Maurice Powers

Goalie Maurice Powers got his start playing ice hockey at the University of Ottawa before moving to Montreal and suiting up with the McGill University Redmen in 1928. By 1932 he had risen to the position of captain of the team and in this capacity he participated in two exhibition games that took place prior to that year’s Winter Olympic hockey tournament. In the first, his McGill team shut out the official Canadian Olympic squad, and upcoming gold medalists, 2-0. In the second, they defeated the team from the United States, the eventual runners-up, 2-1. Among his teammates were Ken Farmer and Hugh Farquharson, both of whom would represent Canada at the 1936 Winter Games.

Powers stayed with the Redmen until he received his medical degree in 1934 and became a doctor. He later studied at the New York College of Medicine, specializing in forensic medicine, and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1937 as a ballistics expert and surgeon. He received a Doctorate of Medical Science in Forensic Medicine in 1939 from New York University (the first person to earn such a degree there) and trained officers in “scientific crime detection” from the RCMP crime laboratory in Regina, Saskatchewan. He was frequently called upon to provide an expert opinion at criminal trials until 1943 when, while returning from one of these hearings, he was killed in an airplane crash.