Through the decades Kingston has produced many high-level hockey officials, but no one is more highly regarded and respected than Pat Hegarty. A credit to the game, Pat stands out for his on-ice work, his honesty, integrity, and dedication to helping other young officials.

I recently spent an enjoyable evening with Pat Hegarty, his wife Ann, and family. It’s very evident the Hegarty’s are a close-knit family, strongly connected through a mutual love of sports.

Four generations of the Hegarty’s involved in dirt racing. Three generations of hockey officials. And, three generations that have made teaching a career. Along with their five kids, the Hegarty’s have eight grandchildren and nine great grandkids.

At age 93, Pat Hegarty is the oldest living member of the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame. Pat and Ann will celebrate a remarkable 72 years of marriage this fall.

Born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1932 at Hotel Dieu Hospital, Pat was the only baby boy born that day in Kingston. The Sisters insisted he be named Patrick.

His father’s name was Nicholas, but his friends and family called him ‘Pat’. He immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1929 and was a longtime phys-ed instructor at Royal Military College. Hegarty’s mother, Winnie, was quite an athlete, she played first base on Kingston ladies championship baseball teams.

They had four boys, Pat, Ned, Phil & Paul, and lived at 155 Division Street, near Princess. The boys all enjoyed sports and during the Great Depression in the 1930’s you had to make your own fun. With neighbourhood kids they played pickup baseball games at Victoria Park. And they organized their own games of street hockey and football in the parking lot and on the lawn of the Bell Telephone building that backed onto Garrett Street.

As a kid Pat went to St. Mary’s Catholic school and played on the school hockey team. He attended high school at Kingston Collegiate and also played hockey there.

In 1951, K.C.I. won the Eastern Ontario title and went to the all-Ontario High School Hockey finals. The tournament was played in Copper Cliff, Ontario, outside of Sudbury, quite an experience for the K.C.I. team although a school from Windsor won the title.

Don Cherry was a teammate of Hegarty’s at Kingston Collegiate and they also played together on Max Jackson’s Kingston Junior ‘B’ Victoria’s team at the old Jock Harty Arena on Arch Street. Cherry signed with the Barrie Flyers, won a Memorial Cup and had a lengthy minor pro career.

After high school, Hegarty became a tool & dye apprentice at Alcan and played intermediate hockey. Alcan had a strong and well-organized sports program for their employees, many top local athletes worked there.

In 1955, Hegarty was the leading scorer in the plant hockey league, played on the Alcan softball team that went undefeated and won the Kingston City Mercantile League championship. Pat also won the 100-yard dash at the annual Alcan family picnic.

Hegarty played intermediate hockey in Gananoque in the cross-border Can-Am League. Then he joined the Vimy Signals team coached by Johnny Carr-Harris, and they won the Thousand Islands League championship in 1954-55.

When he was 20 years old Hegarty found his calling, he started officiating hockey games. He worked well over 3,000 career games and refereed at every level, working his way up through the ranks.

Hegarty began with Kingston Minor Hockey, then it was on to Junior B, Intermediate, Senior A, Canadian University, EPHL and eventually US College and semi-pro in the North American Hockey League. He also took on the challenging task of officiating the annual RMC–West Point games.

Hegarty enjoyed his years at the plant, but knew it would be challenging doing shift work and trying to raise a young family. In 1956 he applied for and secured a civilian teaching position at the Royal Canadian Electrical & Mechanical Engineers school at the Army Base.

Ten years later Hegarty transitioned to the Frontenac County Board of Education. Hired as a machine shop teacher, he taught at three local high schools. Q.E.C.V.I, K.C.V.I. and spent 20 years at Frontenac Secondary before retiring in 1989.

Hegarty spent many off hours refereeing and became a sought after official. He was an instructor with the OMHA Certification Program and in 1967 hired as the OMHA Supervisor of Officials for Eastern Ontario. For the next decade he evaluated and mentored many young officials visiting rinks across this part of the province.

When Major Junior hockey arrived in Kingston in 1973, he was proud to have several high-level officials in Kingston, Terry Landon, Don Goodridge, Frank Robinson, Norm Ball,  Ron Earl, and Doug Jeffries among them.

In 1968, the NCAA recruited Hegarty to referee Division I ECAC college games in the states. Terry Landon & Frank Robinson became his permanent linesmen and they spent seven seasons doing U.S. college hockey games. Looking back on it Hegarty calls it, “the best hockey I ever officiated.”

Most weekends meant road trips from Kingston to work college games at Cornell, Clarkson, Colgate, and St. Lawrence University. Ken Dryden was Cornell’s goalie, Mike Milbury played at Colgate and future LA King Dave Taylor was at Clarkson.

The travel was not always fun, there were many white-knuckle rides back home through the snow-belt in upstate New York. They had many scares along the way and Hegarty vividly recalls returning to Kingston during one particularly bad winter storm. Frank Robinson took over behind the wheel and as they were coming down the Thousand Islands Bridge they bounced off guard rails on both sides and slid right past the customs house.

In the 1970’s Hegarty also started refereeing minor pro games in the North American Hockey League (NAHL). It was the same league featured in the classic movie, ‘Slap Shot.’ Terry Landon described it as, “pretty much like the movie,” a league full of notorious brawlers and plenty of stick work.

During a game that Utica played in Clinton, NY, future NHL referee Paul Stewart instigated a bench clearing brawl. As things reached a boil, crazed fans began throwing folding chairs onto the ice trying to hit the officials and the players.

In Syracuse a well-aimed water bottle struck Hegarty in the back of the head (no helmets for officials in that era).

Incredibly, Landon also recalls having to remove live chickens thrown onto the ice by fans at NAHL games.

Terry Landon has great respect for Hegarty as a person and as an official. Landon felt Hegarty was the perfect choice to referee in that wild league, “Pat was always in control and commanded respect from the players.” Adding, “I worked with a lot of officials, but Pat never let a game get out of control.”

“On our road trips I had more fun with Pat than any other official I ever worked with.”

Hegarty, Landon and Robinson were like a well-oiled machine on the ice. They knew each other’s tendencies and it just flowed. They built a strong bond and had lots of fun, spending so much time together on the road and at the rink.

They also developed great friendships with the off-ice officials at the rinks they visited. Post-game gatherings for a cold beer became a ritual.

Hegarty singles out Belleville’s downtown Memorial Arena as one of the toughest places to work a game. The fans were right on top of you and they were a very tough crowd. Hegarty remembers waving off a Belleville goal and an irate fan threw a red billiard ball that just narrowly missed him.

Hegarty worked many games in the Belleville-area with Keith MacDonald, a local official who played on the World Champion Belleville MacFarland’s. MacDonald offered Hegarty a great piece of advice, “When you leave the rink keep your skates in your hands, they might come in handy.”

In those days officials got paid cash at the end of the first intermission after the gate was counted at the door. Hegarty remembers a game in Belleville when the money did not arrive at the first intermission. At the end of the second intermission, the buzzer sounded for the officials to return to the ice and there was still no sign of the money.

Kingston sports broadcaster Doug Jeffries was a linesman for Hegarty that night and as Jeffries got up to head back out onto the ice, Hegarty stopped him, ‘We are not going out until we get paid.” A few tense minutes passed, then a hand reached through the crack in the door and a handful of bills fell to the floor. The officials finished the game.

Among the many young officials Hegarty mentored was Terry Gregson – a student at Queen’s in the early 1970’s. Gregson started working local games with Hegarty and learned a lot from the veteran official.

Dick Irvin wrote a book on NHL officials and in it Gregson credits Hegarty for helping him get to the NHL. Hegarty told Gregson if he focused on officiating he had the ability to work at the pro level. Gregson spent 25 seasons as an NHL referee and worked eight Stanley Cup finals.

In the early 2000’s, Hegarty attended an NHL game in Tampa and Gregson was the referee. They got together after the game to share a few Kingston stories and memories.

Two of Hegarty’s boys, Chris and his younger brother Tim, followed in their Dad’s footsteps and started officiating at an early age. Both became highly respected Kingston hockey officials. Grandson Ryan is a third generation referee in the Hegarty family, doing games in Peterborough on his way to earning his teaching degree.

When Pat was officiating U.S. college games and later minor pro games, he would often take his son Chris out of school to join him on road trips. Chris saw firsthand Pat’s cool under fire, the way he controlled the game and the rapport he built with the players.

Both Chris and Tim credit their father’s stellar reputation with allowing them to gain instant credibility and respect as young officials.

Tim recalls as a 12-year-old working his first game with older brother Chris – who was 15 at the time, it was a local minor hockey game. Tim was getting set for a face-off when Chris slapped the frozen puck a little too hard into Tim’s hand. Some words ensued, a slew foot may have been involved and the two young Hegarty brothers started trading blows on the ice. The surprised coaches had to intervene, and it would be years before the Hegarty boys would do another game together.

One of Pat’s proudest moments happened in 2005, at age 73 he came out of retirement to do one final game. It was an opportunity to referee a game with son Chris and two of his grandchildren – Nick & Taylor. It was quite a finish to a Hall of Fame officiating career with three generations of Hegarty’s working together. It became a front-page feature story in the Kingston Whig Standard.

In addition to his refereeing, Pat spent over 20 years at Kingston Speedway as a pit steward, track steward, and later Race Director. Pat got involved at the speedway when his father-in-law, Lawrence Craven, became the track owner in the mid-1950’s through to the mid-1960s. Pat soon discovered he loved the action and excitement of the stock car races as much as he did hockey.

Pat was there until the track closed in 1976, and as his kids got a little older Friday nights at the speedway became a family affair. Ann sold tickets, daughters Shannon and Patty worked in the canteen, Chris sold programs, Brian was the scorer, and young Tim ran the lineups down to the starter’s stand.

Pat was the race steward, a position not for the faint of heart. He was the starter dropping the flag in front of the anxious drivers to start each race – then he would quickly scurry backwards onto the infield to avoid the cars racing from the start line.

The love of stock car racing runs four generations deep in the Hegarty family. Pat’s son, Brian, is still working as a track official at the Brockville & Cornwall speedways. Tim is on the road most weekends with his own car in the nostalgia modified dirt racing series, the car now driven by his 24-year-old son, Ryan.

Pat is well remembered for his long teaching career by former students. Mike Doyle spent five years in Hegarty’s machine shop class at Frontenac Secondary School in the 1980’s.

He knew nothing about Hegarty’s hockey background at the time, but Doyle and a half dozen friends marveled at the knowledge and precision of this expert machinist, who also had great teaching skills to go with it.

Doyle cites Hegarty as a major influence on his own 31-year teaching career, much of it also spent at Frontenac.

Walking into Hegarty’s shop class, “It was like you were going to work. Pat would offer advice when needed, teach a skill as required, and be there for support.” Two of Doyle’s friends went on to become mechanics in the airline industry. “Pat motivated them to be highflyers and really take pride in their work.” 

And just like when Hegarty was on the ice, “You always knew where you stood with Pat and what the expectations were in the classroom.” 

Pat earned many accolades throughout his officiating career culminating with his induction into the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame as a Builder for hockey and dirt racing in 2014.

During Kingston’s Hockey Centennial in 1986, Hegarty was one of fifty people honoured by the International Hockey Hall of Fame for making a significant contribution to hockey in Kingston during the first one hundred years.

The Kingston Referees Association named an award after him, given each year to the most promising young official.

Pat Hegarty enjoyed a wonderful career in sports and education, but he is most proud of his family. These days Pat and Ann are content enjoying their kids, watching as their grandchildren and great grandchildren continue the Hegarty family traditions in hockey, dirt racing and teaching.

It is safe to say there will be a Hegarty at the rink, at the track, and in the classroom for many years to come.

Mark Potter is a former Kingston broadcaster, CKWS-TV Sports Director, past president of the Original Hockey Hall of Fame and an honoured member of the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame.