Yorkton This Week | www.YorktonThisWeek.com | Wednesday, July 25, 2018
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SENIORS Our Monthly Feature
…For Seniors and about Seniors
Sports a passion, education a career By Calvin Daniels Staff Writer Over the years few have been more supportive of the ‘Land of Orange’ than Barry Sharpe who worked tirelessly for years as counsellor at Yorkton Regional High School. It was however a winding road to the Land of Orange. Born in 1942, Sharpe said while very young at the time of the Second World War, it still left him with indelible memories. As a kid he said he remembers the Harvard airplanes flying over Yorkton from the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan centre at what it now the Yorkton Municipal Airport. “They would scare the hell out of me,” said Sharpe. It was a situation
which may have been inpart because he lost an uncle in the war, an uncle who was a pilot. And there was, for example, the end of the conflict. “The troops coming home on the trains … all the soldiers hanging out the windows waving,” recounts Sharpe over coffee. And after the war it continued to play a part in his formative years. “Shortly after the war they had a big air show in Yorkton. It was a hot, hot day,” he recalled. They had brought in a Lancaster, or similar bomber, something they did not see from the training centre. “It sank right into the tarmac. They had a heckuva time to get it out,” he said. “It was quite a thing.” He said while very
young the impact of the war on everyone seemed to be something that simply ingrained the memories in him. But the war did come to its end, and as the world settled back into a semblance of normalcy, so too did the life of a young boy growing up in Yorkton. In a time before computer games and television, Sharpe like most youth in those times hit the playgrounds for fun and entertainment. “I played lots of sports,” he said. That meant learning baseball, and hockey, two sports Sharpe would emerge to excel in. It seemed like a very normal upbringing in a time after the war, but there were bumps. “When I was 13 my mother died,” he said, and two years later his father passed too. Sharpe would move to Wynyard to live with an older sister and finish his high school, where he continued to show he could play football. After winning a provincial title with the Yorkton Collegiate in 1957, as a Grade 11 student with Wynyard they lost to Prince Albert in the provincial finals. A year later they took the final, this time over North Battleford. The football championships would be two of many Sharpe would garner playing at a top level in the sports as a young man. Sharpe said while he was in the University of Saskatchewan Huskies
football team, two losses 72-6 to BC and 54-0 to Calgary made him rethink continuing on the gridiron. But then there were the Saskatoon Quakers, the team that would become the Blades one day. Doug Bentley, a former National Hockey League player and Hockey Hall of Fame member was the coach. “They had a rural camp,” said Sharpe. “Seventy-eight kids showed up, and only two made the Quakers.” He was one of them playing with the team for the 1960-61 season. Sharpe would be something of a hockey gypsy for a time. After a year with the Quakers he played with the Weyburn Red Wings for a season. The next season “I got a phone call from Dauphin. I’d never been to Dauphin in my life,”
he said. But he packed his skates and headed to Manitoba where the team would be intermediate provincial finalists for the 1962-63 season. At the time his pro rights were held by the Detroit Red Wings, and he was invited to a camp to play with their affiliate in Edmonton. In spite of local success, he didn’t go. “I didn’t think I had a career in hockey,” he said. While sports would continue to be a huge part of Sharpe’s life, he was also beginning to think about some sort of career, and eventually he settled on being a teacher. Sharpe’s early teaching career would see him finally drawn back to Yorkton, where he began teaching at St. Joseph’s. And he was back on the ice with the Yorkton
Terriers, a paying opportunity at the time. “That didn’t last very long. The team ran out of money,” he said. While at St. Joseph’s he continued his own teaching education, eventually heading back to the U of S to finish his degree. Of course there was more hockey as a U of S Husky too. “I played at the first ever Canadian Winter Games (with the Huskies),” said Sharpe. Through it all Sharpe was also on numerous baseball teams from Rosetown to Yorkton. Where ever he went sports was part of his life. After completing his degree he was offered a teaching job back in Yorkton. Looking back he said something always popped up when he needed it in terms of teaching. Continued on Page A12
Barry Sharpe, left, with the Olympic Torch when it visited Yorkton in 2010.
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