Gary Mossman, Toronto

Fr. Bauer’s exile from hockey did not last long. The Bauer family and its long association with hockey in Waterloo, the embarrassing performance of the Canadian team at the 1962 World Hockey Championships in Colorado Springs, and the unwavering support of the Congregation of St. Basil, especially from Father Henry Carr – a seminal figure in the history of Basilians in Canada and a mentor to Bauer – brought Bauer back to hockey.

In a very short time, he became the face of amateur hockey in Canada, as well as the symbol of Canadian hockey in the rest of the world. As founder of the National Team Program, Bauer became a kind of patron saint for everyone who saw Canadian hockey as something more than a feeder system for the professional teams in the National Hockey League (NHL).

While he usually attempted to deflect attention from himself and preferred discussing the players and the program, Bauer did not shun the limelight. He was extremely confident in his role; there was always a steely look in his eye and a quickness in his step. The players appreciated that he was not just teaching them about hockey; he was presenting them with an opportunity to learn about life.

Eventually, time and the self-interest of so many people associated with the game caught up with Bauer and his enlightened view that hockey in this country could be returned to its roots as a quintessential expression of being Canadian. By the time Hockey Canada shut down his National Team Program in 1970, the backyard rink that had been the crucible for Bauer’s development was no longer the dominant image of Canadian hockey.

The emerging government sport bureaucracy created by Minister of Sport, John Munro, had become an unexpected ally to the NHL in their attempts to force Bauer into the background. Bauer was part of that bureaucracy, having accepted a position on the Hockey Canada Board of Directors in 1968. He maintained that position for the rest of his life, because he never stopped believing that hockey could be a powerful force for good in society.

Munro’s decision to cancel the National Team Program in 1970; however, caused Bauer to question whether the degree of success he had achieved, and could possibly achieve in the future, would ever justify the amount of pastoral effort he was devoting to it.

Dr. Hoven devotes most of his analysis of the 1970s to Bauer’s time helping coach and develop hockey in Japan. Indeed, this was an important chapter in his life, but not because of what he accomplished in Japan. It was the time he spent away from Canada and the freedom he experienced that inspired Bauer to expand his reading list beyond the luminaries of Catholic humanism: Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson and Teilhard de Chardin.

The writings of these Catholic philosophers would always be at the center of Bauer’s personal concept of Catholic humanism. However, in the 1970s, Bauer left his comfort zone and began reading philosophical writers, such as Christopher Dawson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Buber, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Barbara Ward, Paul Tillich, Viktor Frankl, E. F. Shumacker, J.K. Galbraith, T.S. Eliot, Konrad Edenaur, Thomas Merton, Soren Kierkegard, and Marshall McLuhan.

Bauer’s expanding vision of Catholic humanism compelled him to further examine and question, his contribution to the world in which he was living. Numerous letters, many of which were written while on an airplane, or at night when he was suffering from the shingles or insomnia which would plague him for years, were full of questions regarding the cauldron of international hockey and the political quagmire that still surrounded him as a director of Hockey Canada.

He was constantly asking whether it was an appropriate venue for him to be still applying so much of his energy, or if he should be doing more to further Catholic humanist education? Bauer wanted desperately to know if, when the time came, he would be able to answer to God for the talents he had been given. Very often, these letters were written to his nieces, especially Barbara to whom he looked for help in broadening his education. Many of the letters were never sent. They acted as a sounding board for his self-guided search and today can be understood more as journal entries than as letters.

Bauer travelled extensively during the 1970s: as a representative of Hockey Canada; on Bauer family business; and on his twice yearly, six-week sojourns in Japan. It had been almost a decade since he had been transferred to St. Mark’s, but Bauer had spent very little time there. Testimony from colleagues establishes that he was highly respected and well-liked, and that the other Basilians looked forward to Bauer’s presence at St. Mark’s. Unfortunately, his role as occasional chaplain was so loosely defined, and his insecurities were becoming so ingrained, that Bauer usually snuck into his residence at St. Mark’s when returning from a trip. Bauer also took regular trips to Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. Although his official residence would remain at St. Mark’s College until his dying days, in the 1970s, Bauer’s soul was being drawn to Notre Dame and its potential as a home for an educational program based on Catholic humanism.

Notre Dame College (renamed Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in 1981) was established as a convent and co-educational school in the 1920s by the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis. After Pere Athol Murray (1892-1975) arrived at the school in 1927, a Greek model of education based on mind, body and spirit took hold. By the end of the 1970s, Notre Dame was one of Canada’s finest sports schools and was on its way to becoming the largest, private, independent, co-educational boarding high school in Canada.

However, at the beginning of the decade, Bauer envisaged a special place for education at Notre Dame. In describing education under Pere Murray, one writer borrowed an analogy from the life of James A. Garfield (1831-1881), the 20th President of the United States: “The ideal college is Athol Murray at one end of the log and the student at the other.” This was the kind of education Bauer had begun dreaming, from the time of his first meeting with Pere Murray in 1963. Regular trips to Wilcox during the 1960s reinforced his vision.

With the cancellation of Bauer’s National Team Program at the end of the decade, and Pere Murray approaching his 80th birthday, the idea that Bauer would succeed Pere Murray at Notre Dame became a much-discussed possibility. Although Bauer was definitely drawn to Notre Dame and the prospect of building an educational program inspired by Jacques Maritain, and informed by the kind of humanistic philosophers he was reading, Bauer began erecting roadblocks to direct, personal involvement. After Pere Murray died in 1975, the roadblocks became more imposing. Bauer seemed content with installing two of his prize-pupils at Notre Dame: Barry MacKenzie and Terry O’Malley. Both MacKenzie and O’Malley played on the 1960-61 St. Michael’s Majors team, as well as on the National Team, and both coached with Bauer in Japan. In a surprising twist, it was the Canadian hockey establishment that rescued Bauer from a morass of indecision.

Dr. Hoven’s book does an excellent job in helping us understand how Canada came to enter a team of amateur hockey players in the 1980 Olympics and how Bauer had reluctantly accepted the task of assembling that team in 1978. Details of his interactions with the players reveal how profoundly he was able to impact so many individuals, and how these interactions inspired Bauer to envisage the 1980 Olympic Program as a way of resurrecting his lofty ambitions of the 1960s. It is important to add, however, that, just as he had done with the students at St. Michael’s and the players in the original National Team Program, Bauer inspired and challenged the young men – Catholic and Protestant alike – to look at the world in a new way.

When Canada finished sixth and the United States team of the “Miracle on Ice” fame accomplished what Canada had never done under Bauer’s leadership – win a gold medal and finish ahead of the Russians, everyone, including Bauer was deeply disappointed. Bauer found a ‘silver lining’ in Hockey Canada’s assurances that his second “National Team Program,” would carry on after the Olympics. Dr. Hoven provides new research in explaining the surprise cancellation of the program in 1981 and the role played by the Chairman of the Hockey Canada Board of Directors, Judge Willard Estay. While Bauer’s reaction to Judge Estay reneging on his promise is presented, the depth of Bauer’s disappointment and how it impacted his remaining years requires further elucidation.

Bauer’s role as a director of Hockey Canada had always been problematic – both for him and for Alan Eagleson (Director of the NHL Players Association) and the directors representing the NHL. As Chairman of the Hockey Canada Board in the 1970s, Douglas Fisher used Bauer’s moral superiority as a way of controlling the all-powerful and morally-challenged Eagleson. After Judge Estay replaced Fisher and betrayed Bauer with his decision in 1981, Bauer became more uncertain and less assertive. Allies on the Hockey Canada Board of Directors have characterized Bauer as excessively “meek” at a time when they needed him to stand up to Eagleson and the rest of the pro-NHL faction. One director recalls that “there were many people in his camp, but Bauer refused to lead them.” This was both the result and the cause of Bauer’s growing discomfort with his role in Canadian hockey. It was not apparent to most, but the despondency that had begun to set in when John Munro failed his expectations in 1970 by cancelling the National Team Program, was rendered almost clinical by the outright betrayal of Judge Estay in 1981.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Bauer had been sure of what he was doing. His mission was straightforward, his motives were clear, and the relationship between his religious calling and his vocation as a coach and general manager of a hockey team was relatively uncomplicated. Even though he was already questioning whether he would be able to “answer to God” for his choices; the answers he was receiving did not trouble him.

Hockey Priest, Father David Bauer and the Spirit of The Canadian Game by Matt Hoven. Available on Amazon.