Not long after he became the Prince George Spruce Kings trainer, Stu Berry had a hand in saving the hands of hockey tough guy Tony Twist.
Twist, who went on to an NHL career with the St. Louis Blues, was known as a fighter, and he knew when he lined up at left wing he was seconds away from engaging in a premeditated scrap with the heavyweight champ of the Williams Lake Mustangs. Before the game, likely inspired by the movie Slap Shot, Berry wrapped Twist’s knuckles in tin foil and hid his handiwork under wraps of hockey tape and a pair of thin gloves with the fingers cut short Twist wore under his hockey gloves.
Sure enough, right after the opening puck drop, the two combatants dropped their gloves, had their fight and were sent off the ice. Berry, as was the custom, followed Twist into the dressing room and made sure the evidence was disposed of before he went back to his game duties behind the bench.
Berry, who died of cancer at age 80 Wednesday in Victoria, was the Kings trainer for 25 seasons from 1983-2008, a volunteer gig he first took on when his first-aid skills were put into practice to help an injured player at a game at the Prince George Coliseum. To the hundreds of junior-aged players he got to know in that quarter century he was much more than the guy who taped their ankles, stitched their faces and nursed them back from injuries. He was their father figure and trusted confidant, a friend full of positive energy they could always count on to help them cope with the pressures of hockey and life away from their homes.
Raised in a no-nonsense navy family that crossed the country from New Brunswick to Victoria, Berry himself grew to become a naval officer and with his burly build he was the kind of guy you didn’t cross, not if you knew what was best for you. Blessed with a heart of gold, he was always quick to raise his hand as a willing helper and would go through walls to protect his players, even if it meant locking them up against their will.
Not long after the Spruce Kings joined the Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League in 1993, the team traveled north to renew their rivalry with the Fort St. John Huskies. Tom Bohmer has just been traded to the Spruce Kings and had been with the team for less than a month and was playing on a line with Chris Hawes. They both got thrown out of the game for fighting while the bad blood between the teams continued to build.
“We were sitting in the dressing room,” said Bohmer, “and Chris looks at me and says, ‘Hey Tom, don’t take off your gear, there’s going to be a brawl.’ No sooner did he finish saying that but the door closes from the outside because Stu locked us in the dressing room.
“So the bench-clearing brawl ensues and Stu gets back out and gets sucker-punched by a fan. Chris and I would always tell him whenever we saw him, ‘Stu, if you hadn’t have locked us in the dressing room you never would have got sucker-punched.‘
Bohmer arrived in Prince George as a young winger from small-town Alberta traded and Berry and his wife Diana invited him into their home as his temporary billets, something they rarely did for any other player.
”I always bragged about being one of the only Spruce Kings to live in their house,” said Bohmer. “I came to Prince George an 18-year-old kid who just lost his dad, trying to find my way in the world, and Stu was a big part of my life.
“The beauty about Stu is he always made you feel so comfortable. He always was there to help you in any way. He’d drive his own vehicle on the road to get there early and he’d have the jerseys all laid out in the dressing room nice and neat. The behind-the-scenes things he did just made you feel so much part of a first-class organization. It was pretty inspiring.”
To Stu and Diana, road trips were an essential part of their lives. Married for 57 years, they did everything as a couple, so why not be there together to greet the boys when they stepped off the bus and watch them play. Even after they moved to Victoria, when the Spruce Kings made their annual Island Division trek, if they didn’t have a trainer, Stu was there for them, just as he was for the Quesnel Millionaires in the years Bohmer was coaching them.
“In the four years I played there, there was not one game I can remember that he and Diana missed, and that’s a lot of games,” said former Kings captain Rick Kooses. “The amount of miles he put on the road trip with that little Datsun was astronomical.
“With such a big tough exterior, he had such a soft teddy-bear heart. He just made everybody a better person around him. If you were up or down or you had a problem he would be the guy to talk to because he’d solve it. He always made people feel wanted when you were around him.”
Stu and Diana first met as kids in Victoria and found each other again as adults and together they had two sons, Shawn and Brad, and a daughter, Denise, who died of cancer in 2010.
Stu took a job at the College of New Caledonia as audio-visual services manager and a month after checking out the city on a ride north on his Suzuki 250 cc motorcycle he moved the family from Mission to Prince George in 1975. Diana worked as a CNC receptionist and for years hers was the voice at the other end of the phone fielding calls to the college switchboard.
Stu was famous for his huge scrapbook of newspaper clippings of Spruce Kings game stories and features that he always brought to the team’s awards banquet, a piece of history he passed on to The Exploration Place museum.
“He sacrificed a lot of his life for the team,” said Shawn Berry. “He was a big volunteer and what my parents did for the Spruce Kings, they travelled lots, and that was out of their pocket. I remember him getting up and he was there at the morning practice and then he went to work. They loved it. Sometimes we wondered if they loved the hockey players more than us.
“The volunteering didn’t stop when he left Prince George. He volunteered with the BC Museum as Father Christmas and he put in a lot of time for the stuff that he enjoyed. They went to Victoria HarbourCats baseball games and they’re very well-known there and all the messages (since his death) for my mom and aunties to see that, I’m just so happy. My dad was an important man and he was loved by many.”
A celebration of his Stu’s life is being planned for the next spring of summer in Prince George.
Team planning tribute to Berry tonight
A group of former Spruce Kings players will gather tonight in the meeting room at Kopar Memorial Arena during the Kings-Salmon Arm Silverbacks game. Here’s a selection of tributes to Berry they posted on the Spruce Kings Alumni Association Facebook site:
Davey Jones - “With the heaviest of hearts the world has lost on of the nicest people its ever had. Stu, everyone who had the pleasure of knowing you is missing you already. You were there for all of us every day no questions asked. I hope your riding your Harley into the sunset once again.”
Derek Wood – “The world has lost a great human. Stu was so much more than a trainer for the Spruce Kings. He was a mentor to so many young men and we are all better people because of him.”
Mike Lalonde - What a great man who did nothing but help everyone around him! He embodied what a Spruce King should be.”
Parish Child – “Stu gave me the best advice as a young 20 year old, ‘Don't let hockey use you. Use Hockey to make something of yourself’. Thank you Stu.”
