ARTHUR WOOD, PEDODONTIST AND INVENTOR: 1917-2005

Ontario dentist and minor-hockey coach helped develop the mouthguard. At first,
young players rejected his device but later he became -- at least to parents --  
a real-life tooth fairy

By TOM HAWTHORN

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 Page S9

Special to The Globe and Mail; Globe and Mail archives

As a children's dentist, Arthur Wood was appalled by the injuries caused by
hockey pucks. Young patients filled his dental chair every winter, presenting
mouthfuls of what were known among their peers as bloody Chiclets.

After a neighbour's son suffered broken teeth, Mr. Wood made it his calling to
end what he regarded as needless damage.

What he devised, with the help of Charlie Patterson and others, would cause the
dentist to later be known as the Father of the Mouthguard.

He received many honours for his invention, not the least of which was the Order
of Canada.

The son of a nurse and a store owner, Arthur Wood was born in rural Saskatchewan
near Estevan, about 20 kilometres from the North Dakota border. He learned to
play hockey outdoors, stuffing department-store catalogues down his socks to act
as shin guards. Like many of his future patients, he had no protection for his
teeth.
In 1935, Gopher, as he had been nicknamed, was hired as a teacher at public
schools, although the deprivations of the Depression forced him to defer some of
his salary. He would later note with satisfaction that he had been paid in full,
a decade after retiring as a teacher.

Mr. Wood enrolled at the University of Toronto in 1938, completing a doctor of
dental surgery degree in 1943. He married that same year and became a member of
the Canadian Dental Corps with the rank of captain. Mr. Wood served in Britain,
Europe and Asia, although the only action he saw was hand-to-mouth combat. His
final posting came aboard HMCS Ontario, a light cruiser serving in the Pacific,
in 1946.

After the war, the dentist returned to the classroom for post-graduate studies
in pediatric dentistry. He studied at the University of Illinois and
Northwestern University in 1948 and 1949 under a fellowship provided by the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation.

He returned to Canada for a position in the University of Toronto dentistry
faculty. He would later become president of the Canadian Academy of Pediatric
Dentistry. He was also president of the Royal College of Dentists of Canada and
served on the board of the American Academy of Pedodontics.

Mr. Wood maintained his boyhood passion for hockey throughout his life. In the
1950s, he became president of the Cooksville Hockey Association in what is now
suburban Mississauga, Ont. He also coached a boy's team. With so many players
becoming patients, he began to wonder if something couldn't be done to protect
them.

The last straw landed in the early 1960s when a 17-year-old neighbour, who had
only just had his teeth straightened, gave up four of his young pearlies to a
hockey stick. Mr. Wood got to work on some sort of protector that players would
wear in their mouths.

At about the same time, Mr. Patterson, a researcher at York University who was
also a fellow Cooksville coach, began tinkering with hockey helmets after his
son, Dan, suffered a concussion in a nasty spill. At the time, helmets were
little more than a leather skullcap. From there, the two men collaborated on
developing what was known at first as a "mug guard" or "teeth guard." They also
worked together on helmets.

In 1954, Mr. Wood made mandatory for his players the wearing of his dental
protector. By 1961, the equipment had become obligatory for all skaters in what
was then the Toronto Township Hockey League.

He made a presentation about his innovation to the annual convention of the
Ontario Dental Association the following May. In time, the mouthguard was
adopted across the country, becoming an essential piece of protective equipment
in hockey and many other contact sports.

"As a pediatric dentist, I used to see 200 hockey accidents a year," Mr. Wood
told the Toronto Star in 1991. "Now there are practically nil."

Still, the culture of the national game was such that many junior, senior and
professional players refused to wear the gear, as though missing teeth were
emblematic of a devil-may-care ferocity.

Mr. Patterson's head gear was also dismissed by some as an attempt to sissify a
man's sport. Not until the start of the 1979-80 season was the wearing of
helmets made compulsory for new players entering the National Hockey League. By
that time, a generation which had grown up with unbroken smiles and uncracked
skulls had climbed to the pro ranks.

Later, he took to visiting high school, university, even NHL locker rooms to
gather feedback from athletes. "Every year we try to build a better mousetrap,"
he once said.

Less well known was his work on building what he called "Allan Average," a kind
of adjustable head form that could be used for testing all sizes of helmets.
Along the way, he also became interested in developing mouth protection for
basketball players.

Mr. Wood's concern for safety also extended beyond dental well-being. He helped
found the local traffic safety council in 1956, for which he later devised a
"Kiss and Ride" drop-off program for schoolchildren and parents.

Even at age 75, he could be found at curbside making inspections on behalf of
the council, which honoured him by appointment as a life member.

The dentist was inducted into the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame in 1984. He
was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 1991. "It is gratifying to be a
member of a team that greatly reduced facial and dental injuries," he said at
the time.

His family says he never held a patent on any of his designs, taking as his
reward the knowledge that athletic children could reach adulthood with their
teeth intact.

Arthur Wood was born

on June 22, 1917, at Alameda, Sask. He died on July 11

at home in Mississauga, Ont.

He was 88. He leaves his wife

Mary Ruth, known as Molly;

sons Peter Wood of Toronto

and John Kenneth (Kim) Wood

of Dallas, Tex.; daughter

Mary Sue Phillips of Ottawa;

and seven grandchildren.