By Jeff Gard/Today’s Northumberland
Long before Sommerville’s Sporting Goods became a fixture in downtown Cobourg, Clarke Sommerville was a goaltender for the Galt Blackhawks junior A hockey club and during those four years met his future wife Dorothy.
Sommerville went on to play pro in the Eastern Hockey League (like the American Hockey League of today) for Philadelphia and Washington.
“He wanted to get married and mum wouldn’t marry him as long as he was riding the buses in the U.S. so his hockey career came to an end. He moved to Cobourg and started the sports store,” says Dave Sommerville, who continues on the legacy of Sommerville’s Sporting Goods.
The Cobourg and District Sports Hall of Fame, set to officially induct its second group of inductees, will be full of outstanding athletes, builders and volunteers as it continues to recognize local contributions to sport as the years progress.
There will be many inductees that fit into all of those categories, including the late Clarke Sommerville.
Sommerville and the rest of the 2020 inductees – Neil Cane, Margaret Anne Matthews, Ken Petrie, Gord Brooks, Fred Simpson, Kevin Fast and Dan Milligan – will finally be recognized Friday, Nov. 12 during the induction dinner at the Best Western in Cobourg.
Tickets are $80 and now available at the Cobourg Community Centre (payment by cheque only), Sommerville’s Sporting Goods (cash, cheque, credit card) and Kelly’s Homelike Inn (cash, cheque).
Sommerville remained active as an athlete in Cobourg, playing some intermediate hockey, ball and golf. He had purchased an existing store which had hardware and sporting goods. Really it had anything you could imagine.
“I know that when he started he would buy anything that he could get on credit because he didn’t have any money,” Dave says. “I remember as a kid we sold aquariums, bird seed, bird cages, anything he could buy on credit so he didn’t have to pay for it up front. Eventually it evolved into a full-fledged sports store.”
As an athlete, Sommerville had his time in the spotlight. As a business owner, he was a public figure but preferred to be behind-the-scenes as he supported local athletes. Dave recalls a group of girls wanting to play hockey in town on Saturday nights, but couldn’t rent ice without proper backing. His dad went to town officials and assured them the costs would be covered. He handled collecting the money and paid the bill.
That’s just one example, of course, but there’s many stories you may never hear about.
“It was important to dad that everybody got a chance to play,” Dave says. “It didn’t matter how talented you were, it didn’t matter how well-off you were financially and especially children. Every child needed the chance to participate and play. I know that behind-the-scenes there was lots of people that dad helped out with equipment or they maybe didn’t have the financial means, but their kid deserved an opportunity.”
Dave helped his dad and Don Dunn coach the Sinclair Mustangs girls softball team when his sister Nancy was playing. There was a YMCA town league and the teams were often named based on their home ball diamond. It was a great league and Dave recalls Ken Fleming coaching the Dutch Oven team that played out of Coverdale Park. Players loved it.
Clarke Sommerville, of course, took it a step further.
“Dad decided to put a team together and just let the girls play some travel ball, just to experience it,” Dave says. “We basically took the Sinclair Mustangs team that we had and we added Theresa Karpinski and Sharon Oakman. We took them to a couple tournaments and lo and behold this team really gelled and they ended up winning the Ontario championship.”
That was in 1972 and the Mustangs defeated Oshawa to win the first PWSU Ontario Squirt Championship.
One of the key players was Margaret Anne Matthews (watch for an upcoming feature story on her as well.
“Margie was that special type of athlete that you could build a team around and Margie took more joy in seeing, even at an early age, took more joy in seeing other players’ successes and team successes than her own,” Dave says. “You need that type of player or players to be successful.”
Cobourg Legion Minor Softball always had its games played on Saturdays and afterwards coaches would deliver scoresheets to Sommerville’s, they would get sorted by division and picked up by sportswriter Layton Dodge.
“It’s been said more than once, we used to have a Coke cooler here, that there was more sports decisions made around that Coke cooler in this store than there was in any executive meeting. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know,” Dave says, adding when he worked in the store during his younger years that people involved in different sports around town would often meet mid-afternoon every day in the store.
“This always seemed to be a focal point for some interesting conversations.”
Clarke Sommerville was also part of the group that launched the Cobourg Cougars organization in the mid-1960s along with Dick Robinson, Jeff Rolph and Layton Dodge.
“They had a meeting in the living room of our house one night and they all put a thousand dollars in and they started the Cougars,” Dave says. “They would have three executive meetings a year: one in August, they would come to the house and mum would make some sandwiches, they would have one at Christmas and one at playoffs. It was for local guys. It was guys like Gordie Kelly and Steve Harold and Doug Campbell and Rick Austin. It was for local guys to have a place to play hockey and that team was very successful.”
That success drew interest from the Peterborough Petes, who at that time were coached by Roger Neilson, the Hockey Hall of Famer who went on to coach a number of NHL teams during a long career. Sommerville held a number of different roles, including general manager, with the Cougars.
“Dad knew Roger from Keene baseball because Roger would be down here buying ball equipment,” Dave says. “Roger called and came down to meet dad and said they wanted Cobourg to affiliate with the Petes and dad looked at Roger and said ‘this isn’t going to happen because we’re providing hockey for local kids. We don’t need you to be sending us players and taking players. This is for local kids and if it can’t survive on its own, then we don’t need to be affiliated.’ I was a kid sitting here and thinking, ‘dad you’re turning down Roger Neilson.’
“Over the course of time, I was involved with Roger with his hockey school in Port Hope and stuff like that, and we got to be pretty good friends. Roger and I actually talked about it one day and he said ‘you know the day I came down from Peterborough, I knew your dad was going to say no and it was the right thing to do, but management made me come down and make the presentation so I had to.’”
Dave Sommerville is looking forward to inducting his dad into the Cobourg and District Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 12. In 2019, he had the honour of helping to induct the legendary sports reporter Layton Dodge, who became a close friend over the years.
Without Dodge’s incredible work, the hall of fame might not have been possible. It certainly would have made it more challenging.
“Layton Dodge has left an incredible legacy. The sports hall of fame is necessary in this town and because of the legacy that Layton has left with working at the Cobourg paper, there’s 50 years of background information that people can find so that we do have a sports hall of fame,” Dave says.
“It’s my belief Layton’s body of work in itself is a sports hall of fame. The superstars got their coverage, but the average athlete whether they made a good play in a ball game or a good pass in a hockey game, Layton would make a point of getting those kids’ names in the paper and that was something a lot of kids couldn’t wait for Wednesday and then it become Monday-Wednesday-Friday to read the paper and see if they were in the paper.
“I remember years ago there would be ball tournaments or hockey tournaments here and even if a Cobourg team wasn’t in the finals, Layton would write up the final game and we would get calls from people from teams from Newmarket or Orillia or wherever because they didn’t get written up in the papers. We would get 15 or 20 copies of the paper and send them to the manager or a coach so the kids there could read the write-up. It was so novel to them.”
In addition to displays at the Cobourg Community Centre, the Cobourg and District Sports Hall of Fame has a wealth of information on its website www.cdshf.ca. You can find bios on the inductees, photos of memorabilia that has been collected and stories of sport about athletes, teams and events that have been important to the area.
Dave Sommerville hopes the younger generations will keep the Hall of Fame going and continue to share the incredible stories.
“I hope the Hall of Fame continues forever,” he says. “There’s so many stories to be told and there’s so many deserving people that should be recognized whether they were a volunteer or an athlete or a builder.”
