The holes and wear-marks in Norm Gronskei’s Kangaroos hockey jersey tell a story.
The left elbow is completely worn out, a testament to how many elbow jabs Gronskei threw while on the ice during his 14-year term with the Quesnel Kangaroos. The weave has thinned, and Gronskei says the stains down the shoulders are from fans throwing coffee on him during games.
“The fans loved to holler at me because anyone who even so much as moved on the ice would get hit.
“My sweater on both shoulders had coffee stains all down, the fans would come right down there and pour out their coffee on me!”
Gronskei designed the Kangaroos’ original jersey, and says the stripes on the shoulders were the team’s trademark: “These stripes, you’d look up and you could see your teammate from anywhere. Your eye went straight to them.” Today’s Kangaroos jerseys still bear those iconic stripes.
Gronskei, a defenceman, played for the Kangaroos from 1951 to 1965, and is one of the original team members. In September, he was given the honour of dropping the puck for the first hockey game played at the West Fraser Centre, between the West Fraser Centre Team and the Canucks Alumni.
He is turning 89 this December, but his memory is sharp as a tack. He likes to retell his memories in third person, and says he’s always talked to himself, so his stories are punctuated with these asides.
His Kangaroos jersey, with a large number two emblazoned on the back, is one of the physical reminders of Gronskei’s days on the team.
And, just like his jersey, Norm Gronskei has a story or two to tell about his hockey days.
Originally from the Bridge River Valley, Gronskei played hockey from a young age. He says he was chosen to play on a junior team in Edmonton that was set up by the Montreal Canadiens.
“A telegram came in the mail after I graduated, from the Montreal Canadiens. They said their scouts had seen the way I’d played in a B.C. high school hockey championship. He said, ‘How would you like to come down and try out for our junior team?’ I said, ‘You bet I would.’”
At 17, Gronskei says he was small, but fearless.
“The other guys trying out were big guys, farm kids. I thought, ‘Well Norm, what are you going to do?’ I looked at the bench, took a big gulp and yelled, ‘Well, I don’t see anyone here that’s big enough to get me out of here!’” Gronskei laughs.
“But these kids knew I came out of a mining town, so no one said a word!
“Five guys were picked for their hockey playing ability, and number six was Norm Gronskei, because he could fight on skates.”
Gronskei’s tough-guy attitude and strength on the ice was already getting him places.
He played on that junior team in Edmonton for a couple of years, until tragedy struck at home. His younger sister was sent to hospital in Vancouver and diagnosed with a brain tumour, which she didn’t recover from. Gronskei relocated to the coast to be close to his sister while she was being treated.
“This was in 1950. We were in Vancouver and I’d go to the rink in Kerrisdale and watch them play. I’ve never been afraid of anything. I thought, ‘Come on Norm, get your ass out there, you can beat these guys.’ So I tried out for the team, and they were happy to have me.”
Gronskei says the team played in the B.C. junior hockey championships that year. Afterwards, walking out of a Chinese restaurant one day (“I always ate there because they had the best cutlets you’ve ever tasted!”), Gronskei ran into an old teammate from the Valley. It was Bob Young, who’d relocated to Quesnel.
“He said, ‘Gronskei! For God’s sake, what are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m down here and I’m looking for another team to play for.’ He said, ‘I’ve got the perfect answer for you. I work in a little town up here in the Cariboo and we’ve got a league there with Quesnel, Prince George, Vanderhoof and Williams Lake. Norm, this is right up your alley. They are going to love you up there.’”
Young was in Vancouver with a couple of businessmen from Quesnel.
“One had the Chevy dealership, that was Chuck Beath. The other was Paul Gauthier, who was the head honcho of the movie theatre.”
Gronskei says the guys were “tickled pink” to get him on the team in Quesnel, so up he came on the Greyhound bus.
“I was in my early 20s when I came to Quesnel. I joined the Kangaroos team, and we would practice out at Bouchie Lake when it was frozen over, because there wasn’t an arena. And if the Quesnel River froze over enough, we’d go on there.”
Gronskei says the team got its name from the players’ social activities. “The guys would always be in the Cariboo Hotel after the games and practices, drinking and hopping from table to table, like Kangaroos. I think Paul Gauthier was probably the guy who came up with that,” he says.
Gronskei can go into great detail over the games he played as a Kangaroo. He says for him, it was always about putting on a good show. He remembers skating down Prince George’s indoor arena with all the Prince George fans looking down.
“I skated right around and every second or third step, I’d smash my stick against the boards. Bang, bang, bang! I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to put up with me this year. Just look out for number two.’
“It was showmanship all the way down. I’ve been a showman all my life.”
Gronskei and the rivals’ fans had a love-hate relationship – the spectators loved to hate him.
“I would run into the fans later and they said, ‘We loved nothing better than giving you all the hell we could.’
“About halfway through that first season, all those arenas were packed right to the gunnels and everyone of those fans was swearing at me. That just never ever stopped. That’s why a lot of people came to our hockey games, to see that.”
In one memorable episode, Gronskei describes how he got back at the audience.
“The Williams Lake wives and sweethearts, they were giving me crap all the time. They’d sit on a bench beside where the players were, and I’d skate up along the boards and go, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Just to make them jump.
“One night, it was the last game of the year before the playoffs. ‘Well Norm,’ says I, ‘it’s now or never.’”
A mischievous look flashes across his face as he continues his story.
“The play was into the Quesnel end, and the Williams Lake team was down that end as well. The girls were all looking down the opposite way, so I slipped right up against the boards, brought my stick up, and wiped the whole bunch of cups with hot coffee and rum all over the girls!
“I skated back to the far end, turned around and hollered, ‘Come on girls, give a great big hurrah for Norm!’
“Well, they said something. It wasn’t hurrah!” He laughs his wheezing laugh, bending forward.
Gronskei says he eventually had to retire from the game he loves, due to knee injuries. He says Quesnel fans would always come up to him in the years that followed to tell him how the games had gotten too boring without him.
Still, the Kangaroos’ heyday lives on in Gronskei’s memory. He says he was honoured to be part of the West Fraser Centre opening ceremony.
He lives in a supportive living home in West Quesnel now, and instead of showing off to a crowd of hockey fans, these days he’s regaling anyone who’ll listen with his tales. Gronskei, a showman through and through, can make even a routine check-up with the doctor sound like a rollicking caper.
As he pulls his 66-year-old maroon Kangaroos jersey from his closet, he puffs with pride. “I’m like that song, ‘Forever Young’. I don’t think of myself as old.”
There, as he shows off his jersey with his upright posture and impish grin, we can glimpse the hard-hitting Kangaroos defenceman Gronskei knows himself to be.
