Joe Iannarelli's father was a hard-rock miner, his working life spent underground scraping the rock of the Canadian Shield for gold.
The father came from the mountaintop village of Santo Stefano in Italy to seek his fortune in the New World. Instead, he got silicosis mucking in the dank gold mines of Schumacher, Ont. He died when Joe was 10, leaving the boy and his two brothers with little but memories and a cherished pair of second-hand hockey skates.
The family could afford only the single pair, so the three boys took turns wearing them.
In winter, the Iannarelli boys played hockey on outdoor rinks. Young Joe developed into a fine skater, known for his passing ability and his playmaking skill.
In 1938, the mining company in Schumacher opened the McIntyre Community Centre, a grand facility including a ballroom, a coffee shop, a curling rink and a bowling alley. The 2,000-seat McIntyre arena was built as a scale replica of Maple Leaf Gardens, even mimicking the red, green and blue seats and end balconies of the famous Toronto stadium. Young Joe became a rink rat, helping with odd chores and pushing a scraper across the ice between periods.
It was his ambition to avoid his birthright as a miner. "I'd sooner starve than go underground," he said.
At 18, he was invited to a tryout with a hockey team, so he donned his hockey jacket and hitchhiked south. He wound up with a junior team in Kitchener, where one of his teammates was a local boy nearly three years younger by the name of Howie Meeker. They struck a fast friendship.
That was the beginning of Mr. Iannarelli's career as a hockey vagabond. For 20 seasons, he chased frozen rubber from Vancouver to Newfoundland, including stints in such hockey hotbeds as Omaha, Neb., and Fort Worth, Texas. He wore hockey sweaters emblazoned with team names ranging from Athletics to Zephyrs.
The closest he got to the National Hockey League was an invitation to the Detroit Red Wings' training camp in 1946, after he had spent several years in the wartime army. As a rookie, Mr. Iannarelli was billeted inside the Olympia arena, where he was again expected to scrape the ice. He got $5 per day meal money. One of the other prospects was a kid from Floral, Sask., named Gordie Howe.
Mr. Iannarelli signed a contract and went off to play for the Omaha Knights at Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum. (The arena's name is the state's name spelled backward.) In 1948, his rights were sold for $3,000 to the original Vancouver Canucks, who played at the Forum on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds.
"Big crowds," he said. "Good rivalry between Vancouver and New Westminster in those days."
He scored 10 goals and added 12 assists in 35 games with the Canucks, while also accumulating 36 penalty minutes, a shocking total for a player who was more Gandhi than goon. "I was never one of those rough, tough guys," he said.
The team travelled along the coast for games as far south as San Diego, the squad and all their equipment squeezing into two vehicles, with the trainer and coach handling chauffeur duties.
By the late 1950s, he was combining hockey duties with a job as recreation director in Corner Brook, Nfld., where, incidentally, he renewed his friendship with Mr. Meeker, who by then had enjoyed a stellar career with the Maple Leafs as well as a stint as a member of Parliament.
In January, 1961, Mr. Iannarelli entertained a pair of job offers, one in Newfoundland and the other in Esquimalt. He remembers calling his wife long distance from Victoria. "I'm at the Empress Hotel," he said. "The grass is green, the sun is shining. Which job should I take?"
He would spend the following two decades as manager of the hockey arena, creating a hockey league with teams from the army, the navy and the university, as well as a team sponsored by an auto dealer called the Pontiac Chiefs.
When he noticed how poorly the local children skated, he began a hockey school, proudly noting that two graduates (Rick Lapointe and Ron Grahame) went on to NHL careers.
The NHL eluded Mr. Iannarelli, though his hockey career is taking him to the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame, where he is to be enshrined this fall to honour his work as a recreational director.
He celebrated his 90th birthday in February, a landmark tinged with sadness, as he has survived both brothers, as well as his wife, Jean, and his son, Joe Jr., who died suddenly two years ago.
He was not alone on his birthday. Howie Meeker made a pilgrimage to Victoria to see an old friend he has known since both were teenaged teammates 72 years ago.
Special to The Globe and Mail