Ice hockey forward Ab Renaud played in the Ottawa Junior Hockey League from 1937 through 1940 with the Ottawa LaSalle (including one senior-level game in his second season) and the Westboro Spearmans (including one senior-level game with the Ottawa Camerons). He played two matches with the senior Ottawa Montagnards before finishing the 1940-1941 season with the Ottawa Car Bombers of the Upper Ottawa Valley Hockey League (UOVHL). He spent 1941-1942 with the Hull Volants prior to splitting the next two seasons between teams in the Ontario Senior Hockey League (OCSHL) and the Ottawa National Defense Hockey League (ONDHL). He served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the remainder of World War II and then settled with the Ottawa Quarter-Masters of the ONDHL from 1945-1946, spending the next season with the UOVHL’s incarnation of the Ottawa Senators.
Renaud was with the OCSHL’s Ottawa New Edinburghs, and working for the federal government, when he was called up to join the RCAF Flyers, Canada’s delegation to the 1948 Winter Olympic ice hockey tournament. There he played in eight games and scored four goals, helping the team take home the gold medal that year. He also, with teammate Reg Schroeter, hoisted Barbara Ann Scott onto his shoulders after her gold medal victory in that year’s figure skating competition. On his return he played with the Flyers for two more full seasons before transferring early in the third to the Ottawa Army team, where his jaw was broken after a particularly severe hit. After spending 1951-1952 with the Hull Volants, he joined the New York-Ontario Hockey League’s Brockville Magedomas as a player/coach for the last three years of his career. In the late 1990s he donated his Olympic sweater to the Hockey Hall of Fame and in 2008 he was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame as a member of the victorious 1948 team.
Canada