Ralph Bower took one of the most popular photos in Vancouver Sun history — a topless Pavel Bure getting a physical in 1994. But it got him in big trouble with Canucks boss Pat Quinn.
“A photographer had taken a shot somewhere in Canada of (Wayne) Gretzky in the shower,” relates Bower. “They put it on the wire (to be sent) from one guy to the other, not to be published. But it was intercepted by the NHL and they raised hell about it.
“Quinn said: ‘That’s it, no still photographers in our dressing room, especially when anybody has a shirt off.’ That was the rule.”
Fast forward to the first day of training camp in Kamloops, when players were getting their physicals.
“I happen to walk by the restaurant next door to the dressing room and Pavel Bure was getting a private checkup,” said Bower.
“So I took the picture, outside of the dressing room. When I got to camp (the next day), the man in charge came up and said: ‘You’re in trouble, Ralph Bower, you broke the rules. You’d better talk to Quinn, he’s mad as hell at you.’
“So I got on the phone (with Quinn). We’d always been friendly. He said ‘What’s this all about?’ I said ‘I didn’t take his picture in the dressing room, I took it in the restaurant at the Coliseum.’ ‘Well, you know the rules.’
“I thought it was a great picture of him. We stopped the presses at The Sun to do more editions. ‘Oh. Oh. Well, we’ll forget it this time.’”
For his part, Bure was amused by the brouhaha his topless photo had caused.
“I sat down with Bure and gave him a print,” said Bower. “He said: ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were working for Playboy now.’”
The Bure shot is among nearly 200 prints Bower will be displaying at North Vancouver City Hall from June 15 to July 3.
Most are of people, which was his specialty. There’s Pierre Trudeau doing a jackknife off the diving board at the Bayshore, W.A.C. Bennett sneaking a peak down the ample cleavage of B-movie star Mamie Van Doren, and hockey legend Don Cherry in 1969, when he was a defenceman for the old Western Hockey League Canucks.
“He was wearing his (ascot),” chuckles Bower. “He was a fancy Dan even in those days.”
Bower was a photographer for The Sun from 1955 until his retirement in 1996. He used to make prints of shots he liked to take home, and over the years built up a sizeable archive, which he has turned into several photo shows.
One of his favourite shots in the new show is sprinter Harry Jerome tying the world record at Empire Stadium.
“I dedicated the show to Harry Jerome, who was the fastest man in the world and a friend of mine who I grew up with (in North Vancouver),” said Bower, who turns 84 on June 13.
“He was a good guy, quiet. Sports guys were always on him because they thought he was a quiet quitter at times, and it was totally wrong. He made one of the greatest sports comebacks in history (after a hamstring injury).”
Shooting sports was one of Bower’s fortes. He shot countless Canucks games, and has the negatives of all the WHL Canucks games at the Forum.
“The Sun was throwing them out — they were in the garbage can,” he said. “I was told they were there and I went and got them.”
Aside from the Bure pinup, his most famous shot might be a photo of a ferocious Muhammad Ali pummeling Canadian boxer George Chuvalo at the Pacific Coliseum. Ali hit Chuvalo with such force you can see beads of sweat flying in the air.
Back in the ’50s, Oscar Blanck of Oscar’s Steak House would give Bower a free steak for photographing Oscar with the stars. So it’s probably no surprise Bower has a ton of great entertainment photos, from Bobby Darin to Ray Charles, Mitzi Gaynor to Rod Stewart.
He photographed the Queen, the Pope and the Zalm, Terry Fox, Joe Louis and Jack Shadbolt. Many of the subjects became his friends, like former B.C. Lions great Sonny Homer, who was his teammate on a high school team in North Van.
“He wore red football pants,” Bower recounts with a laugh.
“I’ve got them downstairs. We were losing 21 to nothin’ at halftime, so they put the red pants on me so they’d think I was Sonny. But I got out there and everybody said, ‘That gawky guy ain’t Sonny Homer.’”
