Early Years
Born in Toronto, Smythe played hockey for Upper Canada College and Runnymede Collegiate Institute in the 1930s and then went to the University of Toronto where he graduated with an engineering degree. He played one season with the Varsity Blues men's ice hockey team. In the 1940–41 season, he briefly played with the Toronto Marlboros, managed by Harold Ballard, whom Smythe had known since he was a young boy.
Smythe enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. After the war, he became a partner in his father's gravel business. In the late 1940s, he was hired as coach of the Marlboros by Ballard, the team president. Smythe was later promoted to managing director.
Read more about this topic: Stafford Smythe
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I was able to believe for years that going to Madame Swann’s was a vague chimera that I would never attain; after having passed a quarter of an hour there, it was the time at which I did not know her which became to me a chimera and vague, as a possible destroyed by another possible.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)