Scouting group honours Mark Johnston

Mark Johnston’s labour of love has landed him on a Wall of Honour.

The veteran hockey man, who died at 67 on Jan. 14, 2024, will be officially inducted into the Professional Hockey Scouts Foundation’s Wall of Honour on Aug. 28 at a dinner in Okotoks, Alta.

The event is being held at the Viking Rentals Centre Events Hall in Okotoks, the permanent site of the Professional Hockey Scouts Foundation Wall of Honour.

Johnston never wanted to be in the spotlight, but his wife Cheryl and son Chris said the former head scout for the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings would have appreciated the nod from his peers.

“I was very surprised,” Cheryl said. “He would have been honoured but still not want to be the centre of attention. He would be proud obviously because he enjoyed scouting immensely. It was his life pretty much.”

“Honestly, I didn’t know that existed but I was hoping there was something like that,” Chris added. “I think it’s well deserved … He put a lot of time and effort into this business and the Brandon Wheat Kings and that’s what he loved.”

Johnston, who grew up in Wawanesa, was a terrific hockey and fastball player.

The defenceman split the 1971-72 season between the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Portage Terriers and the Wheat Kings at 14. He skated the 1972-73 season with the Wheat Kings, and then spent the rest of his six-year junior career with the Brandon Travellers — in their 1973-74 expansion season — the Selkirk Steelers and the Terriers.

In his final season, 1976-77, he was named the MJHL’s top defenceman and added to the first all-star team.

After Johnston coached minor hockey, former Wheat Kings owner Kelly McCrimmon hired Johnston as a scout prior to the 1989-90 season. The team later made him an assistant coach, which gave him another chance to work with his son, a hard-nosed forward who could score.

Wheat Kings head coach and general manager Marty Murray joined the team as a player at age 16 in the fall of 1991 and quickly got to know Johnston.

“You could sit and talk hockey with him forever,” Murray said. “First as a player and then full circle coming back and working with the Wheat Kings on the management side, Johnny spent quite a bit of time at the rink in his last years. He was a Wheat King through and through and he had a passion for our hockey club.

“He loved coming down to the office and sitting and talking hockey. That’s what it was all about.”

Murray added that Johnston had a terrific understanding of the game and had a lot of good ideas to offer.

“It was his passion, his love,” Cheryl said. “He enjoyed it. He loved going to watch hockey, he loved hockey through the different people he met in later years. In early years, he didn’t really like talking to parents and stuff that much but he learned how to do that. I won’t say it was an obsession but maybe that is the right terminology.”

He served as an assistant coach and director of scouting with Brandon for 11 seasons, from 1990 to 2001.

“His knowledge of the game back then, we didn’t really know it at the time,” Chris said. “Myself and Marty played with him and his knowledge of the game was advanced before it’s come to what it has now. There are skills guys here and skills guys there, but we had that with our coaches.”

Johnston left Brandon to serve as head coach and general manager of the MJHL’s Swan Valley Stampeders in 2001-02. While he moved on after a season, the team he assembled won a franchise record 43 games during the 2002-03 campaign.

At the same time, the veteran scout began a 12-year relationship with the Kelowna Rockets.

He kept coaching, however, joining Craig Anderson as an assistant coach for several years with the under-18 AAA Wheat Kings. In 2004, they won the national U18 championship.

“His work ethic was second to none,” Chris said. “That being said, he was everywhere. On a Monday night, he would somewhere at a rink.”

“I think a lot of it was his attention to detail,” Cheryl added. “Chris was at a function the other night and his fiancee was saying she was shocked how (Chris) remembered how somebody shot in hockey and his height and all that stuff but couldn’t remember where his car keys were.

“That’s exactly like Mark. He knew the guy shot left and what sort of stick he used and stuff like that.”

After the retirement of longtime Wheat Kings director of player personnel Al Macpherson in the summer of 2013, Wade Klippenstein was hired as the Wheat Kings’ director of scouting and Johnston was induced to rejoin the Wheat Kings as head scout.

He was active in the role until his death.

“He had a passion for it,” Murray said. “He put in the work: He wasn’t scared to go into those little rinks on a Wednesday night in rural Manitoba or Saskatchewan to dig up kids. You’re only as good as the work you put into it and I think it was Mark’s passion and keen eye.

“It’s not the easiest job in the world when you’re watching 15-year-old kids and trying to project what they’re going to be like at 18 or 19. Mark had the ability to sift through those kids and had a real gift as a scout.”

Johnston could be guarded around people and never suffered fools kindly. But when someone proved their work ethic and ability, they had a good friend in Johnny, as he was universally known.

(Mark was Big Johnny while Chris was Little Johnny.)

“He had that outer shell-teddy bear thing,” Chris said. “He did a lot of things people would never have known. He just did it out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted nothing back. He liked guys who had been through the trenches with him. He knew the character of you, and if he knew that and believed that, you were good with him.”

“You had to work to earn his admiration, let’s say,” Cheryl added.

Even so, Johnston had a wide circle of friends in the game. His family may not have completely understood how well he was regarded until he was gone.

“It’s really overwhelming,” Chris said. “There were people we knew but especially people that we didn’t know that he knew that all had something to say that we’ve seen along the way at the rink.”

“It was overwhelming,” Cheryl agreed. “It was difficult.”

On Aug. 28, the non-profit PHSF will induct 22 past and present scouts into the Wall of Honour next week, bringing the total number to 96.

This year’s class also includes the late Laurence Ferguson and his two sons, Ron and Sheldon Ferguson, twin brothers Rich and Ron Sutter, Dan Ginnell, the late Garnet (Ace) Bailey, Mike Barnett, Jim Bzdel, Craig Channell, Paul Charles, Marcel Comeau, Jeff Crisp, Marshall Davidson, Thomas Gradin, Randy Hansch, Kelly Kisio, the late Jack McIlhargey, the late Dave Westby and John Williams.

This year’s two major junior inductees will be Ray Dudra and Johnston.

Cheryl chuckles when asked what she expects the night of the induction ceremony.

“Probably to cry,” she said. “We’ve been given an itinerary. There will be a dinner and speeches.”

The family will be presented a belt buckle with the Wheat Kings logo on it, and have another evening to remember the ultimate hockey scout with many of his friends.

“I think it will be awesome,” Chris said. “It will be touching, it will be great. There are going to be a lot of people there and scouts there, and again it will be here we go, people he knows somewhere who are going to come and know us.

“It’s going to be well deserved and a special night for all of us.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com