Flying Father dies. (News in Brief: Canada).

Timmins, ON--Father Les Costello, the first priest to join the "Flying Fathers" hockey team launched in 1962, died December 10, 2002, aged 74. He fell to the ice during a practice with his team on November 30 and three days later collapsed while playing in Peterborough.

Popular both as a pastor and a player, Father Les Costello was born in South Porcupine in Northern Ontario and educated at St. Michael's College School in Toronto. There he began his hockey-playing career in the junior leagues, "Leaf" Les Costello soon graduating to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs. This would be a dream fulfilled for many a young lad but, after less than two seasons, Les Costello felt God's call to the priesthood and joyously abandoned his NHL career to follow Him.

As a priest he was known for his total generosity (he was a devotee of St. Martin de Porres, patron saint of the poor), as well as for his blunt, roughedged language, and boisterous Irish sense of humour. In 1962, he helped found a hockey team, composed of priests and their friends, who featured comedy routines before all their games and donated their takings (reputedly more than $4 million) to charity.

Father Costello's funeral on December 16 was appropriately celebrated at the McIntyre hockey arena in Timmins-Schumacher. It was attended by over 2,000 people including many clergy, hockey personalities, and local people who remembered how he had helped "the poor in goods and the poor in spirit" (Files from the Nat. Post & Toronto Star).