CCM Tacks - Part 2 of 3

MONTREAL - We published a six-part feature series in The Gazette last week on milestones under the headline: "Remember your first...?"

There were stories about "my first apartment", "my first car", "my first kiss", and "my first cat" among others.

The series reminded me of a sports milestone of my youth: my first pair of Tacks.

If you’re around my age (48) and played hockey as a kid, you probably had a pair of CCM Tacks skates on your Christmas wish list. If you were really good, you might have even wished for a pair of Super Tacks.

If you were really lucky, you got a pair.

CCM Hockey started out as Canada Cycle and Motor Company Limited in 1899 out of Weston, Ont., but it wasn’t until 1905 when the bicycle market started to crash that the company began making hockey equipment. The Tacks began as a boot designed by shoemaker George Tackaberry in 1905 after Hall of Famer Joe Hall felt the boot of his skate wasn’t good enough and went to Tackaberry to design a better one. CCM got the Tackaberry name when the shoemaker died in 1937 and started putting out the Tacks line of skates.

I finally got my first pair of Tacks when I was 13, and was so excited that I wrote a composition about it for my English class. My mother actually found the paper recently while clearing out some boxes at her house (she also found a box full of my old hockey and baseball cards a few years ago. Thanks, Mom!).

My Tacks weren’t under the Christmas tree. As a growing boy, new skates were an annual thing and Tacks weren’t cheap. Like many Canadian kids, I had a couple of pairs of Bauer Black Panthers, including a pair purchased at Howie Meeker Hockey School. They were good skates, but they weren’t Tacks. At the time, most of the players in the NHL were wearing Tacks or Super Tacks.

But before the start of my 1976-77 hockey season, my parents gave me the okay to get a pair of Tacks. After shopping around, I found them on sale in the sports department at the old downtown Eaton’s store.

“There they were,” I wrote in the composition. “The skates I dreamed of. Tacks with the new Tuuk blades. I tried them on and they fit perfectly. I couldn’t believe it ... I finally had the skates I had always wanted. I can’t wait to try them out in a game.”

I remember bringing the skates home and putting them beside my bed when I went to sleep that night so I could look at them again when I woke up.

Jean Béliveau was one of the many Canadiens players I remember wearing Tacks and I called him at home this week to see if he remembered when he got his first pair.

“Probably when I played junior for the Quebec Citadelles,” he said. “When I first started (playing hockey) in my hometown of Victoriaville, I don’t think I had that good of a skate.

“My first pair of skates were a Christmas gift from my parents when I was 3 or 4,” Béliveau recalled, “but don’t ask me what kind they were.”

Béliveau remembers wearing Daoust skates at one point in his Hall of Fame career, saying he did some advertising for the company “and I wouldn’t advertise a product if I didn’t use it myself.”

But Béliveau wore Tacks for most of his career with the Canadiens and was wearing them when he scored his 500th career goal in 1971 and when he won his 10th and final Stanley Cup later that year. Béliveau saved those skates and put them up for auction a few years ago.

“The grace and speed ‘Le Gros Bill’ displayed skating up and down NHL ice surfaces was always done while wearing CCM Tackaberry skates and these can be considered the most significant pair of blades ever offered from the legend’s magnificent career,” is how Classic Auctions described them.

The skates sold for $10,000 as one of 195 items Béliveau put up for auction, bringing in almost $1 million. Béliveau, now 80, chose to sell much of his memorabilia to offer a financial cushion for himself and his wife, Elise, along with their daughter, Hélène, and granddaughters Mylène and Magalie.

Marc Juteau, the president of Classic Auctions, told me his company also sold a pair of Super Tacks that Bobby Orr wore during the 1974-75 season with the Boston Bruins for $10,000. That was the season the Hall of Fame defenceman won his second Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer with 46 goals and 89 assists for 135 points.

CCM Hockey no longer makes the Tacks line and today’s kids are probably dreaming of a pair of U+ Crazy Light CCM skates like the ones Alex Ovechkin wears. Or maybe they want a pair of Reebok 11K Pump skates like Sidney Crosby wears, or a pair of Bauer Vapor skates like the ones Steven Stamkos wears.

But there was a time when most Canadian boys wanted a pair of Tacks.

I wish I had saved mine. They wouldn’t be worth a dime at auction, but the memory is priceless.

Reprinted with the kind permission of Stu Cowan and the Montreal Gazette.