Catching up with John Mentis, one of Quebec’s top multi-sport stars of the 60s

Truro, N.S., native John Mentis (middle), shown here with his Kenogami teammates, Jacques Allard (left) and Maurice Joncas (right) in 1957, was one of the top multi-sport stars in Quebec in the 1950s and 1960s. Photo Supplied

July 28, 2020

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

These days John Mentis would be trumpeted as a multi-sport sensation.

He was a .400 hitter who also skated with Johnny Bucyk at the Boston Bruins training camp.

But times were different in Nova Scotia and Quebec in the 1950s and 1960s. There wasn’t the extensive multi-media sports coverage there is today and Mentis was Black, and though he had opportunities to pursue both professional baseball and hockey careers, he had little desire to head south of the border.

“In 1959 or 1960, I had an offer from the [Philadelphia] Phillies,” said Mentis. “But I had just got married to a French woman, and they wanted to send me to Florida and I wasn’t ready for that.”

Looking back, Mentis, now 82, is content with his decision. He has settled in Granby, Que., with his wife, Lisette, after a long and successful career as a prison guard and he reflects on his hockey and baseball playing days with fondness.

Between 1956 and 1970, you’d be hard pressed to find a better all-around athlete in Quebec than Mentis. An elite left-handed hitter, first in the semi-pro Saguenay League and then in the Provincial League, the speedy centre fielder won three batting titles, hit better than .400 twice and over .330 in nine seasons.

On the ice, he was a speedy centre and left-winger with a nose for the net whose skills convinced the Bruins to sign him to a C-Form and he attended training camps with them in Quebec City in 1956 and 1957.

Born in Truro, N.S., in 1938, Mentis grew up in an athletic family. Sadly, his mother died when he was just five, but he was raised by his father and grandparents. His father, an outstanding hockey player with the Truro Bearcats, taught Mentis how to skate on a local pond.

The fourth of five children, Mentis honed his skills by playing against his siblings. His oldest brother, Ray, was scouted by the Chicago Blackhawks, while his second oldest brother, Bob (known as Cook), also drew the attention of hockey scouts. His sister, Lenora, was a standout basketball player and his younger brother, Burton, was a local star on the diamond.

Mentis didn’t start playing organized hockey until he was 10 and he fine-tuned his baseball skills on the sandlots of Truro. He enjoyed both sports equally, but it was his on-ice abilities that first garnered him notice from a pro team.

In 1956, as an 18-year-old, he was scouted and signed by the Bruins. They assigned him to a junior club in Chicoutimi. In the off-season, he hooked on with a baseball team in Kenogami that was part of the semi-pro Saguenay League.

“There was a big adjustment when I got there because I couldn’t speak French,” recalled Mentis. “Up in Chicoutimi, there was hardly any English, so you had to listen and learn word by word.”

He was still a junior-aged player when he attended the Bruins’ camps in 1956 and 1957, but after he graduated from the junior ranks, Mentis says he “got lost” in the NHL club’s organization. But after he was out of the Bruins’ system, he kept competing at a high level, eventually playing 14 seasons in the Quebec Senior Hockey League with teams in Granby and Victoriaville.

Fortunately, Mentis was “equally” focused on baseball at the time. As noted earlier, he started his semi-pro career with Kenogami of the Saguenay League in 1957.

And how good was he at baseball?

Well, he hit a home run in his first at bat. Mentis can still recall that plate appearance in which he yanked a pitch down the right field line in Kenogami that cleared the fence. And that would be a sign of things to come for him. Mentis proceeded to hit .398 and capture his first batting title that year.

After two seasons with Kenogami, he shifted south to play for Waterloo of the Provincial League from 1959 to 1961. In his first year with Waterloo, he hit .412 and won his second batting crown and helped his team to a division title. He followed that up with a .438 batting average the ensuing campaign, with all three of his home runs that year coming in the same game.

“That game was in Waterloo. They had a right-handed pitcher and what can I say? He laid it up there [and Mentis hit them over the fence],” Mentis recalled modestly.

After the 1961 season, Mentis moved to the Granby club in the Provincial League and batted .373 to secure his third and final batting title.

By this time, however, competition in the Provincial League was becoming stronger.

“The first three years I played in the Provincial League, there were no imports,” said Mentis. “There was only one team that was close to the border that used to have some Americans. But about four years in, they started bringing in Americans and Dominicans.”

During his tenure in the Provincial League, Mentis suited up against many players that had competed in the affiliated pro ranks, including future and past major leaguers like Pepe Frias, Norm Angelini, Ray Daviault and Felix Mantilla.

“Pepe Frias, played in Thetford Mines [in the Provincial League] and he went straight to the Expos,” said Mentis.

Following three seasons in Granby, Mentis had stints with clubs in Acton Vale and Sherbrooke prior to returning to Granby in 1967.

Mentis’ athletic prowess was at its peak in 1968 when he was a hard-hitting outfielder for the Granby club that captured the Provincial League title and was also a key forward on the Quebec Provincial Hockey League’s Victoriaville Tigres that won the Allan Cup.

Despite winning the championship, however, several of the players on the Granby club were sold to the owner of a team in Trois Rivieres and Mentis, who by now was working as a prison guard, had to drive farther to play, so he began playing fewer games.

In 1970, he suited up briefly for a squad in Quebec City before hanging up his playing spikes.

Four years earlier, Mentis was hired to be a prison guard at the St. Vincent de Paul Federal Penitentiary in Montreal which made him the first black prison guard ever hired by a federal facility.

“I worked for 30 years in the penitentiary system,” he said. “I worked three-and-a-half years for the federal penitentiary and the other twenty-six-and-a-half for the provincial jail in Waterloo.”

While working at the prisons, Mentis was able to employ his athletic talents, first as assistant director of sports at the federal penitentiary, then as the director of sports at the provincial facility. The work was tough at first, but he eventually found it very rewarding, and sports allowed him to build trust with the inmates.

“You get a little bit closer to them and they confide a little bit more to you,” said Mentis.

Mentis retired in 1996, but he has kept active in sports, including playing Oldtimers hockey until he was 62.

“I play a little golf,” said Mentis in a recent phone interview, “and I have a few friends and we hang out together.”

When asked about his legacy of being one of Quebec’s top multi-sport stars of the 1950s and 1960s, his response is modest.

“I never thought of myself that way,” he said. “It was just something that came along. When it was baseball season, I just went out and tried out for the team and when it was hockey season, I did the same thing.”