HUNT: Bedard fan, golfer, Terry Fox loyalist

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Brian Rosborough had a pretty good week.

On Monday, the long-suffering fan of the Chicago Blackhawks watched his team upset the mighty Toronto Maple Leafs on Rogers Monday Night Hockey. The kid anointed the game’s next superstar had four shots on goal and showed a brilliant flash or two – certainly enough to justify Rosborough’s $190 investment in a red Blackhawks jersey emblazoned with the number 98 and the name Bedard on the back.

On Wednesday, he completed a quest some 47 years in the making. The nine-hole Pines golf course at Grand Lake marks the 65th course he’s played in the province, and he believes he’s now played ‘em all.

A retired fuel tax auditor with the department of finance in the provincial government, his job took him to every town in the province. He took his clubs and played after work. Mactaquac has been his most frequent and his favourite.

Earlier this summer, he shot the round of his life, an 80 at Welsford.

“Three days later, I shot a 96 at Covered Bridge in Hartland,” he said. “That’s golf.”

But he enjoys it for “the exercise, the camaraderie with my buddies, the outdoors, the smell of the grass, and the one or two good shots a round.”

He puts them away reluctantly. Four years ago, he played Carman Creek on Dec. 27.

“It just started snowing when we got there,” he said. “We played seven holes because it got too snowy.”

He’s played basketball, fast pitch, slo pitch, served as commissioner or president for leagues in all three; coached kids teams in hockey, basketball and soccer – 17 of them as he followed his son Adam up through the system in all three – and still plays oldtimers hockey a couple of times a week. He wears the jersey he ordered from nhl.com within days of the Blackhawks drafting hockey’s next great superstar, Connor Bedard.

Rosborough – Rosie to his legion of friends – became a Hawks fan when he started following hockey in 1967, drawn in by that jersey and the magnetism of No. 9, Bobby Hull. Later, when the Hawks started winning again – three Stanley Cups in five years – he became a fan of captain Jonathan Toews. But that jersey is in the back of the closet now, replaced by number 98. He even has a framed picture of Bedard hanging in the kitchen of his Fredericton home.

“I’ve watched all four games and a couple of exhibition games … I think he’s amazing,” said Rosborough.

But his all-time hero as an athlete is Terry Fox.

Rosborough has taken part in all 43 editions of the Terry Fox Run. If he knows Bedard’s stats by heart – a goal and two assists in his first four NHL games – he has Fox’s committed to memory: 42 kilometres per day for 143 days, from April 12 through Sept. 1, 1980, all on an artificial right leg, to raise money for cancer research.

The cause is close to Brian: he lost his dad, Tex, to cancer in 1981. Four years ago, his mom, Marion and younger brother Wayne died of cancer just six weeks apart. In February 2022, Karen Craig, his partner of 13 years, died in his arms due to the combined effects of lymphoma and COVID.

“So I will be dead before I miss a Terry Fox Run,” he said.

“I ran one marathon, one of the biggest accomplishments of my life,” he said. “This man ran a marathon a day for 143 days on one leg, in pain and in all kinds of weather conditions. And at the end, his lungs were full of cancer. He was doing it on behalf of other people. Totally unselfish. In my mind, he’s the greatest of all time.”