Walter Gretzky, (October 8, 1938 – March 4, 2021) was a Canadian philanthropist who was best known as the father of Canadian ice hockey icon Wayne Gretzky.
An avid hockey player as a youth, and a keen analyst of the game, he built a backyard rink for his children, and coached Wayne continually from the age of three, devising creative exercises and drills, and teaching him profound insights into how to play successfully. Wayne credited his father as playing a key role in his success, citing advice such as "skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been".
Gretzky contributed to minor hockey in Canada, and helped many local, provincial and national charities, for which he was honoured.
Early life
The Gretzky family were landowners in the multinational Russian Empire, and supporters of Tsar Nicholas II, originally from Grodno (now in Belarus). Prior to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Gretzky's father Anton ("Tony") Gretzky (, ) immigrated along with his family to Canada via the United States, landing first in Chicago. Following World War I, Anton, who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, married Mary, who immigrated from the town of Pidhaitsi, in what was then eastern Poland and after World War II became western Ukraine due to border shifts.
Gretzky's ancestry is typically described as either Belarusian, Ukrainian, or Polish. In interviews, Gretzky stated that his parents were "white Russians from Belarus", and whenever anyone asked his father if they were Russian, he would reply, "Nyet. Belarus." On other occasions he mentioned his family's Polish ancestry. In his autobiography, however, Gretzky stated that his first language was Ukrainian which would logically have come from his mother's influence and which is not inconsistent with being of Belarusian or Polish heritage on his father's side.
Tony and Mary owned a cucumber farm in Canning, Ontario, where Walter Gretzky was born and raised. This is where he met his future wife, Phyllis Hockin, at a wiener roast when she was 15 and he was 18. She may have been a descendant of British General Sir Isaac Brock, a hero of the War of 1812. They married in 1960, and moved to Brantford, Ontario, where Gretzky worked as a cable repairman for Bell Telephone Canada. The family moved into a house on Varadi Avenue in Brantford seven months after the birth of their son, Wayne, chosen partly because the yard was flat enough to be able to make an ice rink every winter. The couple would later have a daughter, Kim, and three more sons, Keith, Glen, and Brent.
Background in sport
Gretzky was an athlete in high school. In track and field, he set school records in running, pole vault, and long jump. He preferred hockey, and in his teens was a prolific goal-scorer during five years of play with the Junior B-level Woodstock Warriors. He set his sights on the National Hockey League (NHL), and some thought he was destined to make it there.
A local car salesman gave Gretzky a bargain so he could more easily drive to hockey games in and around Woodstock, but his relatively small size and weight, at 5-foot-9 inches and 140 lbs, was a problem for progressing in hockey. He tried out for the Junior A level Toronto Marlboros, a few weeks after catching chicken pox and losing considerable weight. Although he scored just as many goals in the tryout game as any of his fellow hopefuls, he was judged to be too small for the higher league. He returned to play with the Woodstock team.
Career
Walter was an installer and repairman for Bell Canada for 34 years, retiring in 1991. A work-related injury in 1961 put him in a coma and deafened his right ear.
Five days after his 53rd birthday, in 1991, a near-fatal brain aneurysm impaired his short-term memory. His physical therapist, Ian Kohler, married his daughter Kim in 1995. His ordeal is the basis of the CBC movie Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story.
He helped charities and fundraisers and coached at his summer youth hockey camp in California.
Coaching
Walter Gretzky devised numerous creative ways to develop hockey skills, which were often ahead of their time in Canada. Wayne Gretzky would later remark that the Soviet national team's practice drills, which impressed Canada in 1972, had nothing to offer him: "I'd been doing those drills since I was three. My Dad was very smart."