Rare Jewel for a King: A Tribute to King Clancy

W.H. Heick is a professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University.

This is 150 pages of “I love King Clancy; everybody else loves King Clancy; King Clancy loves everybody else; everybody loves everybody.” Rightly subtitled “A tribute to King Clancy,” this book provides an anecdotal biography of Francis “King” Clancy, one of hockey’s immortals. It is written by a person who has had close family ties to the people behind the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team.

Anne Logan has researched into the newspapers covering the years of Clancy’s career for contemporary references to her hero as player, referee, and coach. She also interviewed many people. Thirty-three pages of interesting photographs reinforce the biographic nature of the book.

What is lacking, intentionally but regrettably, is any effort at placing the man or the game into any broader context of the history of sport in Canada or of Canadian society. Even Clancy’s non-hockey interests are hardly referred to: for example, his involvement in a family construction firm in Ottawa. On p.77 Logan makes an oblique reference to Clancy having been in the army but there is no reference elsewhere as to what this part of his life was all about.

Logan has gone to a great deal of effort, but she has produced rather thin ‘gruel’ except for fellow members of the Clancy fan club.