Dozens of items — including press passes, media guides and books — that helped propel broadcasting legend Bob Cole to the heights of hockey greatness were put up for auction in St. John’s, N.L.
The collection includes multiple VHS tapes and photos signed by Don Cherry, a pair of gloves signed by Wayne Gretzky, and dozens of other pieces of hockey memorabilia collected by the late broadcaster before he died in 2024.
Hilary Cole, one of Bob’s four children, said the family connected with Bartlett’s Auction House in after wondering what they should do with what remained of their father’s collection. The children had already picked some of the precious items they wanted to keep.
“They kind of tell the story of all the places he’s been,” Hilary Cole said, especially the press passes that were always hanging on the door handles of her father’s house in St. John’s.
“It’s hard to say goodbye to this stuff because it’s part of the process,” she said. “And we’re not unlike any other family in that way.”
Cole said the auction should help reach people who might want to have a bit of the hockey history that her dad accumulated.
Bob Cole became synonymous with Hockey on Saturday Night for millions of Canadians throughout his career calling play-by-play for Hockey Night in Canada.
His career spanned decades, bringing some of the biggest moments in the game to life — from Canada’s 2002 Olympic Men’s Hockey Victory to the infamous 1976 exhibition game between the USSR’s “Red Army” team and the Philadelphia Flyers.
And it all started, according to his daughter, because of his own audacity: The courage it took for a young man from St. John’s to march into then-broadcaster Foster Hewitt’s office and hand him a demo tape.
“We all got to learn a lot from our dad, but his tenacity was something that I don’t know if you can learn. It’s something that he might have been born with.”
Among the collection of hockey memorabilia are a few of Bob Cole’s personal interests: A set of Frank Sinatra videos and a stack of books about the American Mafia.
The mafia was a “fascination” for Cole, his daughter said, he even became convinced he had a run in with an American mobster after getting into a small altercation with a man outside of a Boston hotel. Shortly thereafter, the man’s arrest made headlines on the local newscast.
“When they arrived back at the next hotel back in New York City…[they] were all upgraded into their hotel rooms,” she said. “They were given VIP service in their hotels and huge fruit baskets.”
“So, there was like a message saying, we know who you are, we know where you are, and don’t talk about our guy.”
Hilary Cole says his father guarded that story closely, still convinced — even late in life — that the mafia might still have their eye on him.
Although the auction is hosted in St. John’s, bidding is open to nationally and internationally. The auction closes on Tuesday night.
