from Dave Stubbs of the Montreal Gazette at Canada.com,

Hall of Fame defenceman Bill Gadsby has lived a quiet, uneventful life of 85 years.

Unless, of course, you consider that in 1939, as a 12-year-old, the Calgary native was a lifeboat survivor of a wartime Nazi German submarine’s torpedo sinking of the British ocean liner S.S. Athenia, bound for Montreal from Glasgow. Of 1,418 on board, 117 perished at sea about 400 kilometres northwest of the coast of Ireland.

Or perhaps that Gadsby successfully battled polio while playing in the National Hockey League.

How about that he had an unofficial NHL Original Six record of roughly 650 stitches sewn into his face during a 20-year career with Chicago, New York and Detroit, his wife, Edna, some nights removing them in the kitchen with junk-drawer scissors?

Or even that the first of four daughters born to Gadsby and Edna was once unexpectedly babysat in a Chicago tavern by small-time hoodlum Matty Capone — whose brother, Al, was a gangster of considerably more repute.

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