By Bruce Campbell
Staff Reporter
Men throughout the Foothills are trying to grow something under their noses in an effort to raise money for prostrate cancer as part of the Movember movement.
There’s no need to panic if you are giving a moustache a try for the first time. Three Okotoks area men who have had moustaches for practically as long as they have had noses have provided some advice on life with considerably more than peach fuzz above their upper lip.
A hairy Bearcat
There was panic at the Murray household when the residents received a phone call from a reporter concerning Bearcat’s famous moustache and a fund-raiser.
“My wife (Shirley) told me it was about my moustache and a fundraiser,” Murray said. “I told her: ‘There is no bloody way I’m phoning him — he will want me to cut it off.’”
He wasn’t always so concerned about his ’stache.
Murray’s upper lip was as bald as his current head when he was attending high school in Okotoks. It was after an unsuccessful playoff run with the Calgary Centennials in 1974 he decided to keep his moustache.
“We had just been eliminated from the playoffs and I was shaving off my beard and I got to my moustache and I said: ‘The heck with it. I’m going to keep it.’”
The moustache has been part of the hall-of-fame trainer ever since. It helped inspire Bostonians to don skullcaps and phony moustaches to form the Bearcat Murray Fan Club.
While the 1970s were known for hairy-lipped athletes like the Oakland A’s, hockey player Derek “The Turk” Sanderson, tennis player John Newcombe and others, Murray’s boss back in the 1970s, the legendary Centennials’ head coach Scotty Munro didn’t like Bearcat’s new look.
“He always said anybody who had a beard or a moustache must be hiding something — that they were goofy,” he said. “He really frowned upon it, but I stuck with it.”
Murray went onto be the trainer with the Calgary Cowboys of the old World Hockey Association and the Calgary Flames of the NHL.
That’s a lot of great players, not to mention some great moustaches — Kent Nilsson, Bill Clement and of course, Lanny.
“Lanny’s moustache was the most famous,” Murray said while gazing at a picture of the 1989 Stanley Cup champions. “But it was all red — you couldn’t see it. Colin Patterson had a great beard and moustache, Rob Ramage had a dandy. Brad McCrimmon also had dandy, but he’s all scarred up like he was in a threshing machine. He was a tough player.”
Murray’s name is often the first one-mentioned when it comes to charity work. However, there was one time he kept a stiff upper lip and said no.
“There was one time a while back a charity asked me to shave it off,” he said. “I said you are going too far there. I’m going to keep it.”
Mayoral ’stache
The last thing you want to be accused of as a politician is being two-faced. However, Okotoks Mayor Bill Robertson chose to be two-faced more than 25 years ago.
“I started out by growing a beard and then I would shave off just half of it and walk around like that for a day just to see if anyone would notice,” Robertson said. “Surprisingly, when someone meets you for the first time they would notice. But when someone knows you, they don’t study your face. They didn’t notice.”
Robertson estimated he’s had a moustache for more than 25 years. He grew one for the reason most males don the ‘stache for the first time.
“I grew it because I could,” Robertson said. “I couldn’t grow a moustache in high school and I had a friend of mine who could way before I did. I was a little bit envious.”
The Robertson-style moustache is easy to keep. He trims it now and then.
While he’s known for having the traditional moustache, he has gone off the beaten path now and then.
“I have had the fu-Manchu before and I have had the narrow one as well,” Robertson said.
There’s been one noticeable change over the years, the colour of his moustache. It’s got what the late-great Jerry Garcia would call a touch of grey.
“It’s now what I call salt-and-pepper,” Robertson said. Meanwhile, Bill’s wife Elaine, fortunately, likes Bill’s moustache just fine.
“It would be interesting though to see what he would like if he shaved it off,” Elaine said. “One time he shaved his head for cancer, but he kept the moustache.”
Elaine was dating Bill back when he shaved just half his beard — and she married him anyway.
“I didn’t really notice to start with,” she said with a laugh. “I just thought something was going a little odd — ‘What’s going on with your face?’
An engineer’s precision
An Okotoks engineer doesn’t get too technical when describing the hair hanging under his nose. He sounds more skateboarder rather than engineer.
“I call it gnarly,’” Marley Oness said with a laugh. “I’ve had it for 35 years. I shaved it off once about 20 years ago and my wife said: ‘Grow it back.’
“My two kids were both traumatized when I shaved it off.”
Oness was one of those guys who could grow a moustache in high school — he sported a goatee while attending Ponoka High School in the 1970s.
His present moustache just kind of grew on him.
“It just happened — there was never any plan,” Oness explained. “It was just a case of leaving it a little bit longer at one point and it looked okay. There was never any conscious plan to have it look this way.”
However, now he’s careful to keep it that way.
“Oh yeah, I trim it myself about once every four months,” Oness said. “I guess it is part of my identity.”
His facial hair gets a mixed review from his family.
“Three of my kids like it but one of my daughters says she hates it,” Oness said.
The Okotoks Western Wheel’s male staff members are all participating in Movember. To see regular updates on the staff’s progress go to the Western Wheel’s facebook page. To make a donation to the Wheel staff’s Movember effort go to www.movember.com
