I saw the last junior game Bobby Orr ever played. Given the greatness that was in the offing for him, it’s hard to imagine his teenage swan song was a loss. But it was, to the Edmonton Oil Kings in game six of the 1966 Memorial Cup final at Maple Leaf Gardens. Back in the ’60s, the Generals’ sweaters went through a few designs, but in ’66 they wore a brief but faithful reworking of their parent Boston Bruins: black and gold, with a “G” supplanting the “B.” In the years surrounding Orr’s Mem Cup loss, though, the Generals went with another crest and design, the classic red-and-blue scripted “Oshawa.” That motif endures today.
What was always best about the Oshawa sweater, besides the talent that nestled inside, was the name, a tribute to General Motors, the company that remains the lifeblood of a working-class town that has almost but not quite been swallowed up by Toronto’s sprawl. Quaint-seeming now, but an accepted fact of life then: teams had sponsors. Today, well-intentioned traditionalists don’t want to see our famous franchises follow the lead of European soccer teams and use their uniform as advertising space for cars, banks, soap or cheese. Their hearts are beating in the right places but they’re not seeing everything in the fullness of context. The Generals name was, in Oshawa, a nod to the people who lived and, yes, worked there. Oshawa wasn’t a company town per se: The auto manufacturer didn’t own it. Still, GM sustained it and so it did the team back at its founding in 1937.
Some sponsors’ names have been deposited in history’s trash can. The East York Lyndhursts, the first Canadian team to lose to the Soviets at the World Championship, are no more; the Red Ensign, worn by Senior B players who bore the name of used-car dealers. Honour was restored by the Whitby Dunlops and the Belleville McFarlands, with acknowledgements due to the tire manufacturers and construction company that underwrote them. For years, the Generals’ archrivals were the Peterborough TPT Petes, before the Petes decided the Toronto-Peterborough Transport Company’s acronym proved too unwieldy and was dropped.
The Generals have a new rink downtown and their red, black and white unis are resplendent, but the psychic weight rests in the name: The team has entertained generations of fans in Oshawa, and GM has employed a lot of them and touched the lives of all of them.
