He Shoots! He Scores!
Ernie Keefe grew up in Timmins, Ontario, an area where his father had prospected before the town existed. His mother and sisters were baptized by Dr. Morley Hall in the fledgling First Baptist Church. Ernie recalls Dr. Slade and Dr. Brackstone, as well as those who taught him in Sunday School.
Ernie never missed an opportunity to be involved in sports activities, representing his school each year in hockey, soft ball, and soccer. By the age of 15 he was playing junior baseball and juvenile hockey. “That was when juvenile hockey, with its age limit at 18, and not midget, was the steppingstone to major junior hockey.”[1] In his third year in Juvenile A he played with the championship South Porcupine Red Wings. Ernie centred a line, played on the point in power plays, and often was sent out to play defense in key situations. A future was opening for him in hockey. He was fourth in scoring in the six-team league and led the Red Wings in points and goals in the playoffs.
The following year it was Junior A major hockey with Porcupine Combines. The Combines won the Northern Ontario Hockey Association title and played against the powerful Barrie Flyers for the All-Ontario title.
During the finals with Barrie, Ernie signed a “C” form with a professional team and was also approached by Barrie Flyers to play for them the following season. Everything seemed to be opening up for a promising career in hockey. After the All-Ontario finals, Hap Emms (Barrie Coach and part owner) invited Ernie to move to Barrie immediately, which he gladly did. While Barrie was waiting for Québec and the Maritimes to finish their finals so they could play the winner, Barrie played an exhibition game. Though Ernie could not play for Barrie until the following season, Hap Emms did ask him to play an exhibition game. Ernie felt at ease playing with Barrie and scored a picture-perfect goal in the second period. During the third period, however, he badly injured his knee.
The first day of training camp the following fall, Ernie discovered that, when he put a lot of pressure on his knee, it would slip out. He hid the injury and began the season with a goal and an assist in his first official game with Barrie. The knee injury worsened, however and this affected his play. Since he was a smaller player, his skating, and the ability to shift easily one way or the other were assets he counted on. But his play suffered, and he recalled that his mother told him when she saw his progress in sports, not to put anything ahead of the Lord, because He could take it away from him.
Not being able to play up to par, Ernie was traded to the Galt Junior A team without Galt’s knowing about his knee problem. The trainer for Galt, upon learning about Ernie’s problem, gave him a knee support and he was able to regain his skating ability and was anxious for the next game.
Ernie’s line began the game that night and came very close to scoring. On their second turn on the ice, however, as he was skating to take a pass on his backhand, his defensemen misread the play and fired a hard shot which Ernie did not see coming toward him. It stuck him on the head—this was before helmets were used—and he fell unconscious to the ice with a fractured skull. He regained consciousness for a short period of time and was surprised to find himself in the dressing room with a towel around his head. He noted that the players who carried him off the ice, and the referee, were all there. The game had been stopped. He heard the doctor say to the team manager, “it is very serious. We will have to rush him to the hospital.” Ernie tried to ask what had happened but he could not speak. Part of his brain had been paralyzed. Ernie began to wonder if he would die that night. He was not ready. Death would be a step into the unknown and he did not have the assurance of salvation. Before slipping again into unconsciousness, he silently pleaded with God to spare him that he might read the gospel for himself and find salvation.
The doctor who examined him at the hospital told a family member that brain surgery might be necessary, that his career in hockey was over, and that he might not fully regain his speech.
During convalescence Ernie accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour and received a peace that he didn’t know existed. To everyone’s surprise, he returned to hockey before the end of the season, regained his old form and his speech returned. Unsure of God’s plan for his life, he returned to training camp the following September. The day before the beginning of camp he heard about a missionary who had been killed on a foreign field. His wife had to return to Canada with her children. Her great concern was leaving a tribe without anyone to tell them about Jesus. Throughout this, God showed Ernie that he could be that person. Going on the ice the next day, two possible futures were in the balance: take the gospel to those who had never heard, or follow career in hockey. At the end of training camp Ernie was assigned to a farm team in the States but he asked the team management if he could go home and think it over for two days. He prayed for guidance and, in his Bible reading that evening, he read the words “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And straightway they left their nets and followed Him.” Ernie knew beyond a doubt what was God’s will. He prayed for the strength to make the decision. Immediately he went to the basement and hung up his skates. He would be a missionary, taking the gospel to those who had never heard and would die without hope without the gospel.
This excerpt is taken from Trailblazers: Life Stories of Pastors and Missionaries, compiled by Rev. Fred Vaughan and published in 2001 by Guardian Books. The edited and revised edition of this volume will be available in Spring 2026.
Look for a fuller version of Ernie Keefe story in his autobiography, God in the Midst of the Events that Shook Québec, published by Éditions SEMBEC in 2017.
[1] Bill Boyd, Hockey Towns: Stories of Small Town Hockey in Canada, (Doubleday Canada, 1998), p 74