There were sports books spread over two stacks. Many of them are oldies like a biography of Foster Hewitt, a pioneer in hockey broadcasting, and still regarded as one of the best play-by-play announcers ever.

You youngsters hear him every Saturday night at the beginning of Hockey Night in Canada. He’s the guy who says, “Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland.” He was also the voice of Canada’s win in the 1972 Summit Series. You have likely heard his call of Paul Henderson’s serieswinning goal.

“Here’s a shot. Henderson made a wild stab for it and fell. Here’s another shot. Right in front. They scored! Henderson has scored for Canada!”

I think Henderson’s goal was the biggest in Canadian hockey history, although people can make a case for Sydney Crosby’s gold-medal winning goal at the 2010 Olympics.

I kept digging through the second pile until I came to one called Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling. I remember buying it at a used-book store, and looking for it one day soon after. I came to the conclusion that the store clerk probably didn’t put it in the bag with the other books I purchased.

And there it was in this pile.

It was published back in 2005. When I was a kid, I watched Stampede Wrestling every Saturday on television. My brother and I tried holds on each other. I was a good guy and he was a bad guy. I like to think our lives turned out that way, but I would be lying.

Anyway, there was also a Stampede Wrestling card once a week in Saskatoon.

One of my memories of my grandfather was him taking me to Stampede Wrestling at the smokefilled Saskatoon Arena. The wrestlers were those that I saw on television every Saturday. It is too long ago to recall, but I likely thought the fights were real until a night when my father had to make a service call at the Barry Hotel in Saskatoon.

Dad had a shuffleboard table in the bar. It was out of order, so we jumped into Dad’s wood-panelled Ford station wagon and off we went. I couldn’t go into the bar, so I sat in the car.

To my dismay, a good guy from wrestling was on the street with a bad guy. When they didn’t come to blows, I got really suspicious about the reality of wrestling. Dad told me there were a large number of wrestlers drinking in the bar. My life was ruined.

For the most part, author Heath McCoy doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the wrestling game in Western Canada and beyond.

Stampede Wrestling was owned by Stu Hart, the father of Bret and Owen. There are 10 other kids in the family. Most were involved in the family business in some way.

While the Harts come off as relatively being well-grounded, many of the other performers featured were, for the most part, not upstanding citizens. Drugs, booze and domestic abuse are themes. My childhood wrestling hero, Dave Ruhl, was not portrayed as the man I imagined him to be. He was called a pig farmer from Hanna, Alta., but didn’t even have pigs on his farm. Sheesh.

There were fights in dressing rooms, in bars and on highways when vans broke down. Wrestlers were paid poorly, housed in seedy hotels and travelled long distances in crammed vehicles for weekly shows in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

My friend Ned Powers was Stu Hart’s eyes in Saskatoon for a spell. He quit in disgust after a number of dressing-room incidents, including threats to his well-being.

There were mean-spirited gags that often involved spiked drinks and laxatives. There were some hilarious ones as well.

One that made me laugh out loud occurred when a rookie wrestler timidly approached nasty Bad News Allen, a guy with a loose screw. The other wrestlers encouraged the rookie to introduce himself and say he heard that Allen’s son was a concert pianist.

“I want to congratulate you on your son and what a terrific pianist he is,” the rookie said, according to the story shared by author Heath McCoy.

Bad News was not happy. He grabbed the rookie, threw him and put a knife to the kid’s throat.

“Are you making a joke about my kid?” Allen screamed. “My kid lost his fingers in a lawn mower accident. I should kill you.”

To bring this column to more modern times, many WWE stars got their starts in Stampede Wrestling. They learned the tricks of the trade in the basement of Stu Hart’s mansion. Stu Hart brutalized young wrestlers down there to see if they had what it took to join his cast. It was cruel, like tortuous cruel.

Hart believed in old-fashioned wrestling, with enough showmanship to bring crowds out. He didn’t like the comic-like characters that the WWE created. Eventually, Vince McMahon and his WWE show all but put Stampede Wrestling out of business.

Among Hart’s pupils were future WWE wrestlers like the British Bulldogs (Davey Boy Smith and the Dynamite Kid). Both are dead now. Smith died of a heart attack at age 39. He was once married to Hart’s daughter, Diana. After they divorced, he hooked up with the ex-wife of one of the Hart brothers.

The Dynamite Kid, who is portrayed as unstable to put it mildly, didn’t quit fighting until he needed a wheelchair. He died in 2018.

Chris Benoit was another who started with Hart. He rose to stardom in the WWE. In 2007, he killed his wife, his son and himself.

Jim (The Anvil) Neidhart played pro football before showing up at Stu Hart’s door. He was married to one of Stu Hart’s daughters. He died of a head injury in 2018.

Chris Jericho is another from Hart’s torture chamber who made it big. Some regard him as the greatest wrestler of all time. He has done well as an author, musician and wrestler. He is the leader singer for a heavymetal band named Fozzy.

Owen and Bret Hart learned the ropes from their father and became stars in the WWE. Some regard Bret Hart as the greatest ever. There must be a long list of the greatest of all time. He was darn good though.

Owen died in May 1999 when a stunt went wrong. Hart, who wasn’t comfortable with the trick, was going to be lowered to the ring from an estimated eight storeys above it.

McMahon allegedly didn’t pay the $5,000 for a pro to run the apparatus, and one safety feature was removed to make the stunt look better cosmetically. The only thing holding Hart in the air was a buckle that unsnapped. Hart fell to his death, but that night’s show went on.

In pro wrestling, the show always went on.

-Cam Hutchinson