Jim Fowler (1941 – 2014)
Jim Fowler played for the St. Mike's hockey team in Toronto before coming to the Yukon to teach school in 1965. He was a rugged and skilled hockey player. He developed a hockey school which he ran from 1969 to 1989.1) He instituted training and practice regimes for minor hockey and his representative team strategy developed elite players at all levels of the game.2) He coached a variety of rep teams between 1965 and 1986.3) He started the practice of having rep teams play in the division above their age group.4)
Fowler was one of sixteen coaches from across Canada to attend the 1974 Canada/Russia hockey series in the USSR and while there, he attended hockey clinics and seminars with Russian coaches and game officials. He was one of the founding members of the Yukon Amateur Hockey Association in 1979. This allowed Yukon to benefit from BC Hockey and Hockey Canada funds for clinics and player development. After this, the Yukon government supported hockey programs and trips outside the territory.5)
Jim Fowler was inducted into the Yukon Sports Hall of Fame in 1990. Fowler went out for an evening skate on Marsh Lake in November 2014 and skated off the edge of the ice and into the water. It was dark and the ice had no snow on it so it would have been impossible to tell the difference between ice and water.6)