Ward Cornell
Registered User
- Dec 22, 2007
- 6,398
- 2,624
From todays Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...star-manny-mcintyre-was-one-of-the-black-aces
Obituary: Hockey and baseball star Manny McIntyre was one of ‘the Black Aces’
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...star-manny-mcintyre-was-one-of-the-black-aces
Obituary: Hockey and baseball star Manny McIntyre was one of ‘the Black Aces’
When hockey games started getting chippy, centre Herb Carnegie knew by the tone of his left winger’s voice that he was about to get a little more room on the ice.
“Leave him alone,” boomed Manny McIntyre, a tough, skilled forward with the Sherbrooke Saints — and one-third of “Les Noirs” or as the English preferred, “The Coloured Line” or “Black Aces.” It was Canada’s first all-black trio of professional hockey linemates.
“I think Manny did his very, very best to protect me because I was the smallest on our line,” Carnegie, 91, recalled from his retirement home in Toronto. On Carnegie’s other flank during their senior men’s hockey days in the late 1940s was brother Ossie Carnegie.
“I always admired Manny because his presence on the team was one of great joy for all the players. If something was to go in a certain positive direction, it might have been Manny who caused it.”
Vincent Churchill (Manny) McIntyre died June 13 in Candiac, Que. He was 92.
The sports-loving McIntyre was born near Fredericton, N.B., where, as a child, he began honing his two great athletic loves, hockey and baseball. As superb a hockey player as he was — he used to play shinny on frozen ponds with wooden pucks — McIntyre might have been better on the diamond.
He played baseball with the Halifax Shipyards in 1944, helping the team to a Halifax Defense Baseball League title. He also competed for Trois-Rivières of the Quebec Provincial League in 1945 then became one of the first black Canadians to sign a professional baseball contract: in 1946, he inked a deal with the Sherbrooke Canadians, a farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals.
McIntyre played high-calibre hockey in the Northern Ontario League while also working in the mines. The Carnegies and McIntyre were teammates up north and in the Quebec Senior Hockey League, when they suited up for the Saints over the 1948-49 season.
Myer Gordon, 90, was a photographer who travelled with the Saints, shooting action for the Sherbrooke Record. Gordon, now living in Toronto, said McIntyre was a gentleman, friendly and a fan favourite across Quebec’s Eastern Townships.
McIntyre was inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1997.
