It seems to many that he has always been on the bowling scene in this part of Canada, and when least suspected, he is there! In a small way Len had an influence in the late 1940’s, in the origin of the Bowlerama chain – but more about that later.

He was born to Scottish Presbyterian parents, the third generation born in Canada, on a dairy farm six miles from the Sarnia City limits during the First World War. He had two older brothers and one sister.

Elementary education was received in the one room schoolhouse about a mile down the gravel road. He got his secondary school education in Sarnia at the Sarnia Collegiate Institute & Technical School, travelling by bicycle in good weather and by car in the winter.

Following graduation in the middle 1930’s he farmed with his father and one brother until he left the family homestead for medical reasons in late 1937.

In 1938, Len enrolled at the Sarnia Business College. The following year he landed a job with Canadian General Electric in their warehouse at King & Simcoe Streets, Toronto. He enlisted in 1942 in the R.C.A.F. and received his Wings and was commissioned in March, 1943. Immediately prior to graduating Len learned that he was to serve as an instructor in Canada before going overseas.

In 1937, Len Hossie met Audrey, a Toronto girl, at a convention at Elgin House and she became a major attraction for this Sarnia fellow, in Toronto. The instructor’s posting did the trick and Len got his Wings on Friday, got married on Saturday, and reported to his next station on Sunday. Remember this was wartime!

Because of this posting, Audrey and Len set up their first home in Mossbank, Saskatchewan, a very small prairie town about sixty miles south of Moose Jaw. The experience of existing in an ex-prairie cook shack was, to say the least, different from Toronto living.

In November, 1943, Len was posted overseas for active duty and after a hectic training schedule in England, he was flying in Operations by September, 1944. This continued till early in November, 1944, when after releasing a bomb load over the German industrial Ruhr Valley, the German anti-aircraft did a job on the Halifax Bomber. Thanks to a parachute, Len lived to spend the balance of the war in a P.O.W. Camp. He was released by the Russian Army in May, 1945 and was home in Toronto by July, 1945.

Being a married man on civvy street, Audrey and Len wasted little time in purchasing their first home in East York at Donlands and O’Connor Drive ad it was to this address that Audrey brought home their three daughters, Donna in 1946, Diane in 1950 and Dayle in 1953.

General Electric didn’t promise Len anything earth-shaking, so employment as a sales representative was obtained with a leading Canadian market research company, Elliott-Haynes.

In the spring of 1947, Brunswick-Balke-Colender employed their services to ascertain if the proposed 16 lane Kingsway Bowl, to be located at Bloor and Royal York Rd. in Toronto, should be equipped for 5 pins or 10 pins. This survey led to Len being hired by Brunswick and on the 1st of July, 1947, he was their Toronto (Ontario) Branch Manager, where he stayed till early in 1955.

This was the post-war era in the Canadian bowling business and Brunswick, under the Canadian management of the very dynamic Ted Gillette was going to make it jump. Jump it did!

New, and in many cases large, bowling centres sprung up. A fire destroyed the building at Bathurst and St. Clair in Toronto, and here after the structure was rebuilt, Mr. Sam Fine and Len negotiated a contract for 16 new lanes. Was this the birth of the Bowlerama Chain as we know it today? It was the start of a wonderful relationship with Sam Fine!

Who can forget the Olympia Edward 64-lane agreement, one of the largest single agreements ever penned in Canada? Len remembers well the negotiations with the two Georges, Bulucon and Ivals, and the huge undertaking of getting it opened for the fall leagues, when Brunswick didn’t get into the premises till mid-August.

How can anyone forget Mary Styra and the planning and negotiations that went on for the establishing and opening of O’Connor Bowl which John Martin made famous across Canada - but while large bowling establishments are fine, the backbone are the 6 lanes in Huntsville, 3 in Shelburne, 8 in Campbellville, and 8 in Ingersoll, to name a few.

In the last half of 1950 Len was engaged in the real estate business. In 1960 it was back to bowling with Double Diamond when the 5 pin pinsetter war was breaking out between Brunswick and Double Diamond. With the demise of Double Diamond, Len was soon established with Argo, a company originally designed to service the 106 Double Diamond Pinsetters in use by the Acorn Bowling chain headed up by the late Bernie Porter.

Argo expanded from Front St. in Toronto to Weston Road after it was purchased by Levy Industries of Weston, who were the manufacturers of the Brunswick 5 Pin Pinsetter. After several years Levy’s decided the bowling business wasn’t for them and gave Len the job of closing Argo, thus making important bowling pin production machinery and chemicals available. Professional Bowling acquired much of this equipment and by 1968, Len was employed by the same company.

Much could be written about Len and Professional Bowling, about their sales of string operated pinsetters, about their pin production and especially their going into the 10 pin business in Japan and building it to a high of 44,000 sets, 440,000 pins in one 12-month period. Len Hossie, after a period covering over 36 years, has retired from active and full-time participation in bowling. When asked about it, he remembers with affection the people more than the sales, such as: the Karry family in Windsor, Toronto and Ottawa, the late Don Graham of Sarnia, Bob Totzke of Waterloo, Leon Hudecki of Hamilton, Matt Kotelko of Oshawa, Cecil Habros and his father from Hamilton, Louis Yeotes of Peterborough and who can forget Sam Shaw, the “Mayor of Hamilton Mountain”?

These are a few it is true, but they all made their mark on others and contributed to the bowling industry.

Len hopes to remain in contact with the industry and especially the people who make it tick.