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It's our sad duty to report that SIHR's founding president, John Walter (Bill) Fitsell, has died at the age of 97. He worked to build a network, a community of friends, joined by a common purpose. We're saddened by the news of his passing and extend our condolences to his family.
Bill was born in Barrie, Ontario, in 1923. In 1927 his family moved to Lindsay. Between 1942 and '46, he served in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. In 1945 he married Barbara Robson, and they marked their 75th anniversary this past October.
After leaving the service, Bill joined the staff of the Lindsay Post. He wrote for papers in Tillsonburg, Port Perry and Gananoque before joining the Kingston Whig-Standard in 1962.
He received the Ontario Minor Hockey Association's Honour Award in 1967, and was inducted into the Lindsay & District Sports Hall of Fame (1995) and the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame (2009).
In 1991, he was one of the 17 charter members of SIHR, serving as our first president from 1991-96. He edited our newsletter from 1991-99, and was on the editorial committee of our Hockey Research Journal from 1993-2008.
He was the author of "Captain Sutherland and His Dream" (1982), "Hockey’s Captains, Colonels & Kings" (1987), "Hockey’s Hub: Three Centuries of Hockey in Kingston" (2003) and "How Hockey Happened: A Pictorial History of the Origins of Canada’s National Game" (2006).
In recent years, he was working on a book about hockey poetry called "Hockey's Lines: Victory in Verse."
He was a keen observer and documenter. If you watched him closely, you might see him reach into his jacket pocket, pull out a 3-by-5 index card, and jot down a note or two. An observation about the weather, maybe, or an idea for a future research project.
If you were visiting Kingston, he'd insist on meeting you in the hotel coffee shop for breakfast, then taking you on a tour of the city and driving you to the train station for your trip home.
Finally, if you'd just visited the Baseball Hall of Fame together, he'd say something like "What's baseball without a hot dog?" And as if he'd conjured it up out of thin air, you'd find yourself in front of a hot dog cart, ordering a lunch you'd never forget.
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