Those Barbershop Calendars.
I was eleven years old when I remember seeing my first Maple Leaf Gardens calendar. It was in my neighborhood barbershop where my mother had taken me for my haircut. The image of the Toronto Maple Leaf team with Captain Dave Keon sitting on the front row will forever be etched into my brain. There was also a dark green Export ‘A’ banner at the bottom of the oversized calendar.
I rarely ever saw the calendars, the odd time one would be visible at a gas station or a bowling alley. The calendars were not sold in stores and for the most part, the only time I would ever see the calendar was when I got my haircut. Both of the barbershops that my mother took me to when I was a kid always had the same calendar on the wall.
Back when I was in high school, the Toronto Marlboros would play Friday night home games at Maple Leaf Gardens. My high school handed out coupons which allowed students to buy tickets for seventy-five cents each at the Gardens box office. I loved Maple Leaf Gardens and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but for me Leaf tickets were way out of reach and impossible to get since every game was always sold out. Even if I had the chance to buy tickets, they were way too expensive for a kid like me to afford anyways. I was lucky; I had already been taken to a couple Leaf games for free and I just assumed it would be a long time before I was taken to another one.
Although, on a few Friday nights I would be able to scrounge up a few bucks for a Marlboros ticket, bus fare, popcorn, Juicy Fruit gum and a Coke.
Truthfully, I could care less about the actual game itself; I just loved visiting and sitting inside Maple Leaf Gardens. The Marlboros wore uniforms that looked like the Leafs and to me it felt like I was at a Leaf game anyway. Most of the time I went with a friend and once I can remember going by myself. The Friday night junior hockey crowds were very sparse to say the least and I could sit anywhere that I wanted to. For the most part I would sit in the red and gold sections. I would always move around during the game and I eventually sat my ass in every section at least once.
While sitting inside the Gardens, I would dream about someday playing hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Hell, I’d even play for them Marlboros who were out on the ice. I'd dream about what it must be like playing in this hockey shrine Saturday nights on Hockey Night in Canada and my name being broadcast from the historic Gondola. I would dream about having my own hockey card and kids asking me for my autograph outside after the game when I left the Gardens.
Who am I kidding? I was still just a kid myself.
Then I would wake up and it was back to reality. The game was now over; I had to leave my shrine and head back home on the subway.
On one Friday night everyone leaving the game was given what I thought was a rolled up Leaf poster. I had no idea until I got home that it was not a poster at all, but the exact same calendar that I had seen in the barbershops. I was ecstatic as I hung the calendar on my wall beside my bed once I got back home.
Unlike a standard calendar, the Gardens calendar began in October when the Leafs season started. On closer inspection, the calendar was only eight pages as opposed to twelve. The October front page photo featured the previous year’s Maple Leaf team and for the most part it was also the current team. The exception being the players that had either been traded or that had retired over the summer. The November page was the previous season’s team picture of the Stanley Cup champions pictured with the cup. The other five months from December to April featured a variety of different pages including various photos of minor league champions. There was an NHL awards page that displayed all the previous year’s winners along with the awards. As well there was a month with photos of the NHL’s first and second All-Star teams from the previous February. The eighth and final page once again had the same Maple Leaf team picture from the October page with a small six-month May to October box calendar underneath. The full monthly pages also highlighted the Leafs regular season schedule in blue for the away games and red for home games played at the Gardens.
MacDonald Tobacco, after decades of making the Maple Leaf Gardens and Montreal Forum calendars would produce the last calendars for the 1974/75 season. Sadly, the wonderful hockey season ritual of displaying an Export Maple Leaf Gardens calendar was coming to an end. The Government was now becoming a lot stricter about tobacco companies advertising products while promoting sports and I assume that might have been a big part of the reason. The Dominion grocery store chain took up the challenge of producing an official Toronto Maple Leafs calendar for a few years thereafter. They were only available for purchase in the stores. However, they were never as popular as their predecessor and after six seasons they too also became obsolete.
That old saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ held so true for me when it came to those old calendars. I never saw them and I had completely forgotten all about them.
Fast forward forty years later and I am attending a sportscard and memorabilia show in Toronto. As I walked about aimlessly up and down the aisles, I caught a glimpse of an old Export calendar tucked up on a wall in one of the booths. Right away I was intrigued and asked the owner if could see it. He happily obliged and handed me the 1971 calendar. I was very surprised that all eight pages were intact and the vintage calendar was in excellent shape for being already forty plus years old. He then handed me a second calendar in even better shape from the 1972 season. My childhood memories came rushing back as I looked both of them over and I was quickly falling back in love.
“How much for both of them?” I asked
“Two-fifty.” He replied
We negotiated for a bit and within a couple minutes I was walking away with the two vintage hockey artifacts, although my wallet was now one hundred and eighty bucks lighter. I could not believe it, I had just stumbled upon a lost love after over four decades from when we first met. It had been that long since my haircut days when I first saw the exact same calendar that I was now holding in my hand. The guy who sold me the calendars said they were now referred to in the hobby as barbershop calendars.
Go Figure.
Originally, I thought it would be nice to maybe collect the last seven Export calendars produced. The last seven would take me back to when the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967. I figured it would be a challenge in itself since finding them complete with all eight pages intact would be almost impossible. People who had owned the calendars would always rip the previous month’s page off at the top when a new month began. They would also write in the scores of the games played and like any other calendar daily reminders would also be penciled in. Rips, tears and stains were sure to be the norm for such old hockey relics.
My original plan to collect the last seven calendars quickly changed after I found multiple calendars dating back to the late 50's being sold by a single seller on ebay from the Vancouver area. They had just been listed and I knew I had to act fast. He had photos displayed of every page from every calendar and each vintage calendar was complete and in absolutely pristine condition.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
I knew I could not afford his asking price for each individual calendar so I reached out to him for a better price if I was to buy all ten that he was selling. We worked out a deal and within a week a couple large cardboard tubes arrived with all the ten calendars loosely rolled up inside. My favorite calendar by far was my birth year back from 1960. It was the only Export Maple Leaf Gardens calendar ever printed that did not have the Maple Leaf team on the first October page. The Gardens paid homage to the mighty Montreal Canadiens that year who had just won their fifth straight Stanley Cup the previous spring. The Leaf team from that year was relegated to both the November and the eighth pages.
I now had a dozen calendars dating back to the late 50's in my possession. My new goal was to now collect every Export Leaf calendar from 1950 and I would diligently focus on collecting all those twenty-five calendars. I was already halfway there and I know found myself consumed with searching for the remaining thirteen calendars I needed. At the time of writing this memory, I had twenty-three of the Export Gardens calendars displayed on my wall.
I rarely ever saw the calendars, the odd time one would be visible at a gas station or a bowling alley. The calendars were not sold in stores and for the most part, the only time I would ever see the calendar was when I got my haircut. Both of the barbershops that my mother took me to when I was a kid always had the same calendar on the wall.
Back when I was in high school, the Toronto Marlboros would play Friday night home games at Maple Leaf Gardens. My high school handed out coupons which allowed students to buy tickets for seventy-five cents each at the Gardens box office. I loved Maple Leaf Gardens and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but for me Leaf tickets were way out of reach and impossible to get since every game was always sold out. Even if I had the chance to buy tickets, they were way too expensive for a kid like me to afford anyways. I was lucky; I had already been taken to a couple Leaf games for free and I just assumed it would be a long time before I was taken to another one.
Although, on a few Friday nights I would be able to scrounge up a few bucks for a Marlboros ticket, bus fare, popcorn, Juicy Fruit gum and a Coke.
Truthfully, I could care less about the actual game itself; I just loved visiting and sitting inside Maple Leaf Gardens. The Marlboros wore uniforms that looked like the Leafs and to me it felt like I was at a Leaf game anyway. Most of the time I went with a friend and once I can remember going by myself. The Friday night junior hockey crowds were very sparse to say the least and I could sit anywhere that I wanted to. For the most part I would sit in the red and gold sections. I would always move around during the game and I eventually sat my ass in every section at least once.
While sitting inside the Gardens, I would dream about someday playing hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Hell, I’d even play for them Marlboros who were out on the ice. I'd dream about what it must be like playing in this hockey shrine Saturday nights on Hockey Night in Canada and my name being broadcast from the historic Gondola. I would dream about having my own hockey card and kids asking me for my autograph outside after the game when I left the Gardens.
Who am I kidding? I was still just a kid myself.
Then I would wake up and it was back to reality. The game was now over; I had to leave my shrine and head back home on the subway.
On one Friday night everyone leaving the game was given what I thought was a rolled up Leaf poster. I had no idea until I got home that it was not a poster at all, but the exact same calendar that I had seen in the barbershops. I was ecstatic as I hung the calendar on my wall beside my bed once I got back home.
Unlike a standard calendar, the Gardens calendar began in October when the Leafs season started. On closer inspection, the calendar was only eight pages as opposed to twelve. The October front page photo featured the previous year’s Maple Leaf team and for the most part it was also the current team. The exception being the players that had either been traded or that had retired over the summer. The November page was the previous season’s team picture of the Stanley Cup champions pictured with the cup. The other five months from December to April featured a variety of different pages including various photos of minor league champions. There was an NHL awards page that displayed all the previous year’s winners along with the awards. As well there was a month with photos of the NHL’s first and second All-Star teams from the previous February. The eighth and final page once again had the same Maple Leaf team picture from the October page with a small six-month May to October box calendar underneath. The full monthly pages also highlighted the Leafs regular season schedule in blue for the away games and red for home games played at the Gardens.
MacDonald Tobacco, after decades of making the Maple Leaf Gardens and Montreal Forum calendars would produce the last calendars for the 1974/75 season. Sadly, the wonderful hockey season ritual of displaying an Export Maple Leaf Gardens calendar was coming to an end. The Government was now becoming a lot stricter about tobacco companies advertising products while promoting sports and I assume that might have been a big part of the reason. The Dominion grocery store chain took up the challenge of producing an official Toronto Maple Leafs calendar for a few years thereafter. They were only available for purchase in the stores. However, they were never as popular as their predecessor and after six seasons they too also became obsolete.
That old saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ held so true for me when it came to those old calendars. I never saw them and I had completely forgotten all about them.
Fast forward forty years later and I am attending a sportscard and memorabilia show in Toronto. As I walked about aimlessly up and down the aisles, I caught a glimpse of an old Export calendar tucked up on a wall in one of the booths. Right away I was intrigued and asked the owner if could see it. He happily obliged and handed me the 1971 calendar. I was very surprised that all eight pages were intact and the vintage calendar was in excellent shape for being already forty plus years old. He then handed me a second calendar in even better shape from the 1972 season. My childhood memories came rushing back as I looked both of them over and I was quickly falling back in love.
“How much for both of them?” I asked
“Two-fifty.” He replied
We negotiated for a bit and within a couple minutes I was walking away with the two vintage hockey artifacts, although my wallet was now one hundred and eighty bucks lighter. I could not believe it, I had just stumbled upon a lost love after over four decades from when we first met. It had been that long since my haircut days when I first saw the exact same calendar that I was now holding in my hand. The guy who sold me the calendars said they were now referred to in the hobby as barbershop calendars.
Go Figure.
Originally, I thought it would be nice to maybe collect the last seven Export calendars produced. The last seven would take me back to when the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967. I figured it would be a challenge in itself since finding them complete with all eight pages intact would be almost impossible. People who had owned the calendars would always rip the previous month’s page off at the top when a new month began. They would also write in the scores of the games played and like any other calendar daily reminders would also be penciled in. Rips, tears and stains were sure to be the norm for such old hockey relics.
My original plan to collect the last seven calendars quickly changed after I found multiple calendars dating back to the late 50's being sold by a single seller on ebay from the Vancouver area. They had just been listed and I knew I had to act fast. He had photos displayed of every page from every calendar and each vintage calendar was complete and in absolutely pristine condition.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
I knew I could not afford his asking price for each individual calendar so I reached out to him for a better price if I was to buy all ten that he was selling. We worked out a deal and within a week a couple large cardboard tubes arrived with all the ten calendars loosely rolled up inside. My favorite calendar by far was my birth year back from 1960. It was the only Export Maple Leaf Gardens calendar ever printed that did not have the Maple Leaf team on the first October page. The Gardens paid homage to the mighty Montreal Canadiens that year who had just won their fifth straight Stanley Cup the previous spring. The Leaf team from that year was relegated to both the November and the eighth pages.
I now had a dozen calendars dating back to the late 50's in my possession. My new goal was to now collect every Export Leaf calendar from 1950 and I would diligently focus on collecting all those twenty-five calendars. I was already halfway there and I know found myself consumed with searching for the remaining thirteen calendars I needed. At the time of writing this memory, I had twenty-three of the Export Gardens calendars displayed on my wall.
Although there were Gardens calendars produced back in the late 30's and the 40's, I have never seen one in complete or in good condition. I would not hesitate to jump at the chance to buy one earlier than 1950 if it was in half decent shape. I have already spent a small fortune on the calendars I that now own.
Since the first time I set foot inside Maple Leaf Gardens, I have always been fascinated with the historic original six hockey shrine. To be honest I still have no idea why the lure of Maple Leaf Gardens remains so strong even to this day.
Since the first time I set foot inside Maple Leaf Gardens, I have always been fascinated with the historic original six hockey shrine. To be honest I still have no idea why the lure of Maple Leaf Gardens remains so strong even to this day.
For me the Gardens will always bring back so many cherished memories. Memories that are rekindled every time I look at all my calendars.
