There are bales of hay in rolling fields and trees ablaze in autumn glory along Alberta Highway 37 as it approaches Calahoo.
A sign welcomes visitors to the hamlet of 143 people 50 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. There is a firehall and a community hall, a hockey rink and two ball diamonds, a war memorial, a pair of churches, a general store and not a single stoplight.
On the street outside the rink stands a wood carving of a man in an Indigenous headdress with the Stanley Cup hoisted overhead. It is a tribute to local hero Craig Berube, who in 2019 became the first Indigenous coach to win hockey’s most hallowed hardware. Berube, who is part Cree, won it with the St. Louis Blues and afterward brought the Cup to his hometown.
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving more than 100 of his relatives – mostly from Calahoo and the surrounding area – gathered for their 10th annual family reunion.
They played softball for hours, hoping to win the Berube Cup – a tiny plastic trophy – and later enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast.
But Berube, a veteran of 17 NHL seasons as a player and 15 more in various coaching capacities, was nowhere to be found.
As usual, he was away because of hockey. In May, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that Berube would be the team’s new head coach – and so this year he was in Toronto, trying to start the impossible task of leading the team to its first Stanley Cup since 1967.
Even though Berube was not in Calahoo for the reunion, his presence was certainly felt in the mostly Métis community, partly thanks to the prevalence of Maple Leafs swag he sent home after he was hired.
His older sister, April Callihoo, was dressed in a Maple Leafs sweater. Berube’s father, Roger, and his uncle Emile wore Maple Leafs ball caps. So did others.
Because of its proximity to Edmonton, Calahoo is usually an Oilers stronghold. But the town’s love for Berube may soon change that. Their allegiance to the Leafs was preceded by a rooting interest in the St. Louis Blues when Berube coached there. “In all honesty, we all cheer for whatever team Craig is coaching,” his cousin, Ken Berube, said.
Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask guards against St. Louis in Game 3 of 2019's finals. Boston won that night, but lost the series.Jeff Roberson/The Associated Press
In 2019, Berube sent tickets to Games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup final for Ken and another cousin, Trent Berube.
“It was one of the biggest times of our lives,” Trent said. “It is etched in our memories.”
After St. Louis knocked off the Boston Bruins in seven games to win the franchise’s first championship, Berube brought the Stanley Cup to Calahoo, and thousands of people lined up for hours outside the local arena to get a picture with Berube and the trophy. After a while, police blocked traffic in and out of the hamlet. Some people had to be turned away.
Maple Leafs fans have high hopes that Berube can summon the same success he found in St. Louis in order to end Toronto’s 58 years of failure.
That pressure is one of the things that was on Callihoo’s mind when her brother was introduced as the new head coach. She was happy for him, but also worried.
“It is such a big market, and a Canadian one, that I was concerned, too,” she said as she sat at a picnic table beside the ball diamond. “It is a tough place to coach.”
Toronto is a meat grinder for NHL coaches. The team perennially has great expectations that are not met. Home games are sold out at the most expensive ticket prices in the league. The media is prickly and ever-present. After a loss or three pressure begins to build from fans. They alternately adore and hate the Maple Leafs.
The team has only made it to the second round of the NHL playoffs once since 2004. In that time, they’ve chewed through a who’s who of A-list coaches, including Pat Quinn, Paul Maurice, Ron Wilson, Randy Carlyle and Mike Babcock. Sheldon Keefe, who helmed the team since 2019, was fired in May after the Leafs bowed out in the first round. Berube was hired later that month.
Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving said he met with numerous candidates, but that Berube’s long playing and coaching careers – and hard-nosed approach – made him the most attractive. “As I went through the process, it kept coming back to Craig,” Treliving said. “He has touched every step on the ladder. Former players said they would go through a wall for him. We wanted someone who can command respect. You either have it or you don’t, and Craig has it.”
Berube had interviews with several clubs before he settled on Toronto. “For me, as a Canadian-born kid, any time you get a chance to coach the Maple Leafs, you jump on that. It’s a great honour.”
Berube skated in the NHL for 17 years, playing with a half-dozen different teams – including for Calgary at two different points in his career, and a stint with the Maple Leafs for the 1991-92 season.
He earned his keep with his fists. In 1,059 regular-season games he accrued 3,149 penalty minutes, the seventh most in league history. In one season alone he dropped the gloves two dozen times. He holds the record for the fewest number of points (159) among players who skated in 1,000 or more NHL games. He was listed as 6 foot 1 and 220 pounds and, at 58, still looks like he would wipe up the floor with you.
Berube's fights, like this 2002 dust-up with Anaheim's Denis Lambert, made him one of the top 10 most penalized NHL players in history.Patrick Price/Reuters
Including this season, he has been behind an NHL team’s bench as a head coach for nine years and has compiled a regular-season record of 286-194-73.
As head coach of the Blues, where he took over in November of 2018, he orchestrated a remarkable turnaround of a last-place team. From January on, the Blues went 30-10-5 over the rest of the regular season on their way to winning the Stanley Cup. It is the only time in NHL history a club has gone from last to first in such fashion.
“As an interim coach I thought he would probably be let go at the end of the season,” Berube’s uncle Emile said. “Then they started to win and it was unbelievable. I don’t think it will ever happen again.”
Berube was fired last year when the Blues had a poor start after missing the playoffs the previous year.
To Toronto, he brings a more disciplined, rugged approach. One of the first things he did during training camp was ban the music that blared during practice sessions under his predecessor.
And he recently shouted at Auston Matthews, Toronto’s star centre and team captain, after a mistake Matthews made led to a St. Louis goal. “It was nothing personal,” Berube said later. “It was just me being a coach and doing what I thought was right at the time.”
In Calahoo, Berube grew up on a farm where his family tended crops and raised cattle, pigs and chickens. The farm is no longer operational but it is where Berube brings his wife, Dominique Pino, and their three kids for a visit each summer.
“There is not a lot out there but it is beautiful,” he said. “It’s a very nice area, but I love it for family more than anything. My dad and my brothers see each other every other day.”
Berube’s family members now run a business called Calahoo Meats. They live on parcels of land beside each other and in the summer play golf four times a week at Calahoo Hills. The nine-hole course was built on the original homestead the Berubes began farming in 1931.
“It’s God’s country,” Roger Berube, Craig’s father, said. He is 86 and played hockey in a 50-and-over league until he was 82. At the end, he was the oldest guy in the league.
Berube learned to skate on an outdoor rink in town. His father would flood it in November, and kids would walk for kilometres to get to it.
“I remember going out there at 11 at night and helping to clean off the ice,” Berube said. “Then we would play shinny until two in the morning.”
Berube's last team before joining the NHL was the Medicine Hat Tigers in 1985-86, a season commemorated in the rafters of their arena.McImages
He left Calahoo in 1982 to play in British Columbia for the Williams Lake Mustangs of the Pacific Coast Junior Hockey League. After that he played in Kamloops and New Westminster, both in B.C., and Medicine Hat, Alta., before he was called up in 1986 by the Philadelphia Flyers.
From then on he played in the AHL and NHL until he retired in 2004.
“He’s quite unique in that he didn’t start at the top where all the scouts would have been able to see him,” Emile said. “He worked his way up through the ranks.”
In their youth, Berube and his cousin Ken played hockey together. Long games of one-on-one on Christmas Day became a tradition. Once the arena was built they took their rivalry indoors.
“We had the keys, and at the end of the day, we were allowed to play for as long as we wanted,” Ken said.
In 2019, Berube put Calahoo on the map when he brought it the Stanley Cup.
At about 1 p.m. on July 2, a few weeks after the win, Berube took the trophy to his parents’ front yard for a celebratory barbecue. At midnight, Phil Pritchard, the vice-president of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the keeper of the Cup, spirited it off to another Blues team member.
After they played softball on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Berube clan poured through the doors of Calahoo’s community hall. There, a Norman Rockwell painting came to life.
Kids coloured Thanksgiving decorations with help from their parents. Other little ones on Big Wheels rode in madcap circles. Someone pulled out a guitar and began to sing.
A display of family photos was set up on one side of the room, including a picture of Berube with the Stanley Cup, memorials to lives lost and Indigenous ancestry documents.
Before dinner one family member after another rose to talk about the things for which they are grateful. Afterward they lined up for a buffet that stretched nearly as far as the eye could see. There were dinner rolls and fried chicken. Roasted carrots and sweet potatoes. Mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. Pans of turkey and stuffing. And at another table cake and a handful of different types of pie.
Berube’s parents, Roger and Ramona, who have been married for 63 years, sat across from one another as they ate. They have three children and eight grandchildren.
“Craig was a hyper kid, but always a good kid,” Roger said. “He was always doing something. In winter time it was hockey and in summer he played ball.”
Ramona, thin as a rail, had a heaping plate in front of her. She planned to take leftovers home. She smiled: “As Craig always said, ‘There’s nothing better than eating.’”
After dinner was done and all the dishes were cleaned, a colossal family picture was taken, with Roger and Ramona Berube seated at the front.
It was an hour or two before the community hall began to empty out. Hugs were exchanged.
In Calahoo, if you are not a Berube, you are either friends with or married to one. And, chances are, you’ll soon be a Maple Leafs fan, too.
