The tie belonged to my uncle George.
It was black, and covered with NHL team logos, including his Habs and my Leafs.
For one day I actually wished the Hab logo was front and centre.
You could tell the tie was made in the 1990s, with no Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus or Minnesota.
It had the old logos for teams like Anaheim and San Jose, Buffalo and Washington, even that ugly-as-sin robot Coyote with the hole in its chest.
The others were wearing cartoon ties featuring the likes of Fred Flintstone, Charlie Brown and Yosemite Sam, but the hockey tie had been picked for me, and it was a good choice.
My uncle George was one of the people who got me into sports, although he couldn't brainwash me into rooting for Les Habitants.
He held court between the pipes his whole life, and it was one of his greatest pleasures.
He still had all the Top Goalie awards from minor hockey, and at age 46, barely a week before his death, he bought brand-new goalie pads.
George taught gym class in Australia for close to 15 years, and in that time he converted his stepson and God knows how many students into "ice hockey" fans.
Baseball was another passion and he was a mainstay on the Crapaud senior team in his younger days.
The old legend was that he could fire a strike from centre field and burn the catcher's hand, and even from our days playing on the lawn, I knew it to be true.
There was never a family gathering with George present when we didn't haul out the gloves for a long game of 500. George batted early and often.
Paintball was one of his great loves, and he set up several games each summer, badgering people to come until they gave in.
His favourite part was pitting his friends from work against his family. That, or comparing the welts when we got home.
Given all that, it came as a surprise when I found his high school yearbook last week and discovered that his favourite sports in 1982 were football, basketball and volleyball.
Aside from team sports, George would try any outdoor adventure once, and more often than not it became a regular activity.
In the last two years he threw himself into golfing, something he'd shown no interest in growing up, and before long he was a pretty decent duffer.
My uncle George died suddenly in a motorcycle accident on June 22, less than five minutes from home in North Tryon, P.E.I.
The news came as a shock, especially for a man who was full of life, a big kid at heart, who never met a sport he didn't like.
He had driven bikes his whole life. We don't know what happened. We'll probably never know.
All we know is George touched countless lives in two countries and has left a massive hole on Earth.
We already knew that, but it has been reinforced by an overwhelming display of grief, including dozens of his students giving heartfelt condolences on his Facebook page, recalling the times he made them laugh in gym class and helped them with life issues.
He was much more than a teacher to them, just as he was much more than an uncle to me. He was a big brother. And now he is gone.
Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at [email protected], on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshlewis306 or on his Bruins blog at http://bruinbanter.blogspot.com. Don't worry, he's not laughing at you. He's laughing at the Colorado Avalanche, who have suddenly become worse than the Toronto Maple Leafs at trading for goalies.
