Long considered a hockey hotspot, there’s just something about Canmore that gives you the itch to tape up a hockey stick, slap on a pair of skates and embrace Canadiana.
As such, many hockey tales and fables have been passed along over the decades including stories from the sets of Hollywood films, local celebrities and much more.
The old Canmore arena
Playing the good ol’ hockey game at Canmore's first arena usually meant you had to bring a couple of things: fists and fury because chances were your nose was going to get dirty by the end of it.
Built by coal miners in 1924, Canmore’s previous rec centre was a small building with a big reputation for being a gritty barn where many punches were thrown and feuds were settled. Getting the maple syrup beat out of you aside, it was also a house of fantastic plays, excitement and, most importantly, good hockey.
Some of the small mountain town’s best players skated in the arena such as the Jerwa brothers, the Michaluk brothers, and the Towers family, among others. Seabiscuit himself, the speedy Alex Kaleta, who played for the New York Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks (two words back then), was the most famous to dangle locals and visitors alike.
Linda Lamb, niece of Kaleta, recalls hearing rambunctious crowds cheering wildly inside the little wooden arena from across the Bow River.
“Back when I was a kid at my grandparents, we could hear the noise in the old Canmore arena from the house. There was always so much excitement and noise coming from there, it was serious hockey,” Lamb said.
An enclosed structure over a rink was originally built in 1911 at the location and replaced by the wooden arena in the 1920s, located on Rundle Drive on the west side of the bridge. The arena collapsed in 1928 due to heavy snow, but was rebuilt that same year. In 1983, the old structure was bulldozed and replaced by the Canmore Recreation Centre.
Alex Kaleta’s flying underwear story
By far the most famous of all Canmore-born hockey players, Alex Kaleta, wasn’t immune to a rookie’s welcome.
As a fresh-faced 21-year-old in 1941, Kaleta, who had a major part in the “hat trick” phrase becoming popular in North America, packed up and left the small mining town of Canmore by train to join the Black Hawks in the former gangster bootlegging city of Chicago.
As Kaleta’s niece, Linda Lamb, recalls, her charismatic uncle loved telling stories and the one about his introduction to the big league was often full of belly laughs by those hearing it.
“When he left for the NHL, he had a cardboard suitcase that my grandfather had given him because it was all he could afford was a little old cardboard suitcase,” said Lamb. “He travelled to Chicago with that suitcase and, I guess, when he got there, he was met by some of the teammates and they laughed at him and they laughed at the suitcase and he said they kicked the suitcase all the way down the train platform and his clothes went everyone down this platform and they, of course, laughed about that. That was his initiation into the big league.
“They presented him with a new leather suitcase that was more suited to the Black Hawk image, so that was a story he always told that his underwear went flying everywhere, but that’s how he left Canmore, was with this cardboard suitcase.”
Trading stories at the Rundle Mountain Trading Company
From famous NHL players to legendary broadcasters, Canmore keeps a quiet history of the days when a side-stop to the coal-mining town was a charmed haven for hockey's elite.
One well-known visitor was Howie Meeker, a four-time Stanley Cup champion, colour commentator, and hockey hall of famer.
The late beloved Hockey Night in Canada analyst is remembered locally for frequenting the “noted hockey town,” where he would head straight for the prominent Rundle Mountain Trading Company, a grocery and supply shop on Hospital Hill, which is now Three Sisters Drive.
A one-stop shop, the store was a go-to for coal miners, townspeople and travellers passing through the small mountain town.
Speaking with the Outlook in 2021, the late Bill Cherak, a local hockey player and former employee of the store, said part of its popularity was for its revered cheese that came in wooden barrels. However, the shop and its employees also attracted a different clientele and were infamously known for their closed-door hospitality.
“We had these big barrels of round block cheese from Ontario and we had a back room and some refreshments back there,” Cherak said. “A lot of famous people sat in that back room and had the cheese and a sip.”
Cherak was born in Canmore in 1929 and had lived in town since.
Twice in the late 1960s, Cherak had remembered Meeker stepping through the door, walking across the wooden floors and immediately talking hockey with the old mine store’s three employees. Once with a salesman on their way back to Calgary from Banff and the second time returning by himself.
The conversation around hockey would lucidly end up going into the back room where homemade beverages were made.
“[Meeker] was just a good old guy, that’s all. A lot of old NHL hockey players used to stop and say hello,” said Cherak. “It was short NHL seasons, but if anyone came west, they knew they had to [visit] the old mine store.”
Meeker was one of the first analysts to use a telestrator, a device that allows operators to draw over a moving or still video image. His catchphrase, “Stop it right here,” became a trademark.
Playing for the rival: Banff’s Eddie Hunter joins Canmore team
Once there was a fierce rivalry between hockey towns Canmore and Banff, recalled Eddie Hunter.
Separated by about 20 kilometres or so, the geographical rivalry was as real as it gets.
“People in Banff, when I was young, used to try to keep people in Canmore out of their mind,” said Hunter.
“At one point, you would never play for Canmore – but we did.”
A Banff icon and nearly 100 years old, most would probably know the legendary Hunter for what he’s done on the ski slopes rather than in the ice rink.
However, as a teen and young man, Hunter was one of Banff’s finest to handle a puck.
Born in 1926, his family moved to Banff from Edmonton in summer 1934, where he quickly realized that winter that hockey and skiing rivalled each other in popularity.
“Hockey was just as big [as skiing], but Banff didn’t have a good rink … We always played outdoors with snow or cold weather, it didn’t matter,” said Hunter.
“We would have a hockey game [on Vermilion Lakes] with one puck and 100 kids and somehow divide it into teams. Sometimes you never saw the puck on the day you went out there.”
Playing left wing, Hunter was smaller in frame but was a flash of speed on the ice. He had a nose for the net and could out-skate most players looking to throw some weight around.
With an obvious knack for the game, the Canmore Juniors came calling for him and fellow Banffite, Spud Whitehead. The strengthened Canmore squad by Banff players, and even worth a blurb in the local newspaper at the time.
“There were two of us in Banff that used to go to Canmore to hockey practice in an old car I had – a 1927 Chev’. A buddy and I eventually drove it to Los Angeles, that old car,” said Hunter.
“We never really had enemies in Canmore, they had bigger players than we did,” said Hunter. “We enjoyed playing with them. They seemed like the better hockey players, in a way, but that wasn’t proven really, no one really proved it. There were so many good players and skaters in Canmore and like I said, they were generally bigger. Everyone was bigger than me, but that didn’t matter.”
Although not with a Canmore jersey, Hunter’s biggest hockey accomplishment was with the Banff Mountaineers in 1947, which won the Intermediate B Provincial Championship trophy in Red Deer after defeating the farm boys of Lougheed, 5-1.
Canmore goes Hollywood
Mystery, Alaska
Lights! Canmore! Action!
Longtime locals have likely heard or experienced a story or two about Russell Crowe during his time filming the underdog hockey story Mystery, Alaska, in Canmore or had the thrill of seeing the actors at the grocery store or other local shops rocking custom Mystery, Alaska jackets.
However, what did the visiting celebrities think about the small mountain town?
Russell Crowe (John Biebe) and Mary McCormack (Donna Biebe) were interviewed in 1999 about their time in Canmore, with Crowe recalling a couple obstacles when filming began in the dead of winter in January 1998.
“It was 36 degrees below Celsius, I mean, ‘Exsqueeze me, why the hell would you live there’ was my first impression. Why bother?” he said with a laugh to the late Bobbie Wygant, who was a television news reporter and film critic.
Before accepting the role as the team captain for Mystery hockey team, Crowe was initially very blunt to director Jay Roach about not being able to skate, thinking Roach would move on to the next Hollywood hunk, but after a meeting together, Crowe was on his way to Canada. The Australian-raised actor saw it as a physical acting challenge, which he “berated himself” for “many times” when he finally laced up a pair of skates.
“I think I achieved the level of about your average seven-year-old Canadian kid and the rest is movie magic,” Crowe said about his skating. “Me and the ice got very intimate. Very, very intimate. There is no part of my body that hasn’t caressed the ice, many, many times.”
Toward the end of the shoot in April, the area was experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures, Crowe said.
“Actually, we were pretty lucky. We only just got finished on the outside pond and, like, little holes started to appear in it and we had trucks and cranes and 100s of people at a time on that pond and that could have been a very interesting situation if it had thawed a day or two earlier,” said Crowe.
McCormack gushed about Canmore in her interview, saying it was “very remote” but “gorgeous” and she praised the townsfolk.
“The town was so welcoming to us. I loved it there,” said McCormack. “The people would walk down the street and say hello to each other by their first name. I would go to get my skates sharpened at the hardware store and they knew me and they knew I was coming in that day and they knew it was time my blades would be dull, it was nice.
“Canmore acted like they were thrilled to have us and I think they meant it. Who knows. Canadians are so polite, you never really know what they feel.”
As part of the 2021 NHL Winter Classic, NBC Sports held a special reunion with some of the actors, director and a writer of Mystery, Alaska.
During the session, director Roach, recalled icy cold temperatures and seeing the makeshift townsite at Quarry Lake Park, which “became a pretty tight bonding experience” for cast and crew.
“That town was built in a meadow around a pond that we kept building the ice on and we were trapped in that town for some number of months, including that and Canmore, and it really did become a 30 below weather and crazy conditions and studio's breathing down our backs all the time,” he said.
Jason Gray-Stanford, who played Bobby Michan, said one of his fondest memories was going to Canmore for the first time.
“I left a place that was 70 degrees and I ended in a place that was -20 degrees in Canmore, Alberta. It was, and you would think the cold weather would take your breath away, but what took my breath away was looking at this town that had been built just for us, seeing it kind of amidst the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, the snow-capped mountains, it was stunning. It was spectacular. I get a little emotional even just thinking about it now. I’ll never forget that image.”
Michael Buie, who played Connor Banks, said he visited Canmore in the 2010s and was amazed by the changes at Quarry Lake.
“It’s a dog park. There’s the big pond still, but that’s it. You look around and go ‘where did the town go?’” said Buie.
However, for the Canadian actors on set, performing in a movie about hockey was a dream come true.
Jon Hamm visits Canmore Eagles
Top Gun: Maverick actor Jon Hamm was flying with the Canmore Eagles in October 2022 when the die-hard hockey fan surprised the Alberta Junior A Hockey League club following a big win.
It was a “crazy moment” when the movie star walked into the locker room and shook hands with the stunned team, snapped photos, and congratulated them on their victory that night against the Calgary Canucks.
“We had no idea he was in the building,” said then Eagles forward Kayden Smith. “Usually, we sing a little song after we win and our door was closed and he came in and we all just kind of got up and didn’t really know what to say.”
For scoring a hat trick, player of the game Smith would normally have been showered with hats being tossed on the ice inside the appropriately named Alex Kaleta Arena, but the sniper goal scorer had received a special, hand-delivered gift from the Hollywood lead.
“He gave me his hat and signed it for me and everything,” said Smith.
The American actor was in Alberta filming season five of Fargo, which takes place in the same universe as the 1996 crime/drama movie.
From St. Louis, Hamm donned a Blues’ scarf at the game and mostly went unnoticed in the crowd until making a grand appearance post-game.
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