Collector Ken Barnstaple shows off three of his Bee Hive hockey cards (from left), broadcaster Foster Hewitt, Toronto Maple Leafs' Rhys Thompson and Howie Morenz of the Montreal Canadiens.

CREDIT: TOBIN GRIMSHAW, CP

For 33 winters, through a crippling depression, a world war and an era of eight, then six National Hockey League teams, there was a hero in uniform who would trudge through the snow right to your doorstep.

And why wouldn't the mailman be a hero? In his satchel he often had an envelope addressed to you from the St. Lawrence Starch Co. Ltd. of Port Credit, Ont. How could you not worship the man who delivered fantastic photographs of your favourite, larger-than-life NHL stars?

For many thousands of Canadian youngsters from 1934-67, there was nothing quite like a Bee Hive hockey photo.

Not for those who poured corn syrup of the same name over their porridge and toast until their teeth ached, or scoured the dumps for mail-in labels on carelessly discarded Bee Hive tins.

Certainly not for Hall of Famers Bobby Hull, who rummaged as a boy through refuse piles in tiny Point Anne, Ont., in search of a Bee Hive "proof of purchase," or Floral, Sask., native Gordie Howe, who still rues the day a relative trashed his treasured collection.

At a glance, a Bee Hive pales beside today's high-gloss hockey cards. But in the hearts of those whose only connection to the game might have been a scratchy radio broadcast and a newspaper summary, a Bee Hive was, and is, sweeter and more golden than the syrup it cost.

In Mississauga, Ont., 49-year-old Ken Barnstaple recalls seeing black-and-white Bee Hives as a boy - his father collected them, too - and he was unimpressed.

"I'd rather have had hockey cards growing up," he said. "I didn't go nuts over Bee Hives. You could get colour pictures on Chex cereal, or in the Star Weekly (newspaper supplement)."

As times have changed, so has Barnstaple. He now owns some 800 of the 1,025 Bee Hives produced before the increasingly expensive promotion was discontinued in 1967, when the NHL expanded from six teams to 12.

Based on catalogue value, a complete set, which apparently is owned by no one, is worth $75,000.

If Barnstaple is not the world's greatest collector of these photographs, surely he is the most devoted. His wonderful Web site - beehivehockey.com - is a loving tribute to a time long past, a return to a day when children collected for fun, not profit.

With "traditional" hockey cards appearing erratically from cigarette and chewing-gum companies in the 1930s and '40s, Bee Hives often were the only scrapbook-worthy photos a youngster could collect.

At 41/4 by 63/4 inches, mounted on a larger colour matte, the grainy photos were a stroke of marketing genius for the St. Lawrence Starch Co., which produced Bee Hive and various corn oils and food and laundry starches for a century until it was bought in 1989 by U.S. interests.

(The syrup is still available, in tall, hive-shaped plastic bottles.)

Bee Hive became Canada's largest-selling corn syrup in the 1930s, its sales quadrupling during its photo promotion. At its peak, more than 2,500 photos were mailed daily from the St. Lawrence business office.

Getting a Bee Hive photo was a simple matter, if one that involved a stamp and a major sugar rush: a collar off a two-pound can earned a single photo that you chose from a checklist of players; a token from a five-pound can was worth two.

Many calories for little material gain. But then, no one in hockey was getting rich from the promotion. For most of its duration, a team received less than $5,000 per year for its participation. A player's fee in the '40s might have been a few tins of Bee Hive from the Maple Leafs' Bob Davidson, who worked offseason for the syrup-maker.

Three groups of photos were produced - 1934-43, 1944-64 and 1964-67 - featuring 601 NHL players in different poses, each set cosmetically unique.

During the early '40s, 55 airplane photos celebrated the Allied war effort; there also appeared images of broadcasters, coaches and trophies, even a set of five called "The Olympians," which curiously included a shot of the Dionne quintuplets.

The promotion widened to include rings, dress pins, tie clips, NHL guides, crests and skate sharpeners. But Bee Hive is remembered for hockey photos.

Barnstaple's collection took flight about five years ago when he bought many from one source. Since then, he's procured them from all over.

"A full set is never going to be attainable," he said. "I figure that once I get 900 or 950, I'll be pretty happy. There are only three or four of some of these photos in existence.

"The big stars like Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull are easiest to find. The hardest are the nobodies whose pictures weren't in much demand, and weren't produced in large quantity."

Say, the photo of defenceman Joe Conn in the uniform of the Chicago Black Hawks. He never played an NHL game.

Some collectors share digital scans to help fill out checklists. One of the rarest photos is Cy Wentworth in a Canadiens jersey; Barnstaple has a scan of it, and says the sale of an original could net you $8,000.

His Group 1 photos of Canadiens Aurel Joliat and Howie Morenz are worth about $800 each, and many pictures, if they could be found, would net $2,000, minimum.

But like his colleagues, Barnstaple isn't in Bee Hives for the money. There's an inexplicable magic about the photos - the crude equipment, spindly legs, posed rushes, goofy smiles, schoolteacher-script signatures.

"I've had people send me nice notes about the Web site," he said, "but I was watching the playoffs and I heard Don Cherry and Ron MacLean talking about an old New York Ranger. Next thing I knew, one of my pages flashed on the screen. That kinda blew me away."

For a time, Barnstaple could spend 12 hours a day polishing the site, rich with his own collection and material provided him by others. It's been largely untouched for many months, but he said he'll soon be expanding it and uploading new images.

For now, a whole lot of NHL history is fanned out on a table in his townhouse, the long-forgotten elbowing the legends.

And that was the beauty of the Bee Hive: for just a proof of purchase, Squee Allen, Eberhardt Heller and Zellio Toppazzini could hold their own against Maurice Richard, Syl Apps and Terry Sawchuk.

Visit Ken Barnstaple's Bee Hive shrine at beehivehockey.com

dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com