Kennedy’s roots were planted in PEI perhaps out of necessity. His father was a prison guard in Dorchester, New Brunswick, his mother unsettled by the idea that an escaped convict might turn up on the family’s doorstep.
The eldest of four children, Kennedy began skating at age 11, playing on Montreal Canadiens-sponsored teams until the Black Hawks acquired his NHL rights.
If he was disappointed to be traded by Montreal, the League’s supreme powerhouse, he was happy to even have an NHL job, never having expected to be a pro hockey player.
“If they had sent me to Timbuktu, I would have gone,” Kennedy said in 1968, upon his induction into the Prince Edward Island Sports Hall of Fame. “I believe to play hockey, you’ve got to love the game. If you don’t, it’s a job. When we played hockey, it wasn’t a job, not for one guy in the League.”