The Georgetown Raiders’ 1961-62 roster, recently compiled on a public hockey database, offers a rare snapshot of the town’s deep roots in Ontario’s community hockey scene. The entry lists a 15-player group from the club’s OHA-Intermediate era and includes basic biographical information for several skaters, underscoring how small-town teams like Georgetown’s served as pillars of local sport in the post-war period.
Early-1960s line-up and available records
The online record identifies the club as the Georgetown Raiders and places the team in the 1961-62 OHA-Intermediate ranks. While the database entry provides only limited statistics for that season, it includes individual player entries that list position, birth year and birthplace for some members of the squad.
- Doug Falby — listed as a defenceman, born 1936 in Kitchener, Ont.
- Garnett Vasey — listed as a defenceman, born 1929 in Toronto, Ont.
Those two names appear alongside a roster count of 15 players for the season. The database also shows the Raiders on its pages for several other campaign years — including seasons spanning the 1940s through the early 1980s — reflecting the team’s long-standing presence within Ontario’s intermediate and senior ranks.
What the roster record tells us
The limited statistical detail in the online listing is typical of archival records for community-level hockey from that era. Many small-town teams maintained modest record-keeping compared with major junior and professional clubs, and surviving public sources often capture only rosters and basic biographical notes.
Still, even sparse entries are valuable for historians, family members and local fans piecing together sporting legacies. The presence of birthplaces such as Kitchener and Toronto on the roster underscores the regional mobility common among players who joined intermediate clubs — sometimes moving between towns to find employment, schooling or playing opportunities.
| Player | Position | Birth year | Birthplace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doug Falby | Defence | 1936 | Kitchener, Ont. |
| Garnett Vasey | Defence | 1929 | Toronto, Ont. |
“The roster highlights how community teams like Georgetown’s knit together players from across the region,”
— archival notation from the roster entry
Local significance and the wider picture
Georgetown has long occupied a space between Ontario’s urban centres and its rural communities. Teams such as the Raiders were local hubs, bringing residents together for winter nights at the rink and providing young players with a pathway to higher levels of hockey or lifelong recreational involvement.
For contemporary supporters and researchers, the 1961-62 listing is a reminder to document and preserve local sport histories. Municipal archives, volunteer historians and families often hold photographs, game programs and newspaper clippings that can flesh out names and dates found in online databases. Those materials can add context on game results, venues and the social life that surrounded mid-century hockey in Georgetown.
Community clubs also help explain the continuity of hockey culture in towns across Ontario. While major junior and professional teams attract attention, intermediate and senior clubs sustained opportunities for competitive hockey in smaller communities, and the Georgetown Raiders’ presence in archival records from the 1940s through the 1980s illustrates that continuity.
Residents with ties to the Raiders or holdings such as programmes, photos or personal recollections are a key part of preserving this history. Local historical societies and the municipality’s archives can provide guidance for those seeking to donate material or to collaborate on projects that document the town’s sporting past.
As online databases aggregate basic roster information, they also open doors for deeper local research. For Georgetown, the 1961-62 Raiders roster is a small but tangible thread linking present-day neighbourhoods to generations who filled the stands, laced up skates and kept community life moving through the long Ontario winters.
