It’s been more than 20 years since Greg Lynch died from cancer, but the Cape Breton Eagles of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League still honour his memory and his heritage by wearing special Irish-themed jerseys ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.
Many people credit Lynch with bringing the Eagles to Sydney when the team moved from Granby, QC in 1997.
“He believed very deeply that Cape Breton needed a hockey team”, said Lynch’s daughter, Shannon Lynch Colbourne.
Beginning in 2007, the team debuted their St. Patrick’s Day-themed jerseys with Lynch’s initials - PGL, for Paul Gregory Lynch - during a home game in mid-March.
For the past eighteen years, the Lynch family has been in attendance on the night Lynch is remembered.
I mean, he was only 50 years old when he passed", Lynch Colbourne said. “But obviously based upon all these things that still continue to happen in his honour, he left a meaningful impact and legacy.”
Lynch’s photo still hangs in the Eagles' dressing room.
“It’s that picture,” said Eagles' business operations manager Joey Haddad. “It’s the story of Greg Lynch. It’s the fight we had in the early days to get a team and that should be our inner passion, our inner desire to push us over the edge.”
Haddad said it was an honour to wear the Irish jersey - with Lynch’s initials on it - during his playing days in 2008 and 2009.
At the end of the memorial game, the green jerseys are raffled off in support of the Tom MacNeil Cancer Patient Care Fund at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital.
Since it began, Irish jersey night has raised more than $187,000.
“That is a direct patient support program that actually helps up to 100 patients per month”, said Caitlyn MacDonald of the Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation. “For patients who have to travel to Halifax for their care, patients that need very specific medications that aren’t covered by their insurance, and it can also provide comfort items to cancer patients during their journeys.”
Most of the Eagles who will wear the Irish jersey Friday night against the Halifax Mooseheads weren’t even born when Lynch passed away but Haddad said nearly 4,000 tickets were sold for Greg Lynch Night at the Eagles’ Nest by midday Thursday.
“The biggest compliment that I receive from them is that they feel that I remind them of him”, Lynch Colbourne said. “And I mean, that’s the biggest compliment I could ever hear.”
Lynch passed away from pancreatic cancer on Aug. 1, 2004.
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