To Dennis Kane - Yours Truly, Red Fisher

It’s unbelievable.

I was going through a box yesterday and found some letters from the Montreal Forum and Maple Leaf Gardens, which were mostly replies to me about tickets. I thought they were long gone, and in fact it was only recently that I was thinking that I wished I still had some of these.

I’ll show some of these letters over the next while, but for now, I want to focus on one in particular.

In the early 1960′s I was an exhibition game in Peterborough, Ontario between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Black Hawks, and I approached Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, who were standing by the boards, for autographs. Hull was more than happy to oblige, but Mikita was surly and miserable. I’ve always maintained that he told me to go to hell, but over the years I began to hope that he didn’t really get that harsh, that it was just me, because I was young, making too much of something.

I would like to say this. In no way is this to be taken that Stan Mikita is a bad person. In the beginning he was a little rough, but as the years went by, Mikita became a fine, friendly gentleman, a class act, and a legendary and deserving Hall of Famer.

After this incident in Peterborough, I wrote a letter to Red Fisher at the Montreal Star about it, and this is his reply back to me. I thought it was long gone.