over and over on every flight.
Sometime between dinner and their initial landing in Montreal, over the Atlantic, Stan Cooperâs heart stopped beating. The cold and indigestion he had been feeling was, in fact, a building infarction, and Stan passed on as heâd always hoped to, in his sleep with the Cup beside him. Because he died unnoticed while crossing time zones, no accurate time of death would ever be assigned to Stan.
The death of âTwo-Secondâ Stan, of pulmonary infarction at the age of 72, was a problem for the airline flying his body home. The flight did not end until Toronto, but Stanâs death was discovered on the descent into Montreal, by a startled cabin attendant trying to wake him. Normally, the body of a passenger who died inflight would be removed from the seating area at the first opportunity. Bodies were then transferred into thick cardboard carrying cases, and stored with the luggage below decks.
While there was enough room in storage for both Stan and the trophy, the airline worried about its legal and financial liability around the Cup. The trophy had boarded the plane as a passenger and was considered the property and responsibility of Stan Cooper, its keeper. This was the standard agreement the League made with airlines in order to ensure Stan kept his eyes on the trophy at all times.
With Stan out of the picture, and no other League representative on the flight, the airline lawyers worried that liability would transfer to them, and they didnât want it, not even for the short forty-five-minute hop from Montreal to Toronto. No one they contacted could put a price on the historic trophy.
Stan and his beloved Cup were both carried from the airplane at Dorval Airport and stored under armed guard, in an empty hospitality suite owned by the airline. In an obituary in the Montreal Gazette , one writer suggested this wrinkle was Stanâs way of finally delivering to Montreal the Cup that was rightfully theirs, the Cup heâd stolen away with his famous two-second blunder in 1951.
The League sent Antonio Chiello to make the pickup. Tony worked with Stan at the head office in Toronto, and had helped him prepare the Cup for travel for the last two years. Tony rode to Montreal, a passenger in the hearse the League hired to care for Stanâs remains. Childless and divorced, Stan had been the last of his line of Coopers for over twenty-five years. Tony Chiello was the closest heâd had to family.
Six
Â
Only once, in August 1989, had Stan run across a situation with the Cup he felt he couldnât handle on his own. The championship trophy had been booked for a party by a young left-winger named Dalton Gunn, in his hometown of Eganville, Ontario, a five-hour drive from Toronto. It was a standard weekend jobâdrive up on the Friday night and figure out the town, shepherd the Cup all the next day when an impromptu tour of the townsfolk would be begged of him, stand watch during the drunken Saturday night festivities trying not to get too in the bag himself, and sneak the trophy back out of town before sunrise and the mischievous hangovers of Sunday. Heâd pulled this job countless times in countless small towns within a clear dayâs drive of Toronto.
Stan packed the Cup in a League van, and took the northern route. He left Toronto at its top end, on the two-lane Highway 7, avoiding for the most part the bung of weekend cottage traffic that plagued the major highway routes. It was a slow drive all the same and, just before sunset, Stan pulled into a provincial park to eat the sandwiches and cookies heâd packed for himself. He parked the van as close to water as he could get, rolled down all the windows and ate looking out across a short expanse of lake to a massive stone bluff. The park brochure told him the cliff was home to First Nations petroglyphs carved high above the water, but he couldnât see any such things from his seat. The cliff face
Sometime between dinner and their initial landing in Montreal, over the Atlantic, Stan Cooperâs heart stopped beating. The cold and indigestion he had been feeling was, in fact, a building infarction, and Stan passed on as heâd always hoped to, in his sleep with the Cup beside him. Because he died unnoticed while crossing time zones, no accurate time of death would ever be assigned to Stan.
The death of âTwo-Secondâ Stan, of pulmonary infarction at the age of 72, was a problem for the airline flying his body home. The flight did not end until Toronto, but Stanâs death was discovered on the descent into Montreal, by a startled cabin attendant trying to wake him. Normally, the body of a passenger who died inflight would be removed from the seating area at the first opportunity. Bodies were then transferred into thick cardboard carrying cases, and stored with the luggage below decks.
While there was enough room in storage for both Stan and the trophy, the airline worried about its legal and financial liability around the Cup. The trophy had boarded the plane as a passenger and was considered the property and responsibility of Stan Cooper, its keeper. This was the standard agreement the League made with airlines in order to ensure Stan kept his eyes on the trophy at all times.
With Stan out of the picture, and no other League representative on the flight, the airline lawyers worried that liability would transfer to them, and they didnât want it, not even for the short forty-five-minute hop from Montreal to Toronto. No one they contacted could put a price on the historic trophy.
Stan and his beloved Cup were both carried from the airplane at Dorval Airport and stored under armed guard, in an empty hospitality suite owned by the airline. In an obituary in the Montreal Gazette , one writer suggested this wrinkle was Stanâs way of finally delivering to Montreal the Cup that was rightfully theirs, the Cup heâd stolen away with his famous two-second blunder in 1951.
The League sent Antonio Chiello to make the pickup. Tony worked with Stan at the head office in Toronto, and had helped him prepare the Cup for travel for the last two years. Tony rode to Montreal, a passenger in the hearse the League hired to care for Stanâs remains. Childless and divorced, Stan had been the last of his line of Coopers for over twenty-five years. Tony Chiello was the closest heâd had to family.
Six
Â
Only once, in August 1989, had Stan run across a situation with the Cup he felt he couldnât handle on his own. The championship trophy had been booked for a party by a young left-winger named Dalton Gunn, in his hometown of Eganville, Ontario, a five-hour drive from Toronto. It was a standard weekend jobâdrive up on the Friday night and figure out the town, shepherd the Cup all the next day when an impromptu tour of the townsfolk would be begged of him, stand watch during the drunken Saturday night festivities trying not to get too in the bag himself, and sneak the trophy back out of town before sunrise and the mischievous hangovers of Sunday. Heâd pulled this job countless times in countless small towns within a clear dayâs drive of Toronto.
Stan packed the Cup in a League van, and took the northern route. He left Toronto at its top end, on the two-lane Highway 7, avoiding for the most part the bung of weekend cottage traffic that plagued the major highway routes. It was a slow drive all the same and, just before sunset, Stan pulled into a provincial park to eat the sandwiches and cookies heâd packed for himself. He parked the van as close to water as he could get, rolled down all the windows and ate looking out across a short expanse of lake to a massive stone bluff. The park brochure told him the cliff was home to First Nations petroglyphs carved high above the water, but he couldnât see any such things from his seat. The cliff face
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