Want a piece of Bob Cole's hockey legacy? Some of it is up for auction in St. John's

Alex Kennedy · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 13, 2025 4:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

Bob Cole's quality to acceptable the signifier and telephone immoderate of hockey's top moments brought him fans from each implicit the world. Now, those fans can make a portion of his legacy their own.

Some of Cole's hockey mementos are up for auction astatine Bartlett Auctions successful St. John's until Tuesday.

"Like immoderate household that loses a loved one, they person to spell done the process of going done each their loved ones' meaningful beingness collections. And, you know, it tin beryllium a large task if idiosyncratic had a large life. And my dada had a truly large life," Cole's daughter, Hilary, told CBC News Thursday.

"We knew that determination was radical that would admit them, would privation to person them. Would privation to person a portion of hockey history."

Cole was a legend, broadcasting sports crossed the airwaves for 5 decades. He died successful April 2024 astatine the property of 90.

His postulation spans a wide scope of important sports items, including framed pictures from events Cole took portion successful oregon places helium called games, Hilary Cole said, on with things similar property passes, merchandise and more.

It besides includes memorabilia from athletes, similar photos with Doug Gilmour, Vincent Damphousse, and a brace of game-worn gloves from Wayne Gretzky.

See immoderate of the items up for auction below:

Hilary Cole said it's affectional to portion with immoderate of the items, but hopes sharing them tin bring guardant memories of her begetter with others.

"For me, these are things that were portion of his home. And they had much meaning for maine erstwhile they were successful his home, and I was spending clip with them," she said.

"But I loved seeing him with his friends, origin that's what hockey meant to him, " she said. "There's beauteous pictures of him with, you know, maybe Jean Béliveau. Or a representation of him with different player, and those are the things that I cognize meant a batch to him."

WATCH | Many of Bob Cole's hockey mementos are disposable for auction:

But the auction besides includes pieces and passions a instrumentality of Cole's mightiness not cognize about, similar the books helium read, movies helium watched and adjacent a skilsaw.

"Everybody got to perceive however passionate helium was astir hockey, but helium was that passionate telling a communicative about, I'm not exaggerating, a run-in with an existent mafia member," Hilary Cole said with a laugh.

"He's got each these mafia books origin he's fascinated by that. He grew up successful the '30s and '40s, truthful immoderate of it is similar clip and place. He grew up during the war, helium had an older member who went to war. We heard stories astir that, and truthful he's got a batch of warfare books."

Cole said her begetter mightiness person felt weird astir the involvement successful his memorabilia, but added the household is taking comfortableness successful being capable to stock a portion of him with others.

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