Carl Hatt, front, and Bobby Hull, second from right, 1953-54

It was the late summer of 1953 and 14-year-old Bobby Hull had arrived in Preston to play Junior B hockey for the Hespeler Jr. B Black Hawks. His parents had driven the nearly 300 kilometres from Point Anne, Ontario, a trip that took roughly four hours in those days. 

He reported to his billets—the Sulphur Springs Hotel—on King Street in Preston, where he presumably met Larry Wiseman, owner of not only the hotel but the Jr. B hockey team, an affiliate of the Galt Jr. A Black Hawks, Chicago’s top junior club in Canada.

Staying at a hotel was unusual for young hockey players. Most were billeted with responsible and well-known local families. Hull was highly regarded, even as a 14-year-old, having been noticed by Chicago’s scout as a 12-year-old. The plan was to house him in Preston, where he would attend Preston High School, and practice and play at Hespeler Arena. There would be occasional practices at Galt Arena, and perhaps he would even suit up for a Jr. A game or two.

When school started that fall, Hull was eager to fit in. He went out for the football team, where he found his Hespeler Jr. B teammate Bill Bartels—a goalie—also on the squad. Hull would spend the year in Preston, which was plenty of time to get to know his teammates and classmates, and where he formed his first crushes on a few local girls.

He would often get Bartels to stay out on the ice after practice in Hespeler, so that Bartels could get extra practice stopping pucks and Hull could hone his snapshot.

“It quickly became apparent that Hull, even though he was only 14, was the fastest skater on the team, and we had some 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds.”

Wanting to work on his slapshot was unusual in those days, said Bartels, because most players used the wrist shot almost exclusively. “Boy could he shoot that thing.”

Not many years later another goaltender teammate of Hull’s, in Chicago, described Hull’s slapshot rather succinctly.

Glenn Hall, who wore facemask protection during team practices with Hull, was barefaced in league games. “The idea,” said Hall, “was not to stop that thing, but to avoid getting killed.”

Bartels survived the year, but on one occasion, the pair ran afoul of the law. 

“We were coming back from practice at Galt Arena one day,” said Bartels, “and Bobby was in the passenger seat.”

Bartels was 15 and had borrowed his mother’s new 1953 Dodge convertible. Everything seemed routine that day, except when they were close to Hull’s hotel. 

“We were coming across the bridge over the river and I thought the car in front of me was going too slow, so I passed him, on the bridge.”

It was an ill-advised move. Constable Len Sneath, one of Preston’s finest, otherwise known as “Sneaky Sneath,” was lying in wait. With lights on and siren going, he pulled over the young upstarts. 

To say that Bartels was nervous doesn’t begin to describe the terror he felt. 

Sneath approached the driver’s side and invited the young driver to accompany him back to the squad car. Bartels was literally shaking in his boots. 

“Hey,” said Sneath, “is your passenger that young Bobby Hull we’ve been hearing about?”

“Yes.”

“Oh boy,” said Sneath, “I want to meet him.”

There was no mention of any infraction. 

Years later, when Hull returned to Cambridge on his book signing tour, both Sneath and Bartels were there to greet him. Bartels had stayed in touch with his former teammate over the years, and indeed, Hull had called him up one day, long after his career was over, to accompany him to a cattle auction at the Gil Henderson farm just south of Galt. 

Bartels ran his own company but knew little to nothing about cattle. That didn’t stop Hull from encouraging his old friend to purchase a young calf as an investment. “He was so enthusiastic and convincing that I ended up buying the thing. Afterwards, I thought, what on earth have I done.”

He had no barn, no ranch or farm, but now he had a calf to contend with.

Hull spent a week at the John Hill farm across Glen Morris Road from where the auction was held.

At the Hill farmhouse, John and his wife Pamela had prepared the house for Hull. Indeed, even the master bedroom had been given over to Hull. But Hull would have none of it. 

“She was mad as hell,” said Hill with a smile, “because she wanted to tell everyone Bobby had slept in her bed. But Bob wouldn’t do that.”  

The best-laid plans…

Hull closed out the season with the Hespeler Black Hawks and returned to Galt after the summer to resume his fledgling hockey career. This time, he was assigned to the Jr. A Galt Black Hawks, based at Galt Arena. He was billeted on Haddington Street, one street east of Galt Collegiate, where he attended school and was part of the track and field team. On Haddington was Irish Mary Livingstone, who took in young hockey billets. Also there, just a few houses distant, were the Erisons, a large family, one of whom was a teammate of Hull’s the season before in Hespeler. 

Out back of the Erison house, and the Darcy house next door, was an outdoor rink on which the kids all skated, including Hull. Years later, when he ran into one of the Darcys at the airport in Chicago, he would remember those days on Haddington Street.

Hull sat in Denis Nathan’s class at Galt Collegiate, a classroom that had once seen Gordie Howe, briefly, and Terry Sawchuk. In ensuing years, after Hull had made a name for himself, he was added to the pantheon of illustrious hockey names that Nathan would parade at the start of each fall term, telling his students that “Howe sat over there in that desk, Sawchuk sat in this desk, and that’s where Bobby Hull sat.”

Few students, among the boys, ever forgot their illustrious predecessors in that old classroom.

One day, while Hull was walking to school at the collegiate, he tagged along with Elaine (Ramsay), who lived one street over on Hopeton.

“He told me the first dirty joke I ever heard,” she recalled. 

“Elaine,” said the bold Hull. “What is a four-letter word for intercourse that ends in K?”

She blushed.

Hull, in mock consternation, answered as if she should keep her mind out of the gutter: “T-A-L-K.”

Hull’s time at Galt Arena, and at the collegiate, was limited. Early that season Hull was competing in a track meet at the school when he pulled his hamstring. Like the season before, when he played football at Preston High, he neglected to tell his coaches. So he had to suck it up and practice and play with a pulled hamstring, which is not an easy thing to do.

His play on the ice suffered, of course, and because there was no evident reason, he was sent down to the Woodstock Jr. B team to finish out the season.

“We ended up winning the all-Ontario championship that season,” recalled Hull.

He would visit Galt, Preston and Hespeler in later years, as he would also visit Woodstock; he had friends living seemingly everywhere. He also had good memories of those early years. Of budding first romances, of honing his slapshot on those endless winter days after practice with Bill Bartels, of being pulled over by Sneaky Sneath, and of those days at Galt Arena and on Haddington Street.

The coming years, after he left town as a 15-year-old, would hold meteoric success for the young star, as well as a Stanley Cup and many NHL records, notably among which was his being the first player in history to score 50 goals.

He changed the game with his power, his shot, and his speed. He also helped usher in the days of huge contracts after signing with the WHA for a million dollars.

But there would be controversy and challenges as well, and one wonders what, if any impact, his stay at the old Preston hotel had on shaping the boy as he grew into a man.

Those controversies that followed his later life came after his boyhood days in Cambridge, a simpler time when his parents made that long trek by car to see their son play each weekend. They would go through three cars in those three years that saw Hull go from Hespeler to Galt, then to Woodstock and finally, St. Catharines. By then the boy had become a man and skipped playing in the minors, going directly from Junior hockey to the NHL.