Kirk Scott
George “Kirk” Scott was born in Windsor, Ontario, on March 31st, 1941. He went to a segregated school in Harrow, Ontario, and described his youth as one filled with confusion and loneliness.[1] In 1953, he found himself looking for purpose, and began spending more time around the Windsor arena. One day, he came across a man carrying hockey bags and asked the man if he needed any assistance. The man said yes, and Scott was offered a job as a stick boy. He soon learned that these players were actual NHL athletes getting ready to play some official hockey. This was his introduction to the great Canadian pastime, and he realized that hockey excited him, even though there were no other Black players in sight.[2]
Scott’s first year of playing hockey was the 1954-1955 season with the inception of the Windsor Minor Hockey Association. He won the championship for the season, and the following year joined the team at Patterson Collegiate as the only Black player. At this point in his life, he knew his purpose was to play hockey professionally and to show the world that Black players could play as skillfully as their white counterparts.[3] As he continued his journey through the world of minor hockey, Scott was met with adversity in the form of racism and inequality, yet he did not let it hamper his love for the game. In the 1960-1961 season, he, along with Americans “Mel” Carter and Ronald “Pud” Smith Jr., were part of one of the few teams in history to place three Black players at the same time. Scott eventually earned a tryout with the Detroit Red Wings in 1972 at the age of 33. He admits that even though he played hard, his size simply was not a fit for the NHL, and he left on his own accord.[4]
Even while he was playing, Scott found time to coach at the Windsor Arena between the other jobs he worked to support his family. A fruitful career coaching the Windsor Spitfires, as well as the Plymouth Whalers, led Scott to an induction in the International Afro-American Sports Hall of Fame in Detroit. With an incredible hockey career behind him, Scott decided to focus on bringing awareness to minority and Black hockey history in a game historically dominated by white players and coaches. His biography Half In Half Out tells his story, as well as providing information on various aspects of Black sporting history in Canada and in the United States. Scott claims that the biography does not just belong to the Black community, but it belongs to the world. From the time he began playing hockey, his goal was to disprove the notion that Blacks did not qualify to coach or play. His contributions to hockey, Windsor-Essex County, and Black history prove that this goal was achieved.
Researched and written by Mark McWhinney, University of Windsor student