Trainer Jim (Bearcat) Murray was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the trainers category in 2008.Candice Ward/Courtesy of Calgary Flames
Trainer Jim (Bearcat) Murray prided himself on being quick to aid injured Calgary Flames players when they went down on the ice.
During the 1989 National Hockey League playoffs, he was too quick.
After Los Angeles Kings winger Bernie Nicholls slugged Calgary’s Mike Vernon behind the play, Mr. Murray raced on to the ice as the goaltender lay writhing in his crease.
But the whistle had not blown. As the referee signalled a delayed penalty to Mr. Nicholls, the Flames took the puck up the ice and scored.
“I ran all the way out there,” recalled Mr. Murray, who wore spiked shoes to avoid slipping, in an interview with CBC Radio.
“And, I got there with Mikey and he was down and I asked him a question: ‘Mike, are you okay?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay, Bear. What’s all the ruckus about?’ And I looked around and I said, ‘I don’t know, but the referee’s coming over and going to have a little chat with us.’ "
The Kings were livid, but the goal counted and Mr. Murray, who died June 14 at age 89 in a Calgary hospital of natural causes, saw his legend grow.
“He was one of those imperishable personalities that the game doesn’t produce any more, because there’s so much structure in it now and there’s so much money and so much everything,” said long-time Calgary sportswriter George Johnson, who co-authored Mr. Murray’s autobiography.
A self-taught athletic therapist, Mr. Murray was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the trainers category in 2008.
Meeting him for the first time, people felt like they had known him for years, while players felt like they were “in good hands” although he did not have a “gazillion letters” of qualifications behind his name, Mr. Johnson noted.
Unlike his peers in any sport, Mr. Murray – easily recognizable by his short stature, half-bald head, bushy mustache and big smile – had his own fan club.
“We would kid him endlessly in the dressing room for being the real superstar on the team, and he loved every second of it,” retired Flames captain and NHL icon Lanny McDonald told an estimated 500 mourners at Mr. Murray’s packed funeral in Okotoks, Alta., where he grew up and lived in retirement.
The Bearcat Murray Fan Club was born in Boston after fans there became impressed with Mr. Murray for going into the stands to help his son Allan, a Flames assistant trainer, retrieve defenceman Gary Suter’s stick in Edmonton during the 1986 playoffs. Bearcat tore some ankle ligaments jumping over the glass during the fracas and, as he was carted into an ambulance, blew kisses.
“[The fan club added] a Montreal chapter and they actually had a club stationery and T-shirts and all this kind of stuff [depicting] Bearcat,” recalled Mr. Johnson. “He’d get pictures and things of these guys when they went on vacation. They’d be in Hawaii and they’d all be wearing skullcaps like him and have big moustaches and stuff, and they’d be on the beach in Oahu.
“This doesn’t happen to just anybody; this happens to a very special kind of guy.”
James Alexander Murray was born Jan. 2, 1933, in Vulcan, Alta.Courtesy of Calgary Flames
James Alexander (Jim) (Bearcat) Murray was born Jan. 2, 1933, in Vulcan, Alta., and lived in Blackie, Alta., before his family moved to Okotoks when he was four years old. He was the eldest of four children of Allan Murray, an Alberta Wheat Pool grain buyer, and Isabelle (née Flood) Murray, a hardware store employee.
Starting in his early teens, he was a jockey in horse races in Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. He also boxed, winning Golden Gloves competitions in his youth, and played on senior hockey teams based in Okotoks and Estevan, Sask.
He inherited the nickname Bearcat from his dad, a talented senior hockey player and curler. Allan Murray received it from High River Times editor and publisher Charlie Clark, the father of future prime minister Joe Clark. Charlie Clark later dubbed Jim as Little Bearcat, and he later became known as Bearcat and often just Bear.
“He was such a character – and he lived his life with character,” said Rev. Marilyn Evans, an Okotoks-based United Church minister during his funeral.
Rev. Evans knew Mr. Murray for about three decades. She praised him for his countless contributions to charitable projects in Okotoks and elsewhere.
Mr. Murray helped raise millions of dollars before and after retiring in 1996, when he became a volunteer Flames ambassador. He often served as the master of ceremonies and auctioneer at golf tournaments, where he shot his age during his late 70s.
“From between 1980-81 to 2018 or ‘18 or ‘19, I figure, I played in between 300-400 charity golf tournaments,” said retired Flames radio play-by-play broadcaster Peter Maher. “But I figure Bearcat played in twice as many – or maybe three times as many – as I did.”
Mr. Murray developed a strong desire to help others while growing up in the Great Depression and listening to the hard-luck stories of doctors, lawyers and others after his father invited them home for dinner upon their arrival via railway boxcars in search of work.
Bearcat got into athletic therapy while tending chuckwagon horses and mending rodeo cowboys at the Calgary Stampede. That gig led to part-time roles with the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders and the Calgary Centennials junior hockey club.
“He was [with the Centennials] all the time so they decided to make it a full-time position [in 1967] and then [his career] went on from there,” said his son Allan, who was a Cents stick boy.
Previously, Mr. Murray had worked as a wildcat-drill operator and equipment sales rep in the oil patch. His Centennials duties included driving the team bus; in the winter, he often stopped to scrape the windshield because of a faulty defroster.
He migrated to the Calgary Cowboys of the now-defunct World Hockey Association, the Calgary Wranglers junior squad and the NHL’s New York Rangers for their 1979-80 playoff run. After that postseason, the Flames moved to Calgary from Atlanta and he toiled 16 seasons for the club, soothing psyches as well as wounds.
“He was that fatherly figure, just a calming figure,” said former Flames winger Perry Berezan. “He knew when to be close to you.”
Despite the incident with Mr. Vernon in 1989, when the Flames went on to win the Stanley Cup, Mr. Murray was usually in no hurry to get off the ice.
“As you’re down for a few minutes, you feel the pain subsiding and you’re ready to get up,” recalled Mr. Berezan. “Bear would be [saying], ‘No, no, no. You stay down there. I need my attention, too.’ He wanted to have the TV camera on him. Maybe that was the reward for all the low pay, the long hours, the constant sacrifice and never being at home. And if it was a Saturday night game, if it was Hockey Night in Canada, Bearcat was coming on that night – whether you were hurt or not.
“He couldn’t wait to hop over those boards.”
Mr. Murray leaves his wife of 64 years, Shirley, sons Allan and Danny, three grandsons, and two step-granddaughters.