Late hockey legend Gordie Howe and I have a history at 575 St-Jean Boulevard in Pointe-Claire.

I thought of this on the last day of May as I drove past the former Fairview Mercury car dealership, this deserted building now reduced to small mountains of crushed cement and scattered debris behind a demolition fence.

For almost six decades, the building just south of Hymus had stood mostly as a car dealership – Fairview Mercury Sales Ltd. – from its grand opening in early 1966, a few others to follow in its tire treads.

In the end, I consider its brick-and-mortar demise to be perfectly symbolic.

When I met Gordie Howe for the first of many times in my life, one summer night in 1967, Mr. Hockey was in his prime, filling nets with his goals for the Detroit Red Wings and destroying foes with his lethal elbows.

Now, 57 years since this star-struck kid met a hockey icon, a year after Fairview Mercury opened, a demolition crew has flattened the building with the ruthless efficiency of Gordie in the corner of a rink, his opponents often left in the same kind of ruined pile.

The autograph of Gordie Howe – “Gordon,” by his longhand – remains one of the most familiar and coveted in old-time hockey, in a photo finish with those of Montreal Canadiens' stars Jean Béliveau and Maurice “Rocket” Richard and probably Chicago Black Hawks legend Bobby Hull, all members of the Hockey Hall of Fame, all no longer with us.

All four are perfectly legible, fluid in stroke, sometimes needlessly accompanied by a sweater number to confirm identities for the generations of fans and their heirs who have treasured them.

Forty-five years after I’d first met Gordie, he was back in Montreal for a 2012 Montreal sports collectibles show, his final time in this city before he died in 2016 at age 88. I met him at Montréal-Trudeau Airport when he arrived, and we sat for a wonderful talk.

For his scheduled hour at the show, and for a while longer in a room backstage, Gordie would sign his name a couple of hundred times. Everyone who stood before him for even a brief moment in the building’s main hall was awestruck; many were almost speechless.

Absently, between signatures, Gordie would flex his hand, curling his fingers almost tight, and you’d see not a fist so much as the business end of a sledgehammer. Long-ago players who blocked it with their unlucky mugs know as much.

The distinctive “G” that he penned that afternoon is probably unique in the world. It is more of an “S,” and how that came to be is part of the rich lore of Mr. Hockey.

As a grade-schooler in Saskatoon who lived his winters on a prairie rink, seemingly certain of the fame that one day would be his, Gordie diligently practiced a few different signatures, writing until his fingers cramped.

He offered these samples to his sister, Violet, and she chose the one that he signed tens of thousands of times as the greatest player of his era – No. 1 or 1A of all time with Wayne Gretzky, depending on your argument.

Gordie’s was the first autograph I collected as a boy.

The first and the second, in fact.

He signed my first when I was maybe 8, stroked on the back of one of my father’s Royal Bank of Canada – Pointe-Claire Shopping Centre branch cheques during Montreal TV personality and famed hockey broadcaster Dick Irvin Jr.’s annual Sports Celebrity Dinner.

I have no clue where it went; I probably gave it to a kid at school in exchange for part of his lunch.

The next was truly memorable, when this 10-year-old met Gordie at Fairview Mercury.

My father, Hal, was considering a new 1967 Mercury, and Gordie was in the showroom that night for a “Shoot To Win” promotion.

That afternoon, the Red Wings legend had been up the road at the Fairview mall, appearing at Eaton’s on behalf of his TruLine sporting goods line, but you couldn’t get within a rink-length of him there. By comparison, Fairview Mercury offered a private audience.

That night, I slapped a sponge-rubber puck through a gaping hole in a wooden board shrewdly not covering a hockey net; a happy kid was a far better sales tool than free floor mats.

Gordie extended his hand in congratulations, swallowing mine with a paw the size of a first baseman’s mitt, then signed a youth-sized stick as my prize. It was a heavy piece of lumber whose blade I reduced to a toothpick playing road hockey until, carelessly left on my Pointe-Claire driveway, it snapped when backed over by a 1967 Mercury that had joined our family a week after the stick.

“Straight blade, I’ll bet!” Gordie joked when we sat at the airport in 2012, the slope-shouldered legend having arrived with his son, Marty, for the collectibles show.

Gordie and I spoke for nearly an hour that day, talking about his blood-boiling rivalry with the Canadiens, his dear friend Jean Béliveau, a fraction of Gordie’s career highlights, and his views on the state of the modern game.

And I asked him about his world-famous autograph.

Gordie hadn’t begun signing his name in earnest until after his rookie season in 1946-47, having landed with the Red Wings at age 18. He vividly recalled the rule of iron-fisted Detroit coach Jack Adams, whose Red Wings that season were headed for a fourth-place finish in the six-team NHL and a first-round playoff exit.

“Adams would fine us if we signed autographs in our own building,” Gordie said. “He said, ‘You’re paid big money, so we expect you to keep your minds on hockey.’ I remember thinking about the fans. If we’d played (expletive), at least with an autograph they’d have had something.”

It was then that I confessed my two lost Gordie Howe autographs – the cheque and the hockey stick that wound up staking tomatoes in my mother’s garden.

He studied me for a moment.

“That’s pretty disrespectful, don’t you think?” he said with just a hint of a grin.

Then he cracked open a large envelope I’d brought, filled with photos for his enjoyment, and Marty and I got to talking. We soon would say our goodbyes, and it wasn’t until a few days later that I dug into my briefcase and pulled from it the envelope of photos.

And there, on the front: “Gordon Howe,” perfectly signed.

I phoned Gordie and asked, “How? When?”

He laughed.

“You were talking to Marty. You lost the cheque and you broke my stick. So this is No. 3.”

Pause.

“Consider this your Gordie Howe hat trick!”

In mid-June 2016, almost a half-century after we first met at Fairview Mercury, I was in Detroit, covering the emotional public visitation and funeral for Gordie Howe.

My third autograph is safely preserved at home. Near it are two other cherished pieces: A wonderful souvenir book of his career that Gordie signed for me not long before his passing, and a red enamel lapel pin, a simple No. 9 that is worn by the Howe family.

The pin was a breathtakingly kind gift from Marty Howe, a symbol of my friendship with his father, a man I maintain is the greatest NHL player of all time, and someone who, since my youth, has been a very special part of my life.

Gordie may be gone, and now, so too is Fairview Mercury, but memories of both still burn brightly in me.

Dave Stubbs is a Pointe-Claire native who, since 2016, has been a columnist and historian for the National Hockey League at NHL.com. He began his journalism career with the weekly News & Chronicle in 1976, and during three decades at the Montreal Gazette, worked as a columnist, feature writer, and sports editor.