For 20 years after his hockey career ended, Carl Brewer was hockey’s best-known kook, a guy who made wild accusations against some of the most respected figures in the game, a publicity hungry malcontent biting the hand that bred him, fed him and made him a star with the Toronto Maple Leafs even though he was never really their type of guy.

In a day when kids, or their parents, signed away their hockey futures for as little as a few hundred bucks and were thankful for the opportunity that indentured servitude might provide, young Carl Brewer, a tough kid from a rough part of town had the gall to spurn his home town team’s initial offer to take him under their wing.

The Leafs offered Brewer, then a defenceman with the junior Toronto Marlboros, a $1600 signing bonus, an amount he insisted on negotiating upwards before signing on the line on his 20th birthday, eventually extorting $4000 from Conn Smythe’s coffers.

Differences over money and issues relating to money would be recurring subject throughout Brewer’s career. His capacity for independent thought and willingness to go to the mat would have seen most other players drummed out of the game for such insolence but Brewer was just too good a hockey player for the Maple Leafs to wash their hands of, even when he had the nerve to hire a lawyer to represent him in contract negotiations.

Unwittingly introducing Alan Eagleson to the NHL was something Brewer soon regretted and devoted much of the rest of his life to trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube, eventually winning complete moral vindication and significant benefits for the surviving players of his era, over 1500 in number, who eventually saw some of the money diverted from their pension fund revert to them.

“He really began to wonder what kind of a monster he had created. Of course in Carl’s day when he saw the players with no dignity, no benefits, no voice whatsoever, he thought Alan Eagleson was going to be the great liberator,” said Susan Foster, Brewer’s life partner and author of The Power of Two, a book that details their lives together, centering on the torturous path that eventually allowed the complex, conflicted Brewer to feel some measure of redemption.

It took over 20 years for the tenacious Brewer to win his only significant victory, a period that saw him use over 20 lawyers and initiate numerous legal actions, most of it at his own expense against opponents with seemingly bottomless pockets but when the dust settled, Brewer was no longer simply a crank and Eagleson, now a convicted felon in the US, was no longer in the game, the Hall of Fame or a member of the bar.

Stevie Cameron, who wrote the introduction to The Power of Two, was recently describing the criminal mind to Foster.

“She said it didn’t matter whether it’s a pedophile, mugger, bank robber or white-collar criminal. It’s all the same. They have no scruples, they have no morals and it doesn’t matter if there’s 25 cents or 25 million dollars on the table, they have to get the lion’s share.”

“That man was so powerfully connected at every level of the Canadian societal scene,” Foster said of the man who dominated the hockey world, numbered as intimates the movers and shakers of both major Canadian political parties, gave annual parties for the Premier of Ontario and had a former Prime Minster swear to his good character. “There was absolutely no way he was ever going to be called to task in Canada and he felt pretty smug that he was untouchable.”

The pair suffered several defeats for each victory in the years leading up to the final judgement, one that Foster thinks ought to have been much larger.

“We were successful with the surplus but it was just the tip of the iceberg. There were many millions of dollars left on the table. It always just benefited the owners who outright lied about the monies from All-Star games and international play,” said Foster.

“They bought group annuities for the whole bunch of guys every year and within those group annuities they would be buying bonds at say, 2 1/2%. That would be what the were guaranteeing back to the fund however as they matured and over the next 30 years the interests went from 2 ½ to 18 or 20% and difference should have benefited the players but it didn’t. David Cruise and Allison Griffiths showed in Net Worth that money was just shipped back to the owners,” said the woman responsible for unearthing much of the information revealed by the book.

“In the NHL pension society bylaws it says that the members get the return of interest or the greater of the investment that’s a key line and it was overlooked in everything. It would have meant an incalculable amount to the players.”

The turbulent, conflicted Brewer often asserted that without Foster in his corner, there was no way that he could have managed to continue his many battles. Whether it was in litigation against the NHL, the Leafs or the pension society, Foster did the bulk of the spadework, researching, organizing and disseminating the information she painstakingly dug up.

Her book covers a lot of ground. It is a love story, a hockey book and a whodunit all at the same time all the while giving an insiders view of the way the hockey world worked in the bad old days, something Foster thinks was made possible by the way young prospects were raised and groomed, a process in many ways remarkably similar to way things are done today.

“My theory has always been that they miss out on a whole learning experience. Your son and mine begin learning how to be an adult in school. They graduate, go out and get their first jobs, learn how to manage their money and figure out who their friends really are. This is all lost to hockey players and they turn out as 65-year-old men and they still don’t have any idea about who they can trust and they really aren’t too alarmed about things that would concern other men that age.”

While things have changed on many levels and no single individual dominates all aspects of the hockey business, Foster feels that the days when unsophisticated athletes were short-changed by both their employer and the men who were supposed to represent their best interests have not faded completely away.

“There are still agents out there today who are basically doing what Alan Eagleson did but nobody seems willing to take them to task,” she said.

Their victory on the pension fund issue has brought Brewer, who passed away in 2001, some measure of vindication after being dismissed, even by many of his peers, as a crackpot. At a gathering to celebrate friend’ 50th wedding anniversary this summer a long-time teammate and friend of Brewers took Foster aside.

“You know, Carl talked to me about it all and it’s not as if I though he was wrong,” he said to her. “But it was Carl.”

Another ex-player present, who went into broadcasting after his hockey days, caught her ear as they were both headed for the buffet table.

“ If I read your book, do you think I’ll understand what happened with Eagleson and the pension fund?” he asked. “Because when I was reporting on it I really didn’t get it.”

“Over the years people were so quick to judge Carl and not know him. I’m not suggesting that he was an easy person to get to know but I hope the book will give people an understanding of what he was about – his principles and what drove him so fiercely to fight against some of the injustices the players endured,” said Foster “I’m really glad he lived to see some of the accomplishments. It’s too bad he’s not here to enjoy the book and help me promote it but he knows what’s in it.”

(The Power of Two - 333 pages, published by Fenn Publishing Company. $34.95 in Canada. Shipped outside Canada by Amazon.com at $29.95 US.)