You don’t have to be lucky to be good, but there’s no arguing that when it came to swinging a golf club Pete Sherba was extremely fortuitous.
How else do you explain how a guy can sink 18 of his tee shots over the course of a lifetime into the hole with one swing?
It took 50-plus years of chipping away at his favourite pastime to get that many holes-in-one from the time he first started golfing at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club. He got his first in 1968 and well into his 80s Sherba was still racking up aces.
"I don't play for a hole-in-one, I'm just lucky - a lot of pros don't get a lot of holes-in-one,” Sherba told Citizen reporter Andrea Johnson in September 2015 after he plunked his ball in the hole for his 17th career ace on the fifth hole at PGGCC during the Farr-WIC tournament.
That 17th hole shot came with a $10,000 payoff. He donated $4,000 of it to the PG Community Foundation and he also bought a round for everyone in the clubhouse.
He’s still the only golfer to ace all five of the Par 3 holes at the PG course.
The last one for Sherba came on Feb. 18, 2018 when he was 84, at his winter home in Mesa, Ariz., and that comes with a funny story.
Sherba’s eyesight faded considerably over the last 10 years of his life and he was taking aim at the pin of an adjacent hole when his playing partners noticed it and corrected him just before he let go with his club.
“He was teeing off and it was 174 yards to the hole and he was at a 45 degree angle away at a total different green and buddies are going, ‘What are you doing?’” said Sherba’s son Scott.
“So he said, ‘Line me up.’ So they told him, ‘Shuffle more to the right, a little more to the right, there you go,’ and he hits it and that was his 18th hole-in-one and he never got to see it. It was all his friends that saw it and they were cheering him on.”
Sherba died Oct. 7, just 11 days shy of his 90th birthday, a few years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Before he got into golf, curling was Sherba’s game and he took it right to the top. Playing third for Kevin Smale, with Bob McDonald at second and Pat Carr sweeping lead broom, he helped put Prince George on the map at the 1969 Macdonald Brier in Oshawa, Ont.
Back then there were no playoffs unless there was a tie for top spot. Smale and his crew were undefeated when they came up against the Alberta rink skipped by Ron Northcott of Calgary in the ninth draw and BC lost 9-8, their only loss of the round-robin tournament. Northcott finished 10-0 to defend his title. BC went 9-1. Only one other team had lost just one game and failed to win the Canadian men’s championship.
Following is the video highlights of the 1969 Brier. Sherba and his team are featured 16 minutes into the video.
Sherba, 34 at the time, was selected as the all-star third of the Brier and the Prince George team came home to a heroes’ reception. A crowd of about 1,000 met their plane on the airport tarmac and greeted them with a bagpipers welcome.
Back then curling was a bigger deal and they were instant celebrities. They rode to city hall with their wives in four open convertibles for a mayor’s reception and for the next two weeks their calendars were full with public appearances and luncheons in their hounour.
Dozens of competitive men’s teams battled annually for the provincial title and it became harder for Sherba to stay on top. His team won the BC crown again in 1971 and finished fifth at the Brier that year, but with his curling skills on a downward slide, Sherba shifted his focus more to family life and running his electrical business. He still curled occasionally with his son Scott and Doug Engstrom Sr. and they entered a few Kelly Cups together in the late ‘80s and once got to the Interior finals, but eventually Sherba’s corn broom found a permanent place in the closet.
So what was it that made him such a good curler?
“He actually had the ability to focus and he could shut everything else in the world off,” said Scott Sherba. “I had lots of guys tell me that when he was there, he was there to play. He had the mind for sports and business, and that does translate. You’ve got to be focused.
“He really enjoyed the game and my dad always had a competitive streak in him. He was always fun to play with, it was always good camaraderie on and off the ice. He liked to have a lot of fun. He was a pretty happy fellow and he liked to socialize and enjoy people’s company.”
Sherba was born and raised in Vernon, where his family had an orchard. Once he was done grade school in the late ‘50s he left for north central BC and a job with BC Hydro. He and his brother-in-law Vic Litnosky were working as electrical contractors when they formed Northway Industrial Electric, based in Burns Lake, Fort Nelson and Prince George.
The city was in the midst of the pulp mill boom in the mid ‘60s and Sherba’s saw an opportunity to join forces with his brother Bill and they started Shoppers Wholesale Foods to supply local restaurants, and their Shoppers Food Mart grocery chain expanded with stores in Prince George, Vanderhoof, Fort St. John and Fraser Lake. They also cornered the market on convenience stores, buying up some of the high-traffic locations to try to keep 7-Eleven and Mac’s from moving into the city. They called their corner stores AM-PM and eventually the American chain that had already trademarked the name sent them a letter, which prompted a name change to Mr. G’s. At one time they operated 12 Mr. G’s.
Sherba moved on to Lakewood Electric around the time it became a union shop in the ‘70s and in 1991 he started Westcana Electric with his oldest son, Pete Jr. Before long it was a family business with Sherba’s nephew Mike Gair working in the shop, Pete’s sister, BJ Gair managing the office and his youngest son Scott, who joined up as a contractor.
They built one of the largest electrical contracting companies in the province. Now with close to 300 employees, Westcana has offices in Prince George, Terrace, Fort St. John, Kamloops and Kelowna.
Sherba was active in the Rotary Club, raising money for community projects and in the mid-70s he served as president and was a board member of the Prince George Construction Association.
He loved the outdoors and was big on fishing, hunting and snowmobiling and used the cabin he built on Cluculz Lake as his base. He once raced his sled 300 miles in the Smithers-to-Prince George race in 1973 and finished ninth out of 91 entrants.
He and his wife of 63 years, Sylvia, spent a good chunk of their winters at their place in Mesa and that was a popular retreat for their three kids – Terri, Pete Jr. and Scott, and their families.
“I was fortunate to have him in my life,” said Scott. “Sadly enough, I didn’t just lose a father, I lost a best friend.
“Up until COVID, Dad still came to work every day. In his mid-80 he was coming in every day, and that abruptly stopped when we were worried about his health and I think that was very sad for him. He enjoyed coming to work and having a coffee and chatting with the employees.”
Sherba was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in private family service on Oct. 18 and that was followed two days later by celebration of life that packed the PGGCC.
