Willie gave up the NHL for the farm

DALKEITH — Willie Terry has chosen his combine and cows over the National Hockey League once again. The 61-year-old dairy farmer and former scout for the St. Louis Blues got the last call three months ago.

This time it was the New York Rangers on the phone hoping to persuade Terry back into hockey arenas in search of young talent. The puzzled Rangers’ scout asked why a man would turn down the NHL for a farm. Nothing beats "the peace and tranquility of the whole thing," Terry said.

When Farmers Forum dropped in on Terry last month, we found him in his combine harvesting a field of soybeans. He didn’t know we were coming. He jumped off his green machine and was quick to offer a stranger a broad smile and a handshake. As disarming as a priest, he talked like a friend over a beer in the half-cut field. A warm sun and an Indian summer breeze kept us company.

He wasn’t dressed in suit and tie. There was no briefcase or laptop computer to record game reports, no St. Louis Blues I.D. card or plane ticket to Moscow. Sporting a baseball cap, he looked like the hired hand after a day of shovelling. He slapped his stained blue-stripped white shirt and laughed: "Shitty, dirty, greasy, grimy. This is me."

He remembers one night lying awake in a city hotel room after a junior game and hearing the police sirens in the street. It’s nothing like the sound of a cow bawling, he thought and wondered what he was doing. "Life is passing me by. I’m not doing what I really want to do."

Back on the dairy farm, heaven is the peace in the cab of his combine. He loves to sit on the fence and eat his lunch, as he watches the wind wave the barley. He’s up each morning, seven days a week, shortly after 3 a.m. "You walk into the barn and the cows are lying down," he said. "That’s a scene that’s pretty hard to beat."

He still has the last scouting contract from the St. Louis Blues at the house. He didn’t sign it. That was three years ago. In the upper echelon of sports there are a lot of liars, backstabbers and politics, he said. "I never had a cow try to cut my throat."

Terry loves his farm so much, not even money will drive him from it. An Austrian couple wanted his farm, cows and quota so badly, they sent in a real estate agent to offer him $3.5 million. The agent couldn’t understand how farming could run so deeply in a man’s blood. What Terry seemed to be saying was that money, once there’s enough to live in modest comfort, is not that important.

"I’ll make you a deal," Terry offered. "You bring back my son and I’ll give you the farm for free."

Nine years ago, his 22-year-old son, Tom, died of a brain aneurism while driving his car. Terry’s daughter is a teacher.

It was Good Friday and Terry had been to Mass at the Catholic Church. He was at the hospital visiting his father when an ambulance arrived. He watched, thinking how bad the accident must have been, not knowing the paramedics were attending to his son and he was already dead. His father had only a few days left so Terry didn’t tell him the news. Terry’s father must have been thinking about the next planned scouting trip when Terry told told his father: "Say hi to Tom."

It’s hard to imagine the pain but he never got bitter. "I genuinely believe we’ll meet again. If someone doesn’t believe this, I don’t know how they can cope," he said, adding he thinks of his son every day.

He also noted: "We don’t know what’s in store for us and I accept that."

He hasn’t seen four hockey games since he quit scouting three years ago. He used to watch 250 games a year. He last played professional hockey in Phoenix in 1971, earning $13,000 a season. He was a scout for 13 years. He got into it after one of his former teammates, Pat Quinn, got him a job with the Detroit Junior Red Wings. The first year he earned $300. He’d watch games all over Quebec and Ontario and drove home in time to milk the cows. He often slept in the car. "My favourite spot was the Pointe-Claire Shopping Centre. But they’d give me shit. ‘Bill, don’t sleep at the side of the road.’ But I wouldn’t spend money for a hotel for three hours. It didn’t matter that they were paying for it. I wouldn’t pay for it for myself."

As time passed, the money got better but the scheduling was a bitch. He flew seven times a year to Europe. He thought he’d seen it all in Russia. Sometimes when coaches learned he was in the stands, they wouldn’t dress their best players. He remembers slipping a US $20 in between his Russian VISA and NHL identification card to get through checkpoints quickly. At one Russian tournament, he had the same faithful cab driver and communicated using signs with hockey arena names written on them in Russian. He later tipped the driver $100. "I thought he was going to cry," Terry recalled, noting the anomaly of a supposed superpower; ubiquitous poverty.

On a trip back from Moscow, via Amsterdam, he was immediately sent to Boston to watch a few college games. After getting home from the Montreal airport he took his wife to dinner then drove to Boston in his truck. "I didn’t sleep for two days. When I got home, I changed clothes and went to the barn."

Terry and his wife, Gail, own 305 acres, rent about 700 acres and milk 85 to 90 cows. He bought the farm he grew up on, north of Alexandria in Glengarry County, from his father. It didn’t have indoor plumbing and his father milked seven cows. "I worked like a bastard all my life," he said. "I never got an education."

He grew up with horses pulling plows and bought his first tractor, a British 414, at age 14. He regretted not saving up the extra $120 for power steering.

Hard driving but not hard drinking — he hasn’t had a drink of alcohol in his life. His first job was in the bush. "When you work for three dollars a day, you don’t spend it on booze," he said. Everything he earned went back into the farm. His wife put up with his long hours in the barn and later on the road. "I always teased her, good naturedly, that she was my best cow," he chuckled.

His capacity to work for hours on little sleep is stunning. "Tired is here," he said, pointing to his temple.

You’d think Terry was building an empire when you look at his new dairy barn and silo towers. But that’s not really what makes the man tick. He enjoys simple pleasures, simple things, simple life.

The best compliment in his hockey years came from an old bag lady in Kelowna, British Columbia, who told him she ate at the local soup kitchen. Terry passed her on the way to a restaurant, asked her how she was doing and handed her $20 for a meal. Several months later, he was back in the same city and saw the same old lady pushing a cart. He asked her again how she was doing and gave her $10.

She didn’t recognize him and said: "A man before gave me $20 and I bought myself Christmas dinner. I don’t know his name but God does."