As I have mentioned here before, the early eighties were definitely part of my formative years - that stretch of time that I would spend at Laurentian University studying Sports Administration.

At almost exactly the same time, a young Cambrian College journalism graduate by the name of Norm Mayer would be hired at the Sudbury Star.

A shared passion of local sports and keen interest in all statistical aspects of athletic competition would create the base of a flourishing friendship – not to mention a strange enjoyment for “whack-a-ball”, though it was clear early on that neither of us possessed any golf related skills whatsoever.

A typical mid-winter Sunday evening in those days might have involved the two of us making the trek out to Levack, the Sunday night Onaping Falls Huskies' home games often marking the end of the week of NOJHL play.

Afterwards we returned to the Sudbury Star office on Mackenzie Street, there until the wee hours of Monday morning, Randy updating all of his league stats (NOJHL, SMHA, SDSSAA hockey) based on the weekend activities and Norm working through what seemed to be six or seven different stories that would appear in the Monday newspaper.

Our ties to the Sudbury Wolves would run deep enough that a weekend road trip was not at all out of the question, making stops in Kitchener and Windsor and throwing in a cross-border visit to catch a Red Wings game in Detroit on the same excursion – neither of us knowing that acknowledging our purchase of souvenirs at the contest to the border agent would cause us to be detained as we tried to re-enter Canadian soil.

Suffice to say there are memories a plenty to be shared.

Sadly, Norm passed in the summer of 2019, just 60 years of age after battling a variety of health issues for years.

In more recent years, our paths had frequently crossed via a shared involvement with the Greater Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame, Norm serving as the Hall historian for a decade or two; I brought aboard to assist with the nominations for the annual award winners from the high-school and minor sports rank and file.

Quite recently, during a visit with fellow HOF committee member Gord Apolloni, I came across a handful of boxes that Gord believed to be Hall of Fame inductee info that Norm had accumulated over the years. As it turns out, we had at least one more thing in common.

These boxes were home to file after file broken down in sport specific or event specific manner, each one jammed with clippings and notes and photos from the wide spectrum of sports that Norm had covered over the year.

I couldn’t help but to smile, thinking about just how closely this filing system mirrored the same one I had developed over the course of now covering local sports for the past twenty years. But even more importantly, from a strictly selfish standpoint, the contents covered much of the Sudbury sports scene from the 1980’s and 1990’s, the exact period of time where my former banking career would take me to Kingston.

Given my inkling on tackling a quasi-retirement project that I can only loosely describe as a natural follow-up to Home Grown Heroes, the late seventies publication penned by the late Frank Pagnucco that outlines the growth of sport in these parts for much of the 20th century, these files represent an absolute gold mine of information.

To wit – I had little to no idea that some of the earliest versions of women’s hockey in the north dated back to a 1937 Capreol-based squad that were dubbed the Canadian Girls in Training. Turns out the daughters of railway staffers had easy access to the travel requirements necessary to make the hike up the track to Parry Sound, Foleyet, Chapleau, Hornepayne and other outposts where similar teenage female hockey talent might be waiting to engage in a friendly game.

I had far more vivid memories of the 1983 Games for the Physically Disabled, having worked closely with both Maralyn Quinton and Rob Faulds on the Promotion and Publicity committee for the event that was hosted at Laurentian University. Still, a complete file of stories accompanied by a Games' program would bring to life countless flashbacks of times shared with chairman Charlie Labarge and world records that were broken along the way.

As I worked my way through more of the assorted paperwork, I come across the September 1996 article that documents the creation of the Collège Boréal Vipères, the logo designed by Dominique Viau and unveiled in time for the 1996-1997 season – well before the most recent installment of OCAA varsity athletics were celebrated at the New Sudbury campus just over a week ago.

Ron St Louis would be coach of the hockey team that year, a squad that would lose eight straight before besting the Sault Cougars 6-4 courtesy of a four goal effort from Alain Corneau and five assists from Martin Alary.

There are two large files devoted entirely to the World Junior Track & Field Championships in 1988 – not to mention several much smaller files that include recaps of a good cross-section of the All-Ontario Peewee, Bantam and Midget playdowns that have been hosted in Sudbury.

There is a file set aside to chronicle the 1985 NHL Entry Draft in Toronto, the setting where Walden native Craig Duncanson was selected ninth overall by the Los Angeles Kings, the team following that pick up with their choice of forward Dan Gratton from the Oshawa Generals.

It’s also the NHL draft that likely will always most stand out for this intrepid reporter, having attended it in person, along with Norm Mayer, as he gave me a glimpse of what a day’s work entailed when trying to navigate the chaos at the Toronto Convention Centre.

In the end, I have stumbled across a treasure chest of useful nostalgic information, much of which could have easily ended up, unnoticed, in a local landfill site. Which reminds me: having now been elected as the chairman of the Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame committee a few months ago, I welcome one and all who discover deeply hidden boxes of sports memorabilia from loved ones who have passed to consider dropping me a line (info@sudburysports.com) prior to leaving these items up on the curb for garbage day pick-up.