From left are Craig Palfrey, Celeste D’Agostino and June Hogan at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, on April 22.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
June Hogan was 14 when she got a job selling popcorn at Maple Leaf Gardens. These days she tends bar at Scotiabank Arena.
Craig Palfrey applied for a job at the Gardens because he had a hard time getting tickets to Maple Leafs games. He got hired the first time he applied. Today he stands guard outside the opponent’s dressing quarters at the home team’s rink.
Celeste D’Agostino was hired as an usherette at Maple Leafs Gardens because she fit in the uniform. In those days there were not many usherettes and very few uniforms. If it didn’t fit, no job for you.
Now she is a supervisor of guest services for Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment.
Together the three hourly employees have worked for Maple Leaf Gardens Limited and MLSE for a combined 152 years. In actuality, they worked for the current organization at least 20 years before it was founded.
For Hogan and Palfrey it has been 51 years. For D’Agostino 50.
“I am the baby of the group,” D’Agostino said.
They are unheralded heroes.
“They are part of history,” Raphael Alfonzo, the manager in charge of guest services for MLSE, says as he stands outside Gate one before the second game of the first-round playoff series versus Ottawa. Palfrey and D’Agostino report to him.
“They have seen Leafs’ history more than anyone else in the organization. They are the bedrocks of what we do. Fans have seen them for so long that they recognize them.
Kevin Ramlal manages beverage and food service and hospitality for the Maple Leafs’ ownership group. Hogan works within his group.
“She is dedicated, a hard worker and very passionate,” Ramlal says. “She is a battler.”
Hogan, 65, is fighting cancer for the third time. She has had breast cancer twice and bladder cancer before that.
She grew up in Toronto watching Maple Leaf games on television with her great-grandfather and grandfather.
“That’s where I got my colourful vocabulary,” she says.
It was easy for her to get a job at Maple Leaf Gardens because other family members worked there: her brother, mother, sister-in-law, two aunts, two uncles and four cousins.
She started at an hourly rate of $2.25. At the time, that was 25 cents above minimum wage. A year later Harold Ballard reduced hourly employees’ pay to $2.00
Her popcorn stand was near the executive offices and Ballard would often walk past. He never acknowledged her or would not look her way.
“Miserable,” she says.
She recently took some time off during treatment and eventually returned to work.
“I was so lucky that I could come back,” she says. “I was sitting at home and had gotten tired of watching games and shouting at my TV.
“Coming here is such a habit and watching games is great. It’s not something I take for granted.”
Since her days as a popcorn girl, she has peddled T-shirts at concerts, sold ice cream, and now is a quick-service bartender. She also once worked the door in the media lounge.
“It’s the people that I work with and the people you serve that make this special to me,” she says. “It’s fun. You get to meet some real characters.”
While working at a concert back at Maple Leaf Gardens, she watched Frank Sinatra walk through the door wearing a tiara, a fur coat and a long gown.
“It was funny,” Hogan says. He looked so out of place. It’s not something you’d see at a hockey game.”
She is busiest when the Maple Leafs score right before the end of a period. A goal seems to increase fans’ taste for beer.
“They get hyped,” she says. “I’m overrun.”
Palfrey was initially hired as a spare usher. The job was attractive to him because at least he would be inside of Maple Leaf Gardens and possibly catch a bit of the action.
“The Maple Leafs were my favourite team since I was a little kid,” he says.
He grew up in Millbrook, Ont., a village about 60 minutes east of Toronto.
“We didn’t have a TV when I grew up and there were only two or three in the whole town,” he recalls.
On Saturday night he would go to a friend’s house to watch his beloved Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada. He rarely got to see an entire game.
“My dad was an Anglican minister and eventually he would call and tell me to get home because I had to go church in the morning,” he says.
Now 77, he figures he has staffed at least 2,100 games combined at both venues. He used to place a chair outside the visiting locker room so Guy Lafleur could sit in the hallway and smoke between periods. He remembers players pedalling exercise bikes and drinking beer at the same time.
He maintains relationships with some of the visiting players, exchanging emails in the summer. Earlier this week, Ottawa centre Tim Stutzle came out of the dressing room to chat briefly before Game 5.
There were only a relatively few women working as ushers at Maple Leaf Gardens when D’Agostino was hired a half-century ago. To become one, an applicant had to literally fit into the uniform. They would get a new one about every three years.
She defers when asked her age.
And she plans to keep working for MLSE.
“I am waiting for a Stanley Cup,” she says.
Hogan says the same.
She owns a T-shirt with the words, “Just once before I die” written on the front.
“I can’t retire before we win one,” she says.
Says Palfrey, “I have no intention of retiring. I’ll retire when I am six-feet under.”