Robert “Bruce” Dickson got his start in ice hockey as a forward with the Edmonton Athletic Club of the Edmonton Junior Hockey League and stayed with them from 1947 through 1949. After a season with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Canada Junior Hockey League (WCJHL) he took a season off to help the Edmonton Oil Kings earn acceptance into the aforementioned league. In August of 1950 car dealership James Christiansen, who would later fund the Edmonton Mercurys on their trip to the 1952 Winter Olympics, agreed to sponsor a junior hockey team in Edmonton. The newly forged team was denied entry into the WCJHL a month later and the Alberta Hockey Association suggested that the team, soon to be known as the Edmonton Oil Kings, play a series of exhibition games against the league’s teams.
Dickson was among those on the team and his performance was so impressive that he was offered a spot on the senior-level Edmonton Mercurys, who were to represent Canada at the 1952 Winter Olympics. At the tournament he was the team’s youngest member and he played in eight games, scoring seven goals, and taking home one of the last gold medals for Canada in ice hockey until 2002. He later moved to the United States, settling in Littleton, Colorado and, in 1998, helped coach several of the players of that year’s Canadian national team at the Olympics. As a member of his Olympic squad, he was inducted into the Alberta Sport Hall of Fame Museum in 1968.
Canada