian Sports Hall of Famer died in 2006 at age 91 at his home in Canmore, Alberta.

In a tribute, veteran sports journalist George Gross quoted a colleague who described Stukus as a fun-loving storyteller: “He loved to tell stories about the good old days of playing and coaching and he loved to have a group around him. He would go out at a drop of a hat to any function that asked him, whether it was two people or 200 people. He would soon have them laughing.”

Turk Broda

Perhaps the best playoff goaltender in hockey history, Turk Broda was as free spirited off the ice as he was fiercely competitive on it. Called “the Fabulous Fat Man” due to his impressive girth and his prowess between the pipes, Broda backstopped the famed Toronto Maple Leafs teams of the 1940s, winning five Stanley Cups in 12 years and setting the standard to which every subsequent Leafs goalie would aspire.

Fresh off the first of his two Vezina Awards as the league’s top goaltender, Broda’s legend was born during the 1942 Stanley Cup final, when Toronto found itself down three games to none against Detroit. Backed by their stopper’s brilliant play, the Leafs stole Game 4 and then rolled over the Red Wings 9–3 in Game 5. Frustrated Detroit fans pelted Broda with fruit and peanuts in Game 6, but Turk was outstanding, shutting out the Red Wings and then allowing just one goal in Game 7 as the Leafs completed the unprecedented comeback.

Broda spent the next two seasons in the army but returned to lead Toronto to four more championships, including a run of three straight titles from 1947 to 1949 and a nail-biting 1951 final that saw him turn away Rocket Richard’s Canadiens, with every game decided in overtime. Broda’s sparkling playoff resume includes 60 wins, 13 shutouts and a miniscule 1.98 goals-against average in 101 games. He once said that the lure of bonus money outweighed any pressure he felt on the ice—or as Toronto Star humorist Gary Lautens once quipped, “When the playoff bucks were on the line, the Turk could catch lint in a hurricane.”

Like Johnny Bower after him, Broda wore No. 1, a fitting choice for a man with a knack for finding the spotlight. His most publicized off-ice battle was with Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe—and a weigh scale.  Smythe had first happened upon the portly Manitoban in 1936 while the Leafs boss was at a Detroit Olympics International League game scouting a different goaltender. But Broda’s tenacious play caught Smythe’s eye, and he paid the Red Wings $8,000 to transfer the promising young goalie to Toronto. That transaction proved to be a lucky break for Broda and the Leafs, for whom the future star spent his entire 15-year career.

Smythe had no qualms with Broda’s play—“Broda,” he once said, “could tend goal in a tornado and never blink an eye”—but his rotund goalie’s prodigious skill with a knife and fork caused the owner no end of consternation and sparked a short-lived but highly publicized confrontation that became known as “the Battle of the Bulge.”

After missing just one game while he slimmed down to Smythe’s weight target, a jovial Broda called the stunt “a million laughs.”
By the 1951–52 season Broda—then the oldest player in the league—was in the twilight of his long career. In a rare move, Smythe held an appreciation day for a current player, and players and executives from across the league—plus scores of fans—packed Maple Leaf Gardens on December 22, 1951 to celebrate the beloved netminder.

After retiring in 1952, Broda turned to coaching, leading the Toronto Marlboros to back-to-back Memorial Cup championships. The six-time NHL all-star was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967 and died seven years later at age 58. Still the all-time leader in regular season and playoff wins, shutouts and games played by a Maple Leafs goalie, Turk Broda’s legend looms large in hockey history to this day.

Charles “Bud” Fowler

Bud started his athletic career at Mimico Collegiate where he was an all-round athlete participating in basketball, track and field, and football.

Upon leaving the air force after WWII, where he trained as a wireless air gunner, he joined the Toronto Indians of the ORFU. He played for the Indians in 1947-1948. In 1949 he played for Balmy Beach for Coach Ted Reeve, who switched Bud from a running back position to an end.

In 1950, Bud tried out for the Toronto Argonauts and successfully made the team. Playing mostly the defensive end position, he had a banner season culminating in a victory in the 1950 Grey Cup Game, famously known as the “Mud Bowl”. Bud played for a total of four years with the Argos. He was also a valuable member and teammate of the 1952 Grey Cup team.

In addition to football, Bud’s other great passion was hockey. Although he never played minor hockey as a young boy, Bud was a dominant player in the very competitive industrial leagues in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He also served as playing coach for a Bell Canada hockey team.

Following Bud’s playing career with the Argos, he was approached and coached a junior football team called the Lakeshore Bears. He served as line coach for 3 seasons from 1957 to 1959 and mentored many aspiring professional players during this time.

Bud also successfully coached minor hockey in the Humber Valley league for several seasons in the early mid 60’s.

Most importantly, Bud has served as a positive role model for many young aspiring athletes with whom he crossed paths.

Adam Oates

Adam Oates earned his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame in large part by assisting on teammates’ goals. So it follows that once his playing career ended, Oates would decide to help the next generation of players achieve their goals on the ice.

The playmaking centre from Weston tallied 1,079 assists and 341 goals in 1,337 National Hockey League games. Oates played for seven teams over 19 seasons, combining a gift for perfect passes with solid leadership in the dressing room. His accomplishments are even more impressive considering he was never drafted.

Oates was one of three children born to David and Loretta Oates. As a youngster, his true passion was lacrosse. He was a star with the Etobicoke Eclipse of the Ontario Lacrosse Association, but after one season of senior A Major Series Lacrosse, Oates decided to devote his efforts to hockey.

He left high school and joined the junior A Markham Waxers at age 19, pumping gas to support himself. Oates lit up junior A, but scouts passed on the playmaker, considering him too slow for the NHL. Oates was determined to prove them wrong, even if he wasn’t sure how. “I was a little bit of a cocky kid, thinking that I would figure out a way to get there,” he said.

Paul Allen, assistant hockey coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, recruited the talented forward while scouting a different Waxers player. Oates led the RPI Engineers in assists for three seasons, being named an NCAA All-American in 1984 and 1985 and helping RPI win the 1985 national championship. At the urging of RPI head coach Mike Addesa, Oates completed his high school diploma. His strong showing with the Engineers finally caught the eye of the scouts, and he signed with the Detroit Red Wings.

As the highest-paid rookie in the NHL, much was expected of Oates. The 23-year-old started strong, netting his first goal and assist in his first game, on October 10, 1985, against the Minnesota North Stars. He endured the inevitable first-year struggles and split time between Detroit and Adirondack, winning a Calder Cup with the AHL Red Wings. Over the next three seasons Oates established himself as a solid contributor, but he was shipped to St. Louis after the Red Wings bowed out of the 1988–89 playoffs in the first round.

Oates was said to have been “heartbroken” to leave the club that had signed him, an emotion Red Wings executives might have echoed as they saw their former prospect blossom into a superstar. With sniper Brett Hull on his wing, Oates quickly cemented his reputation as a hardworking two-way centre. Playing on the top line, “Hull and Oates” became a feared offensive combination, with Oates recording 102 and 115 assists in his first two seasons with St. Louis. Many of those passes ended up in the net courtesy of Hull, who scored 72 and then 86 goals. “It was just fantastic,” Oates said. “I can’t believe we only played together two and half years, because it felt like 10. It was just so special. We just really hit it off as buddies, friends. We played the game the same way; the chemistry was just excellent.”

Oates played in the 1991 all-star game, his first of five all-star nods. He acclimatized quickly to life in Boston after a trade to the Bruins, posting his best season in 1992–93, when he led the league with 97 assists and tallying 142 points. Feeding pass after pass to winger Cam Neely, Oates’ 112 points the following season were good for third in the league. Oates recorded his 1,000th career point in style, with a hat trick and two assists on October 7, 1997. Traded to Washington in mid-season, Oates propelled the Capitals to the Stanley Cup final, where they lost to Detroit.

As Washington captain, Oates led the league in assists at ages 38 and 39 while providing veteran leadership. His tour of the league continued when he was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 2002. He signed with Anaheim the following year—leading the Ducks with 13 playoff points in a hard-fought Stanley Cup final loss to New Jersey—and finished his career with a season in Edmonton. “There were a lot of good things that happened to me everywhere I went,” said the journeyman centre.

When Oates retired, his 1,079 assists ranked fifth all time. He credits his father, David, with encouraging his son’s unselfish play by pointing to British soccer star Stanley Matthews—known as a pass-first player—as an example to follow. “It was just kind of our family story growing up—‘if you can be unselfish, your teammates will always like you,’” Oates said.

His teammates did indeed appreciate Oates’ generosity. “He doesn’t get as much publicity as the goal scorers, but he loves to watch you put the puck in the net. I never asked him why he didn’t want to score more himself; I was afraid he’d change his mind,” quipped Hull.

Boston defenceman Ray Bourque agreed that Oates was underrated. “I think a lot of people take what he does for granted,” Bourque said. “He does it in a quiet way. He’s not a flashy guy. He’s not looking for attention, he just goes out and does it. He’s the best centerman I’ve been around.”

Oates could also find the back of the net when the situation arose. He reached the 20-goal mark five times and scored 45 goals in 1992–93, including a league-best 11 game-winners. He was a presence on the power play, scoring 103 of his 341 career goals with the man advantage, and knew how to rise to the occasion, with 42 goals and 114 assists (156 points) in 163 playoff games. He was also a six-time finalist for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, awarded for high levels of sportsmanship and ability.

Six years after he retired, Oates was behind the bench as an assistant coach with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Under Oates’ tutelage, Steven Stamkos matured into a more complete player and the team’s power play improved to ninth-best in the league. Oates became an assistant in New Jersey the following year, helping the Devils reach the Stanley Cup final in 2012. “He did an outstanding job for us,” then-Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said of Oates. “He’s very communicative, very intelligent, he explains things very well.” Oates’ positive attitude resonated with players like Scott Gomez, who called Oates the best coach he ever played for. “(Oates is) one of the only coaches I’ve seen where, whether you were on the first or fourth line, every day he would try to make you better.”

June 26, 2012, proved a fateful day for Oates, as he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame and hired to be the head coach of the Washington Capitals. After a moribund start to the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season, Oates took his charges from worst to first in the Southeast Division. The Capitals lost a hard-fought playoff round to the Rangers in seven games. When Washington missed the post-season the following year, Oates was fired along with general manager George McPhee. Lamoriello brought Oates back to New Jersey in December 2014 for a brief experiment in co-coaching with Scott Stevens.

These days Oates remains active in hockey as a private skills coach, working with Optimal Player Performance and My Pro Hero to train the next generation. Stamkos, Zach Parise, Alex Ovechkin, Teddy Purcell and Max Pacioretty are just a few of the NHL players who have benefitted from Oates’ experience, attention to detail and excellent communication skills.

That Adam Oates enjoyed a prolific NHL career is a testament to his work ethic and determination. Thought of as a player who improved every team he was on, Oates’ undeniable skills and unselfish mindset on the ice cemented his status as one of the elite playmakers of all time.