RCAF Flyers (an Ottawa-based RCAF hockey team)

SGT FRANCIS GEORGE BOUCHER - Section 40, Lots 52 NW, 53 SW Frank Boucher was born March 3, 1918 into a well-known hockey family. His father, John Georges “Buck” Boucher, and three uncles were all professional hockey players, and both Boucher’s father and Uncle Frank are recognized in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Boucher was a sergeant with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1948, when it looked like Canada would not be sending a hockey team to compete in the Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. With only two days before the International Hockey Federation deadline for the Games, Dr. Sandy Watson, an RCAF squadron leader managed get permission to assemble a team, using members of the RCAF Flyers (an Ottawa-based RCAF hockey team he managed) as a starting point.

He appointed Boucher and his father as coaches, and left them with the unenviable task of finding players and scrounging up equipment. After scrounging up a rag-tag group of 75 hopefuls, Boucher and his father had only a very short time to get the Flyers in shape.

The first two exhibition games were humiliating, and the Bouchers made emergency calls to several NHL and university teams, begging for players. With several late additions, the team finally stood a chance. Once they made it to Europe, the Flyers played a staggering 42 exhibition games, of which they managed to win 31 and tie six. But the team really shone when the real competition began, winning five of their first six games (against Italy, Poland, Austria, the US, Britain) and coming in tied at zero with Czechoslovakia.

The final game against Sweden was a difficult match – the Flyers needed to win by two goals to finish ahead of the Czech team, and they were battling both slushy ice conditions and partisan referees. Despite the odds, the Canadian team won the game 3-0 and captured their fifth Olympic gold in hockey.

In 2000, the Canadian Forces recognized this “Cinderella team” (as they were dubbed by the press at the time) as Canada’s greatest military athletes of the 20th century. Boucher was able to attend the award ceremony, and relive the victory.

Boucher is recognized in both the Ottawa and Canadian Forces sports halls of fame, and he played hockey for Providence and Philadelphia of the American Hockey League and the New York Rovers of the Eastern Hockey League.

Boucher died on December 3, 2003, and is buried in the Boucher family plot at Beechwood.