If any one individual’s ideas and efforts forever change the way a game was played world-wide, it certainly had to be Mississauga’s Dr. Arthur Wood.
Not many people realize it, but the hockey mouth guard was invented by Dr. Arthur Wood. The first team in hockey to use the combined head and mouth protection as a unit was a team coached by Dr. Wood in the 1954-55 season at Dixie Arena.
Born on June 22, 1917 and raised in Saskatchewan, Dr. Wood taught school there before coming to Toronto where he graduated from the Faculty of Dentistry in 1943. He served four years in the Royal Canadian Dental Corps. He taught part time at the University of Toronto, and served in executive positions on many professional organizations, including the Dental Public Health Committee of the Ontario Dental Association. Dr. Wood and his wife Mary (Molly) arrived in Mississauga in 1951 and took up residence in Cooksville, where they raised three children, sons Peter and John and daughter Mary.
As a practicing paedodontist, Dr. Wood saw hundreds of children coming to his office with serious damage as a result of playing hockey. He felt something more than attending to the children’s teeth had to be done. It was a matter of solving the problem rather than treating the problem.
Coincidentally, Dr. Wood was president of the Cooksville Hockey Association playing in the Toronto Township Hockey League (TTHL), as well as coaching a team. He had extensive knowledge of the game and the medical background to understand the problems players might encounter with any form of apparatus that was used. It wasn’t until Dr. Wood designed and perfected a mouth guard and put it into use with a full team of players, that protective gear became the norm for hockey the world over. The Mississauga Hockey League made it mandatory to wear the mouth guard and helmets in 1961.
Pictured above is the Balabans Sunoco Peewee team, which was coached by Dr. Wood. The Cooksville team played at Dixie Arena. Photo courtesy of Dr. Arthur Wood.