CHARTRAND, Paul

BORN 27 JULY 1943, Paul Chartrand grew up in a small Manitoba community in Canada and did not have any opportunity to play sports at school. After high school, he began to play baseball and amateur senior hockey. He became a teacher and taught for a decade before deciding in 1974 to move to Queensland. He ended up in Brisbane schools where, upon meeting Russ Trudeau, he found out that ice hockey was played at Toombul hockey rink. After playing a season or two, he co-founded a new local team, the Moreton Bay Sharks, with the late Casper DeJong. The Club recruited new Canadian arrivals.

In 1976, Chartrand was one of seven Queensland Goodall Cup runners-up selected for the Australian team to compete against the touring Olympia 80 team from West Germany at Iceland Ringwood the following June. Others were goalie Terry Mouland, Rick Schram, Thornton McLaren, Russ Trudeau, Barry Norton and Jan Lindh. The Queenslanders did not compete in the mismanaged national tour. The team that met the West Germans in 1977 were all Victorians. But 1975 and 76 had signalled the shape of things to come from Queensland, two warning shots across the bows of the long-established senior states, Victoria and New South Wales.

In 1977 Chartrand enrolled in the barrister's programme at the law school at the Queensland Institute of Technology, today's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and did not play in the state side that won the Goodall Cup in 1977.

Having had considerable experience as an ice hockey referee in Canada, he turned to officiating. In 1978, he was Referee for the Goodall Cup national men's competition where Queensland was defeated by Victoria 5-3 in the Final at Prince Alfred Park in Sydney.

In 1981 he was appointed national Referee-In-Chief in a new national association led by Phil Ginsberg. The NIHL floundered in its second season in 1981 when refereeing problems emerged, sponsorship and promotion proved insufficient to cover expenses, and the spectator capacities of some rinks were inadequate to generate enough revenue. Clubs and associations pressured the national administration to act on the displacement of many local players by overseas players in some NIHL teams.

Chartrand also discovered that baseball was played in Brisbane and Australia. When he first arrived in September 1974 he had just finished a successful season as a pitcher with a winning 6-2 record for the Calgary Giants. Calgary recruited him from Manitoba. The right-hander had played for championship teams including provincial teams in national competitions, including the first Canada Summer Games in 1969.

Baseball was just building up in Australia at that time and he played in the Brisbane Major Baseball League. In his first season in 1974-75 playing for the local Athletics team managed by Tim Nilsson, father of Major League All-Star David Nilsson, Chartrand had a 15-3 record with 1.51 ERA. He later pitched for the Queensland State Team and the Australian National Team (1974-82). He led Queensland with two wins in a tri-State series in 1974 at Sydney. He pitched a record 20-strikeout no-hitter on October 21, 1979 against Ipswich Musketeers which was broken only years later by Adrian Meagher from Lismore, NSW, who was at that time playing in the Brisbane league as well as for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Named to two Australian national teams, ice hockey and baseball, Chartrand returned to Canada to teach and practise law in 1982. He continued to compete in both sports, winning a national bronze medal with Saskatoon Liners in 1983 and later retiring at 49 years of age.

In ice hockey, he played four seasons with the Sagkeeng Old-Timers team, competing successfully in national and in Old-Timers World Cup competitions in Nice, Munich, Paris and elsewhere.

Son Dan and daughter Leila became professional golfers and competed at the highest level. Chartrand picked up the game late in life and plays off a six handicap.

Following his return to Canada in 1982, he pursued an academic career focused on the law and policy of states respecting indigenous people. He completed a Master of Laws degree at the University of Saskatchewan and took on university appointments in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

Author of over fifty publications, he served on several high-profile public bodies, including Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission, and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. He has been a university department head, a college president and CEO, and a member of various professional organizations. In 2002, he was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award from QUT law school. Now in his late seventies, he is practising at the bar and writing legal texts. He is a member of the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame and the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame.

As Queensland ice hockey player Peter Nixon said recently: back in the day, you did not take Paul lightly on the ice.