Former Regina Pat Bill Ansell eager to hear from old teammates

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Feisty, high-scoring forward Bill Ansell played for the Regina Pats when the legendary franchise won its last league championship — 45 years ago, believe it or not — and he became the Western Hockey League team’s captain for most of the next season.

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“Until Strummer ripped the ‘C’ off my jersey with two or three games left,” said Ansell, referring to former Pats general manager Bob Strumm, who was well-known for his impassioned outbursts at players, officials, media and league administrators.

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“We started the season really strong then lost four or five games in a row at the end of the season. Strummer was apoplectic!”

Recently retired from 33 years in the Royal Canadian Navy, where he achieved the rank of lieutenant-commander and fittingly enough served on the HMCS Regina, 63-year-old Ansell and Strumm have crossed paths a few times since their final, tumultuous season together with the Pats.

Indeed, Strumm was one of the first teammates to call after hearing Ansell was dying from pancreatic cancer.

“I had a long, long chat with Strummer,” said Ansell during a recent phone conversation from his Sidney, B.C., backyard while visiting with older brother Max Ansell. “And I’m expecting a couple other guys are gonna call me up shortly. Kelly Livingston, my best buddy because we used to hang out all the time, is calling.

“Every time I look at my phone now, it’s usually got some American numbers on it. I keep thinking they’re scams. Apparently not. It’s my teammates leaving me messages, so I call them back.”

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Jock Callander and Garth Butcher have called for “chin-wags.” And there’s still a huge list of former teammates Ansell would love to hear from.

Ansell played 2 1/2 seasons with the Pats, recording 182 career points (69 goals, 113 assists) and 246 penalty minutes. He added 15 goals, 17 assists and 61 penalty minutes in 28 playoff games, including an appearance in the controversial 1980 Memorial Cup played in Regina and Brandon, where the vaunted Pats were infamously eliminated from the round-robin tournament against the Peterborough Petes and champion Cornwall Royals.

The Pats, who won their last Memorial Cup in 1974, have appeared in the Canadian junior hockey championship only twice since 1980, as hosts in 2001 and 2018.

That 1979-80 squad was coached by Bryan Murray. It included a record-setting power-play unit of Doug Wickenheiser, Darren Veitch, Mike Blaisdell, Ron Flockhart, Brian Varga and Bart Hunter. With most of the high-profile Pats gone in 1980-81, Ansell became captain until just before a postseason run that ended in a semifinal series loss to the Calgary Wranglers.

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“I’ll blame that on (Wranglers goalie Mike) Vernon,” said Ansell. “I was flying up right wing, came across the blue line and I took probably one of the best slapshots I’ve ever had from right near the top of the circles. Vernon picked it off and that was it for the series.”

After leaving the Pats, Ansell got recruited by Hockey Hall of Fame coach Clare Drake to join the University of Alberta Golden Bears. Ansell believes he was one of the first WHL graduates to get his post-secondary education funded by the league’s scholarship program. During his five seasons with Alberta, the Golden Bears won the 1986 national championship and Ansell nearly earned a degree, but he had no career plans.

“I worked for a year, probably drinking a little more than I needed to, but I wasn’t living all that great,” said Ansell. “I was working at a lumberyard, sitting in the little booth where they take your money and I said, ‘Screw this!’

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“I told my dad Ronnie I didn’t know what I was going to do and he goes, ‘Join the f’ing Navy!’ I went, ‘OK.’ And that’s what I did.”

Ansell finished his degree so he could enlist as an officer, trained on Vancouver Island, learned to speak French during Navy-sponsored classes in Montreal, figures he circumnavigated the world twice, recalls travelling through the Suez Canal and waxes poetic about a Crosby, Stills & Nash song he would play on the ship’s loudspeaker for the daily “Wakey Wakey” at 7 a.m., about a constellation that’s only visible outside the Northern Hemisphere.

“We ended up going to New Zealand and every morning I would put that song on, ‘When you see that Southern Cross for the first time … ,’ ” said Ansell. “It was a fantastic career!”

Ansell was told earlier this year he had four months to live, but an experimental treatment available to B.C. residents called POG (personalized onco-genomics) has extended his forecast. Another older brother, Pat, is a former Pats goalie who lives nearby and visits regularly. Their sister, Dawn, lives in Edmonton with her family.

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Ansell’s wife, Leslie, died from cancer a few months ago. She had three children, who have three grandchildren. They all bolster his spirit.

“The doctor told me this (POG) is gonna extend me for more than a few months,” said Ansell. “It’s still inoperable and there’s still some issues, but this is good news. I’m kind of hoping for about a year or so.”

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