THE OLDE TOWNE BEVERLY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Hockey In Beverly Sports Champions Tom And Millie Cross

It's not there anymore, but for a group of young men in 1934, the Beverly skating rink at the northwest corner of 118th Avenue and 40th Street was truly a rink of dreams. Built by several men including Glenn Wilson, the rink utilize the runoff from The Beverly mine, pumped by a donkey engine to flood the ice. The ice was the primary playing surface for the Bush Mine Tigers, the team that won the Coughlin Cup (the Commercial League Championship) on March 15, 1934, beating Hillas Electric Black Hawks 2-1 in the third and deciding game.

One of the last surviving members of that winning team, Harold Jinks (1913-2016), who scored the winning goal with just 8 seconds to play. Jinx was born in 1913 and moved to Beverly in 1915. He recalls the Beverly rink was made out of a slough. "We used to pump water out of the Beverly mine ditch which ran right along 40th and flood it. Then we'd put our boards up and play some hockey we were just a bunch of hillbillies having fun," he laughs.

The Beverly Athletic Club team began play in the regional commercial league in 1931/32 and, in 1934, the team was sponsored by the Bush mine and became the Bush Mine Tigers. Tigers played until the 1937/38 season.

For a small community, Beverly generated more than its share of championship teams. Building on the achievement of the Bush Mine Tigers, several other sports teams won big, including the Beverly Athletics and then the Beverly Drakes (sponsored by the Drake Hotel), a men's intermediate team that captured the Alberta baseball championships three consecutive times in the early 1950s. Another Beverly team called the Edmonton Rotary Midgets won the Northern Alberta Midget Baseball Championship in 1959 and a year later a team sponsored by the Beverly Welding won the Edmonton Men's Fastball Championship.

As hundreds of families poured into the district in the 1950s, the minor hockey program expanded dramatically many boys and girls participated in the sports programming that became one of the most utilized in the entire Edmonton area. Among the many successful teams over the years was the Beverly Heights Pee Wee hockey team, which won the 1977 Taber Invitational Pee Wee Hockey Tournament. That year, the team also travelled to California to compete in the West Covina International Christmas Peewee Hockey Tournament and then repeated as champions at Taber in 1978. Several Beverly players made it to the National Hockey League including Harold Schnepts and brothers Gary and Kenny Yaremchuk.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Tom and Millie Cross were known as “the couple that owns the rink.” Ice makers, caretakers, sports organizers, concessionaires and Jacks-of-all-trades, the couple exemplified the spirit of giving that built the Beverly Heights Community League from just a few memberships to the largest in Edmonton and grew the minor sports program from a handful of teams to more than 20 between 1960 and 1980. The rink shack they used became known as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

With his excavation business operational only in the warmer months, Cross was able to devote thousands of hours every year to the community. In a 1978 Edmonton Journal article, he explained that his own experience as a boy taught him the value of participation. “I didn’t have the advantage of organized hockey as a boy, and I would argue you can’t overorganize at the minor levels to develop talent.”

Tom explained that the couple’s children Jim, John and Sharon had also benefited enormously from participation in community league activities. A tournament that Tom started for Mite hockey in the 1970s was later named the Tom Cross Tournament. Tragically, Tom died in a car crash in 1997 while returning from the American sun belt.

BUILT ON COAL, A HISTORY OF BEVERLY, EDMONTON'S WORKING CLASS TOWN - LAWRENCE HERZOG