Bruce Dowbiggin
Small But Mighty, Hockey Crusader Susan Foster Belongs In The HHOF
Susan Foster April 26, 1944 – May 7, 2023
The first time I saw Susan Foster’s wonderful smile was in 1991, just after I’d seen Carl Brewer’s legendary scowl. I’d come to their home on Mt. Pleasant Avenue in midtown Toronto to follow a story I was researching about the meagre pensions for retired NHL greats and the corruption of the NHL Players Association under Alan Eagleson.
When I announced my plan, Carl had said— in his measured, sarcastic tone— that he’d had reporters up to here (he pointed to his bald dome). He wasn’t cooperating anymore with media guys who were spies for the owners. I swallowed hard. That’s when Sue (everyone called her Sue) emerged from the back kitchen, beaming her smile.
“Oh Carl,” she chided. “He’s come all the way up here, at least ask him in.” Carl did what he always did when Sue gave his a suggestion. He obliged. When I left their place two hours later I had embarked on a journey that would take almost eight years to complete, a story of intrigue, deceit and discovery to assist my boyhood heroes. Through Carl/ Sue it won me two Gemini Awards.
Of far greater importance, it brought me and my family two enduring friendships. Carl, the imposing rebel of hockey whose heart was always troubled, died in 2001. And Sue, who left us last Sunday, the teacher-turned-social-catalyst who won over even enemies with her sweetness and determination. Small but mighty, she even charmed Gary Bettman, the cold-fish NHL commissioner.
In league with the indomitable Russ Conway of the Lawrence Eagle Tribune we took down a man and a system many thought invincible. It was gratifying and frustrating all the same but, oh, the trails we travelled. In a snowstorm up to our waist in Boston for the announcement of the charges against Eagleton. In Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, to plan more strategy with Russ. In Sue’s backyard where her cats— always she had cats around— walking the fence around her deck while I read the galleys of her book The Power Of Two about her life with the mercurial Mr. Brewer.
BOSTON – 1979: Carl Brewer #28 of the Toronto Maple Leafs skates against the Boston Bruins at Boston Garden. (Photo by Steve Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
By the time I met them, Carl and Sue had been chasing the NHL over Carl’s pension since 1980, when he finally stopped playing in the NHL at age 41. When the league refused his personal grievance over a single year’s pension, they declared war on behalf of everyone. They went though, by their own estimation, 22 lawyers who told them to give up before Mark Zigler of Koskie Minsky took on the file that would end with Carl, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Ted Lindsay, Andy Bathgate and hundreds of others winning their pension lawsuit to retire millions of dollars to their Fund.
It took another four years before Eagleson answered for his scoundrel turn, being convicted in Canada and the U.S. for fraud and other crimes. Carl stood up in Boston court to declare that it was only the United States Justice Department who’d saved hockey players. Typically, Eagleson’s pals like ex-PM John Turner and Supreme Court justice John Sopinka made sure he only served a sliver of what he deserved in a Canadian jail. (He’d have done five years in the jar if he’d been sentenced in the U.S. which had forced Canada to due its duty.)
Through it all, Sue was the discoverer of documents, the one who remembered a letter sent, the recruiter to the cause. With tea and caramel cake she brought us more allies every week while keeping Carl’s head from exploding in outrage at the ill-treatment. Her normalcy charmed media people into finally doing their duty to come aboard. No one could refuse her calls. Only fools underestimated the gentle grandmother.
She taught me how to use the corporations act to explore boards of directors, and land transfers that slowly unveiled the manner in which players had been defrauded by Eagleson and the NHL. Her late-night calls announcing legal hearings and extradition requests kept me and CBC TV Toronto a step ahead of the competition.
A loving mother to Dan and Melanie, she soon adopted my own three kids to her brood. They’d arrive home for lunch to see Carl’s gleaming skull next to Sue pouring tea at our dining table. The gentle giant and the den mother. When the news came of her death from dementia Evan, Rhys and Clare were crestfallen, recalling those simple childhood days on Manor Road East.
I remembered driving in the limousine to Carl’s funeral at St. Michael’s Cathedral on St. Clair. I told her I was nervous, because there’d be about 50 former NHL greats in the pews for my eulogy. A hundred other hockey people were coming too. I’d had about four hours sleep coming in from Calgary on the red-eye. Sue grabbed my arm, smiled and said, “You’ll be fine. That’s why I picked you.” My worries disappeared.
After Carl’s passing— and the Pension issue subsided– Sue turned into advocate for the Original Six survivors, going to charity fundraiser games. And when the retired NHL guys grew too old to play, she attended luncheons where they exchanged notes with Sue on their predicaments. She reviewed lawyers’ letters and pension arcana for them, listening to their weathered stories as if it were her first listening.
One by one, they’ve disappeared, succumbing to age and the inevitable. When their funerals were within driving distance Sue was there to send them off properly. Now it’s her turn, and it breaks my heart I won’t be able to join Melanie (Will) and Dan (Sarah) and their kids Angeline, Marshal, Foster and Hannah this week on Bayview, the scene of so many great days. We will have Dowbiggins there to make she’s remembered properly. Still.
The last time I saw her she was beginning to show the signs of PCA, a rare and debilitating dementia. An inability to use the phone or computer. Difficulty reading. But we still walked a couple of blocks down Mt. Pleasant over to The Homeway for brunch. It was spring, and she noted how the trees were blossoming in tribute. She was still full of chat, maybe a little apprehensive about her memory. But oh, that smile when I kissed her goodbye at the door. It elevated you.
They need to put her in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Now.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.
The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.
But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
“Reporters once asked legendary boxer Rocky Graziano why he hugged his opponent after the guy had pounded him senseless for 15 rounds. “He stopped punching me, didn’t he?” That sums up the reaction of Boomer voters hugging Mark Carney after ten years of having Liberals pound them. They can rationalize any amount of suffering.”
The two looming figures in the current “hurry up before they find out who Mark Carney is” election are Carney, the transnational banker/ climate zealot/ not-Trudeau Liberal, and Donald Trump. Yes, Pierre Poilievre is running against Carney, but Carney and the Gerry Butts braintrust are running against the U.S. president.
And not just POTUS 45/47. They’re running against the SNL cartoon figure embraced by Canada’s mainstream media outlets. Depending on the day the Toronto Star/ CBC/ Ottawa Citizen iteration of Trump is “stupid”, “racist”, “sex fiend” and, for this campaign, the boogeyman who will swallow Canada whole. While these scribblers and talking heads themselves are going broke, they imagine Trump as an economic moron collapsing the western economy.
All the clever Conservative ads, all the Carney flubs, all the revelations of election rigging by Chinese operatives— none of it matters to Canada’s Boomers huddled against the blustering winds of Trump. They call it Team Canada but it might just as well be Team Surrender to people who are willing to keep the Liberals’ Gong Show going for another four years.
As they say, you’re welcome to your own opinion, you’re just not welcome to your own facts. And the facts are that Trump and Carney are representative of their separate nations in 2025. Before we address the parachute PM Carney let us suggest that CDNs weaned on Stephen Colbert and John Oliver have little idea why Trump is the most impactful American politician of the century so far.
But don’t take our word for it. Here’s Democratic comedian Dave Chappelle explaining why so many remain loyal to the former Democrat and reality TV star in the face of impeachments, criminal charges and yes, bullets. Chappelle, who lives outside the Hollywood bubble in Ohio, said, “I’m not joking right now, he’s an honest liar. That first (2016) debate, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a white male billionaire screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘This whole system is rigged.’
“And the moderator said, ‘Well Mr. Trump if, in fact, the system is rigged as you suggest, what would be your evidence?’ He said, ‘I know the system is rigged because I use it.’ I said ‘Goddamn’.
“No one ever heard someone say something so true. And then Hillary Clinton tried to punch him on the taxes. She said, ‘This man doesn’t pay his taxes,’ he said, ‘That makes me smart.’ And then he said, ‘If you want me to pay my taxes, then change the tax code. But I know you won’t, because your friends and your donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.’…
“No one had ever seen anything like that. No one had ever seen somebody come from inside of that house outside and tell all the commoners we are doing everything that you think we are doing inside of that house. And a legend was born.”
In short, Trump is what we want politicians to be. Aspirational, yes. But willing to act. We can take it. Yes, his truth is wrapped in multiple layers of balderdash and folderol. There is a preening ego. Self serving. Vainglorious. Opportunistic. Bombastic.
But he recognized that no one— GOP included— wanted anything to do with closing borders, ending foreign wars, levelling the trade barriers. So while Canadians whined, he took them on, and for that he’s been given two terms in the White House. You can understand why people wanted him dead last summer. He’s bad for the business he exposed in that debate with Hillary.
So Canadian liberals might sneer and condescend, but Trump’s answering to a legitimate voice in an America that was deceived and abused during Covid. And had a senile man as POTUS being manipulated by unseen characters behind the scenes.
Which begs the question: What in the Canadian character is Mark Carney answering to as he is dropped into the seat formally occupied by Justin Trudeau? The most obvious answer is Trump’s 51st state musings as he seeks to re-order the world’s tariff system. But what about repudiating everything he and his party stood for the past decade? How does that fit into the Carney identity?
While Trump has a resounding mandate to pursue the issues he campaigned on, Carney has a manipulated Liberal leadership contest, no seat and Mike Myers. Plus a media that owes its living to his party’s bribing them.
It would be hard to imagine more own goals than Carney’s record since the Liberals rigged his nomination. The China denials, the offshore tax evasions, the three passports, the renunciation of his entire work history, the re-hiring the worst of Trudeau’s cabinet, the bad body language… yet every gaffe increases his numbers in the purchased polls and the bought media. It will be an amazing story when it’s written.
But it’s not being written that way now. Because Donald Trump has activated Canada’s passion for authority and the expert class. While the rest of the world has awakened to the government’s deliberate manipulation of fear and white-coat reverence during Covid, Canada’s Boomers are still in awe of people like Carney. They still think the vaccines work. That The Science was behind it all.
So prepare for another 15 rounds of being slugged in the head by people who don’t have your goals in mind. Don’t say you we weren’t warned.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Province introducing “Patient-Focused Funding Model” to fund acute care in Alberta
Mark Carney To Ban Free Speech if Elected
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: Canada’s ties to Wuhan Institute of Virology and creation of COVID uncovered by Sam Cooper of The Bureau
Trump targets Washington’s climate laws in recent executive order
Why nation-building Canadian resource projects need Indigenous ownership to succeed
Bill Maher Breaks His Silence on His Private Meeting With President Trump
PPE Videos, CCP Letters Reveal Pandemic Coordination with Liberal Riding Boss and Former JCCC Leader—While Carney Denies Significant Meeting In Campaign
-
espionage1 day agoEx-NYPD Cop Jailed in Beijing’s Transnational Repatriation Plot, Canada Remains Soft Target
-
Business2 days agoDOGE Is Ending The ‘Eternal Life’ Of Government
-
2025 Federal Election2 days agoCanada drops retaliatory tariffs on automakers, pauses other tariffs
-
2025 Federal Election2 days agoTucker Carlson Interviews Maxime Bernier: Trump’s Tariffs, Mass Immigration, and the Oncoming Canadian Revolution
-
Daily Caller1 day agoDOJ Releases Dossier Of Deported Maryland Man’s Alleged MS-13 Gang Ties
-
2025 Federal Election1 day agoAllegations of ethical misconduct by the Prime Minister and Government of Canada during the current federal election campaign
-
John Stossel1 day agoClimate Change Myths Part 1: Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Food Shortages
-
2025 Federal Election1 day agoBREAKING from THE BUREAU: Pro-Beijing Group That Pushed Erin O’Toole’s Exit Warns Chinese Canadians to “Vote Carefully”