small village of Humberstone, Ontario, which in 1970 was amalgamated into the city of Port Colborne. Ted's father, Gordon Kennedy, was killed in a hunting accident eleven days before he was born and his mother, Margaret, was left to raise a family of four children. To supplement her income she took a job selling confectioneries at a local hockey arena which became young Ted's second home. When Ted was seven years old a family friend took him to Toronto to see the first two games of the 1932 Stanley Cup finals and from watching those games Maple Leaf right winger Charlie Conacher became his childhood hero. He wore Conacher's no. 9 throughout his minor hockey career. In Port Colborne, Kennedy was childhood friends with Elmer Iseler, who found fame as a choir conductor and Don Gallinger who became infamous when he was banned for life by the NHL for gambling while playing with the Boston Bruins in 1948. Kennedy played with the Port Colborne Lions in the Ontario Minor Hockey Association as a bantam, midget and juvenile. His nickname "Teeder" is a short form of his real name which was used by other neighbourhood boys because they could not pronounce "Theodore" and was overheard by a local reporter with the Welland Tribune. During Kennedy's NHL years, newspapers often used the spelling "Teeter". Kennedy was captain of the midget Port Colborne Lions when they won the O.M.H.A. Championship in 1941. The Toronto Star described the 15-year-old Kennedy as a "shifty rightwinger" who had "paced the Lions to victory, scoring five goals, two of which were solo efforts." On May 7, 1941, at a banquet in Port Colborne honouring the championship team, one of the speakers was Hap Day, coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He spoke to the players, advising them that "keen desire" and "hard work" was required to get to the top in hockey as in any job in life and that hockey salaries were "equal to other leading professions". Day then presented members of the team with jackets bearing the championship crest. In only two years, Kennedy was playing for Hap Day's Toronto Maple Leafs. The next season Kennedy's juvenile team made it to the finals. During the season, Kennedy had scored seven goals in one game and six in another and it was efforts such as those which were attracting the attention of professional hockey people. The