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Biography:
Don ‘Butch’ Turcotte was a hockey innovator who started coaching while in his teens in Kapuskasing. On coming to North Bay to teach at E.S.A. in the late 1960’s he began coaching the Barons hockey and football clubs. In 1975 he assumed coaching duties with the Tier Two North Bay Trappers in the POHA and led them to the championship in an emotional roller coaster eight-game final over North York in the 1975-76 championship. The next season they lost in the finals to those same Rangers and in 1978 Turcotte ended his junior coaching career and successfully lobbied for and helped establish the controversial “AAA” hockey program. He handled the “AAA” convenor post for a decade from 1980. In 1978, he started an experiment that resulted in this city’s first Canadian Hockey Championship. He took a group of boys - Pinehill Coffee Shop - and coached them through the various “AAA” age brackets. In 1982 the Pinehill crew reached the Provincial Bantam hockey finals and in the spring of 1984, the same group won the Canadian Midget hockey title, the Air Canada Cup, in North Bay. He continued to coach at the midget level for two more seasons then spent two at peewee and two more at bantam. The Hal’s Marine Bantams won two NOHA titles, became the first Canadian team in 25 years to win the Cumulus Tournament in Finland and took silver in an event in Sweden. As well as coaching for over 20 years, Turcotte ran the Northland Hockey School from 1974 and co-chaired, with Dick Prescott, the “AAA” Hockey Tournament for 20 years. He achieved Level 5 in the CAHA coaching program and umpired softball at various levels for almost two decades.
Inductee No.
120
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| Last Revised:
11/13/2011 |
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