Grant Horricks - Valley boy

by Mike Horricks

I recently lost my father, Grant. After a long hard struggle with heart disease, he passed away last July in Deep River.

My reason for writing this piece was to not only to share his remarkable life but to describe to everyone a man for me who represented the very essence of “the Valley.”

When you ask people what the Valley is all about, for me it is about hard working people who worked the poor soil and toiled in the bush.

It’s about people who grew up workin’ hard, playin’ harder.

It’s people who were part of some of the most amazing engineering achievements in this country and who left us with a rich heritage and beautiful landscape along the Ottawa River.

My heritage is born from these people. My great-grandparents were original settlers in this part of the country and their names are attached to the roads and islands and bays scattered across the Valley.

They were just a few of the many immigrants who first came to cut the giant white pines and later clear the land to farm and build the dams.

The Valley is the birthplace of hockey in this country and has always been a place where men hunted and fished to provide for their families.

My Dad was a product of all of those aspects of Valley life and excelled at all of those things that define “the Valley.” He was a skilled hunter and angler, a gifted hockey player, a pioneer, an entrepreneur and a man who knew every inch of the bush.

My Dad was born in Pembroke in the middle of the Depression but was very fortunate because his father worked steady during the '30’s for Imperial Oil as a deliveryman.

His father was a tall powerful man who “could pick up drums of stove oil and load them on a horse drawn cart by curling his hands under them in the dirt and picking them straight up in one fluid motion.”

My Dad was similar in stature to his father and was equally as powerful in his prime. He worked at an early age loading boxcars with wet pulp from the Ottawa River by hand.

Like many boys of their era, Grant spent more time playing hockey and pool than going to school and he honed his hockey skills on the Muskrat River just down from his parent’s house on River Road along with other hockey greats, like Grant Gareau from the famous “G Line” of Lumber Kings lore.

My grandmother often packed a picnic basket for the boys on the river to snack on while they played because they seldom made it home from supper when the conditions on the river were ideal.

They would “swing” the gas streetlights out over the river to light the games in the shortened daylight between the two bridges.

My father’s hockey prowess led him to the junior ranks at an early age.

He played on many of the great Lumber King teams of the era with the “G Line” and the Giesebrechts and even played for the Inkerman Rockets junior team who played in the Memorial Cup back in the late 40’s and early 50’s.

My Dad was a prospect of the Detroit Red Wings and we proudly display a number of letters from Jack Adams inviting him to hockey camp at the old Olympia at the tender age of 16.

He never made the big league and I think a part of him always regretted that, but he did have some great stories about Black Jack Stewart, Turk Broda and Red Kelly.

He also had the privilege to share room and board with Glenn Hall and Al Arbour as young men living in the Windsor area during that time and eventually he played in the IHL for the Detroit Hettche.

Hockey led him back home and eventually he landed on with AECL and then when the new nuclear station in Rolphton was being commissioned, he came to Ontario Hydro as one of the first nuclear operators in the province.

Gib James asked him if he would like to be an operator and helped mentor him through the process.

During the course of his 28 years at NPD, he had many roles and worked his way into management positions.

He was there to see the reactor go critical and was there to take out the last fuel bundle.

My Dad served in the community in a number of areas and was a Deep River town councillor and worked on the arena board.

He was a key player in the drive to rebuild the old barn and turn it into a hockey arena and fought for artificial ice as a necessary requirement to build a hockey program.

He even bid on the operating contract and for a few years he ran the rink and we all had a part-time jobs. Some of my best years were spent at the arena as a rink rat.

My Dad also served as the reeve for the townships of Head, Clara and Maria just west of Deep River and was a driving force in getting the boat launching ramps built and trying to drive some economic development to the top end of Renfrew County through county council.

He also served on the Pembroke and Area Airport Commission because he had a passion for flying that he developed as a young boy through his admiration of his older cousin Garth, who went on to become an ace in the Second World War (Garth Edward Horricks, DFM).

My Dad owned his own aircraft which was a tool for his other passion - fishing and hunting.

His Cessna 180 on floats, skis or wheels put him in more lakes and prime spots in Quebec and Northern Ontario than you can imagine and he even flew to James Bay to goose hunt one fall.

If it ran through the bush or swam in a lake or river, he has caught it, shot it and we ate it.

I am sure my Dad probably shot over 100 deer and perhaps as many as 50 moose over his life plus he was a skilled duck, goose, woodcock and turkey hunter.

He had a very keen understanding of plants and habitat and loved the outdoors.

As a young man he travelled with his dog Bo all by himself throughout Algonquin Park. He fished and canoed and slept under the stars.

He could catch fish in an unstocked rain barrel and often did whenever we went fishing with him.

He may not have been a “great man” in many ways, but I am not sure how you measure greatness, and to us he was always larger than life and will always be remembered as one of the great Valley boys of his era.

Few like him are likely to pass this way again. Thanks Dad for all the memories.

Photo: Grant Horricks, shown in his portrait as reeve of the townships of Head, Clara and Maria, 1976-80.