Bill Riley, first African Nova Scotian to play in NHL, remembered as inspiration | CBC News
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Bill Riley, the first African Nova Scotian player in the NHL who went on to coach several junior hockey teams, has died of cancer. He was 75.
Riley was born in 1950 in Amherst and played for two seasons with the junior-level Amherst Ramblers. He joined the Washington Capitals from 1976-79 and the Winnipeg Jets in the 1979-80 season. He was the third Black player in the NHL.
Riley also captained the New Brunswick Hawks, leading them to the Calder Cup in 1982, and the Nova Scotia Voyageurs.
After his pro career, Riley coached the QMJHL’s Moncton Wildcats and his hometown team, the Amherst Ramblers.
Jim Bottomley, a friend of Riley’s who coached against him in the Maritime junior A circuit, remembered him as competitive and hard-nosed on the ice. But he said he was a generous coach and a community leader off the ice.
“He changed a lot of young people’s lives, especially when he was coaching in Amherst,” said Bottomley. “He’d have the players living in his house, he wasn’t shy to look after them financially, whatever he could do, you know, [give] towards their education. He was a class act.”
Riley was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.
“He was a lifelong ambassador for the sport for Amherst,” said Hall of Fame CEO Bruce Rainnie.
“He was aware of how important he was for African Nova Scotians. The old expression, you have to see it to be it? Well, you look at Bill Riley and if you’re a young African Nova Scotia kid who likes hockey, there’s your proof that, yes, with hard work and determination and all of that stuff, you can make the biggest league in the world.”
Riley had a Hockey Nova Scotia award and scholarship named after him in 2022.
“We were so proud of him,” said Mark McFarlane, Riley’s son. “He was bigger than life to us.”
He also said that the prejudice his father faced as a Black hockey player stoked him to play as hard as he could.
“That does drive a man internally,” McFarlane said. “It drove no one more than Bill Riley.
“That fire came from somewhere. It was an internal drive to prove people wrong, to show people you belong.”
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