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"Nobody from a working-class home in the '30s had much money. When I
was a boy, sports was about all we ever thought about. Maybe it
sounds corny, but I did wear magazines as shin-pads for street hockey
games."
Never
a great athlete, Bishop's immense ambition led him into a variety of
sports. Besides, he was a good organizer, a type who is always handy
to have around.
"We
played our street hockey games in organized leagues," Bishop smiles
now. "We even kept standings."
In
1945, Bishop got to coach his first team - the Parkdale Marauders
bantams in the King Clancy hockey series, which led to his coaching
the pee wee lacrosse team for the St. Vincent's Holy Name Society,
although he had never seen a lacrosse stick before he took the job.
"I
didn't know what the game was all about," Bishop recalled. "Neither
did the players. But we worked at it. Sometimes we practised all day."
Of
course, the team won. "We took the Ontario pee wee championship
tournament at
Brampton,"
Bishop said. "No one had ever heard of us and we weren't the best
dressed team, either. But we were the hungriest."
Bishop
coached assorted hockey and lacrosse teams. Then, in 1948, he founded
the Green Gaels.
"We
carpet-bagged around for a few years," he said. "We played at the old
Sunnyside Bowl,
Oakville,
Mimico and spent two years at
Newmarket
- anyplace where we could find a spot to play. Often we were broke and
sometimes we didn't win many games."
Bishop
worked at assorted jobs to support his lacrosse habit, including
Canada's biggest rural mail route out of the Port Credit post office,
until 1952 when he joined Sports College, operated by physical fitness
and sports expert Lloyd Percival. Percival, the most controversial
figure in Canadian sports, had a big influence on Bishop.
"First, I had access to Percival's great knowledge in the fitness
field and through him I was able to discover the techniques which
great coaches, such as Paul Brown, were using," Bishop said. "But, the
most important thing Percival taught me was the desire to find new
ways of doing things. He taught me how I to break down the barriers
of learning new methods and that I there was no value in a dogmatic
attachment to the old ways."
Bishop
branched out on his own in 1955, accepting the post of recreation
director in Huntsville, the resort town in Muskoka. Lacrosse had been
played there at the intermediate level, but Bishop organized minor
teams. They won nine Ontario championships in the next five years.
Many of the players Bishop developed in Huntsville became stars with
Oshawa Green Gaels.
At
Huntsville,
Bishop also cracked the radio field, taking the sports announcer's job
with the new station there.
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