After recently being inducted to the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame, Bob Graham has a lot to be proud of, and this successful hockey player attributes much of his success to his time in the Jasper Arena.

Between the ages of eight and 15, Graham says that he and other young Jasperites spent many hours at the arena – their second home. One of the earliest memories for Graham was of him and his chums packing up their hockey gear to take to school so that they could haul it over to the arena to play after the final bell.

“Which ever team would win would get to chant ‘we won, we won’,” he recalls, laughing.

Saturdays were a favourite among many locals, remembers Graham. Afternoon hockey games would begin with the bantam team, followed by the midgets and in the evening much of the town would come out to watch the senior games.

“We used to play under the wooden bleachers while the senior game went on,” says Graham with a chuckle. The fun didn’t end there, with youngsters heading back to the rink on Sundays to play “crack the whip”, where if caught, there was “trouble”.

Graham spent a lot of his youth at the arena, where his brother worked as a “rink rat”.

“And that was quite a prestigious position,” says Graham. “You were considered pretty cool if you were a rink rat.”

Eventually the arena secured an old farm tractor to clear the ice so by the time Graham was the age to become a “rat”, the position had been eliminated much to his disappointment.

In those days, the arena was everything, says Graham. He and his friends all began skating at the age of five and really grew up on the ice. When he starts talking about those who were most influential to him in his developing years of hockey, Graham says he gets a little emotional.

“Arvon [Hilworth] was great and he had huge patience for us,” he says. “And Mr. Nichol was the first guy to teach us to play position. Mr. Chesser was a terrific coach and Mr. Wall was great. Bert and Cal Rowan were unbelievable coaches; they let us play and taught us to play good hockey, and the all-time greatest hip-checker was Harold Senz Jr.”

Graham says that when he looks back and thinks about the highlights in his life, playing hockey in Jasper is definitely high on the list.

“Playing hockey gives you confidence to do other things in life,” he says, genuinely earnest. “I remember a game when I was on the bench and it was crunch time, and Mr. Chesser said, ‘Put Soapy out!’ I remember leaping over the boards – I was really happy and proud of myself that someone believed in me.”

That stayed with Graham for the rest of his career.

“Back then the rink was the fabric of my life. Part of [the satisfaction] of getting the induction is that I can finally look back over my shoulder and say ‘We did it’ to Mr. Chesser.”

After high school, Graham went on to play with the Red Deer College Kings – to a team that would later be inducted to the Alberta hall of fame.

“Al Ferchuk was the coach there and he was a remarkable coach,” says Graham. “He was way ahead of his time with the way he taught – you didn’t only play, you learned.”

Remembering the glory years with the RDC Kings, Graham says it was unbelievable. 

“When it’s happening, you can’t believe it. You have to sit back and all of a sudden it hits you.”

The Kings won the Canadian championship in the 1976-77, 1978-79 and 1979-80 seasons and were second in 1977-78. They were the first team in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference history to finish first in the league five years in a row, win four 4-West championships and win back-to-back national titles. As the story goes, in the 1977 league final, the Kings played three overtime periods to defeat the Mount Royal Cougars 3-2 on a goal by Graham in the final game of the best-of-three series before more than 1,300 fans. 

“Being inducted was very humbling,” says Graham. “Hockey’s been unreal for me. Playing hockey you can have so many good times. It has opened up doors and made me friends for life.”

Graham continued to have an exciting career, playing senior hockey in Vancouver and winning two championships with the Royal City Hockey League in the early ‘80s. Then, hockey took him to Kamloops where he played in a semi-contact league and won two more city championships with the Fireplace Centre Hawks.

“Now I’m playing with a terrific bunch of guys called the Free Radicals,” he says laughing. “I like to think that I won’t hang up the skates, but where we used to be lean and mean, now we’re just old and full of opinions!”

Graham says the Jasper Minor Hockey League definitely prepared him for his future career.

“I couldn’t have achieved so much without the minor hockey system. It’s something that was supported by the whole community and that is truly something special,” he says. “Those kinds of memories, they don’t wash away.”

When asked about the importance of a small town arena, Graham speaks with conviction.

“It’s the core, the centre, the focal point of a town. When you’re travelling anywhere, even in the smallest towns of the prairies where there’s not much, you know that sure as hell there’s a rink, a church and a general store. I couldn’t imagine the life we would have had without it.”

Graham says it’s a great honour to be inducted into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame.

“And I accept it on behalf of all of the people in my time (playing in Jasper). In Jasper, the community, the rink, the people – they are all in the hall of fame with me.”