John E. Dwyer – Athlete

Inducted November 7, 1981

Born in Millinocket, Maine, U.S.A., May 12, 1908 John E. Dwyer was very young when his pioneering parents decided to become part of a brand new paper mill community at Grand Falls, Newfoundland. At the time of the move in 1910, John, like the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, was not yet two years old.

In his formative years, John quickly took advantage of the full sports program available at Grand Falls and started an outstanding athletic career that spanned three decades and lasted more than twenty years.

John Dwyer became one of Grand Falls most talented and versatile athletes in an era that was truly the papertown’s “Golden Age of Sports”, the mid-twenties to the mid-forties.

He was active in all three major sports – hockey, baseball and soccer – during the so-called “brigade” system of CLB, Cadets and Guards and spent all of his career with Ken Goodyear’s Guards organization.

He was a goaltender in hockey, a goalkeeper in soccer and a catcher in baseball. In sports parlance John was a ‘Guardian’ both in club affiliation and in his playing roles. In each sport his outstanding talent earned him all-star honours for several years. While playing in goal for the Guards soccer team he was instrumental in that club’s string of eight consecutive championships from 1930 to 1937. John was often added to the roster of other local teams as a strengthening player in competition against outside clubs.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of media coverage and ongoing record keeping for the era in question, detailed statistics of his career in Grand Falls are not available, but clippings from St. John’s newspapers of the 1930’s in particular, clearly reveal his great performances in inter-town competition, especially in baseball and soccer games against Feildians, Mount Cashel and other teams in the capital city.