For more than two decades, left-winger (in hockey anyway) Frank Mahovlich played professional hockey, picking up six Stanley Cup rings in the process with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montréal Canadiens.
For the past 14 years, the Big M’s arena has been Parliament Hill, where he sat as a Liberal senator, and for most of those years as a member of the Senate agriculture committee.
Next month, senator Big M skates out of the political arena for the last time when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75 Jan. 10.
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In early December, at his last committee meeting, his fellow senators gave him a send-off with hockey clichés galore.
“One of our team players, I say the best when he is on skates, will be departing,” said committee chair Percy Mockler, a Conservative from New Brunswick. “As we know, our friend is a friend to all Canadians.”
Although Mahovlich’s hockey glory years ended more than four decades ago (think the Canadiens’ unlikely cup victory in 1971 when he set a record for playoff points), Manitoba Conservative Don Plett joked that the Big M still stole the show.
“When I was appointed to the Senate, I felt somewhat that I had achieved something and that people would be happy to see us when we travelled,” he said.
“However, when we walked in ahead of senator Mahovlich on many of the trips we made, people were looking over our shoulders to see where the Big M was. Maybe after you are gone from this place, some of us will get some recognition on our trips, but I am not sure.”
Mahovlich, a Timmins, Ont., native who spent his adult hockey and political life in Toronto, Detroit, Montréal and Ottawa, seemed an unusual fit for the agriculture committee.
His questions and comments often were out of the usual agriculture debate mainstream.
At one point in the late 1990s, when the Senate committee was holding what turned out to be decisive hearings in attempts to dissuade Monsanto from introducing a dairy herd growth hormone, the then-rookie senator heard testimony that the product had been used in the United States for years.
Mahovlich said he used to play with a fellow in Detroit called Gordie Howe, who presumably was drinking milk from cows subjected to the hormone injection. It didn’t seem to affect him.
He also extolled the health virtues of his breakfast routine of eating blueberries.
His retirement, along with the January departure of longtime Alberta Liberal senator Joyce Fairbairn for health reasons, gives prime minister Stephen Harper an opportunity to strengthen the Conservative grip on the unelected Senate in the new year.
Six seats will be open for appointments in early 2013. Currently, the Conservatives hold 60 seats in the 105-seat chamber, followed by the Liberals with 38.
The retirement of Mahovlich also all but ends a strong National Hockey League presence in Parliament and its environs.
Until recently, the Big M could share hockey nostalgia with former teammate and Canadians’ great Ken Dryden (a Liberal MP defeated in 2011) and former NHL referee Bruce Hood, who served as Air Travel Complaints Commissioner and often appeared on Parliament Hill
The remaining link to the NHL now is Ontario Conservative Michael Chong, a former chief information officer for the NHL players’ association.
Ironically, Chong narrowly defeated then Liberal candidate Hood in 2004 in the Wellington-Halton Hills riding.
