Stewart Edward Hart OC (May 3, 1915 – October 16, 2003) was a Canadian amateur and professional wrestler, wrestling booker, promoter, and coach.

Hart was born to an impoverished Saskatchewan family but became a successful amateur wrestler during the 1930s and early 1940s, holding many national championships, as well as engaging in many other sports.

Beginning from the 1950s Hart helped train a large number of people for his company and gained a reputation as one of the best teachers in the wrestling business.

Hart remained an active full-time wrestler until the 1960s when he entered semi-in-ring retirement, thereafter he would focus mostly on promoting, booking and teaching, as well as raising his twelve children with Helen while still appearing in the ring sporadically until the 1980s.

Throughout his career, Hart almost exclusively portrayed a heroic character, a so-called "babyface" role and only held one professional title, the NWA Northwest Tag Team Championship.

He continued to teach wrestling at his home in Calgary until the 1990s when he suffered a severe leg injury and had to stop engaging excessively with students, leaving most of the work for his sons Bruce and Keith.

[13] In 1928, his father was arrested for failure to pay back taxes, while the Salvation Army sent Stu, his mother, and two sisters, Sylvester and Edrie to live in Edmonton.

[iv] Due to his destitute childhood and youth Hart did not experience a dramatic shift in life quality or mentality during the Great Depression which affected most others around him in Edmonton.

Hart qualified for the 1938 British Empire Games in Australia but was unable to go due to economic reasons,[16] mainly the lack of funding from the Canadian government, a leftover from the depression.

[16] While Hart was mainly a lover of submission wrestling he was also an outstanding all-around athlete[viii] who played virtually every sport available,[11] excelling at football, baseball and fastball notably.

The accident happened while he was on the way to be with his father Edward to celebrate Christmas with the family when a fire truck drove behind him and forced Hart to swerve to the side where he was hit by another car which propelled him thirty feet forward on the road and scraped off a large portion of his skin in the process.

Physically, he had fully recovered from his injuries and had hoped to see genuine sea duty afterward, but the Navy appeared to be more interested in him as an athletic director than as a regular enlisted seaman.

Hart originally wanted to leave the Navy when the war was over but the organization considered him to be a great asset both as a trainer as well as a showpiece, persuading him to stay.

[20][22] The roughing up of younger performers by veteran workers was common at the time in the industry but Hart adapted to it rather quickly and would retaliate with the same treatment, utilizing his catch wrestling experience to his advantage.

[xi] Hart had quickly become a rising star in the area but chose to leave together with his newly engaged fiancée only about a year and a half after debuting.

[xvi] Hart was a perpetual "face" during his in-ring career, including during his time with the NWA,[xvii] and was a noted draw for women in the areas he wrestled.

A recurring staple of these appearances in the 1990s was that Stu and Helen would be verbally attacked by several of the commentators, mostly by Bobby Heenan and Jerry Lawler, the latter of whom was in a long-running feud with Bret during this point in time.

"[39] Some of Hart's former students, including his son Bret, have mentioned that his stretching would sometimes result in broken blood vessels in the eyes,[40][41][2][42] something which others have attempted to learn from his father.

[44] Some have described his training as torture[45] and have accused Hart of being a sadist who enjoyed inflicting pain on people and was more interested in doing so than teach them professional wrestling.

[xxxii][54][xxxiii] Stu's seventh son Ross has said that his father was always generous and compassionate with his children and others in person but added that he was different when training people, believing that there was no easy way to teach wrestling.

[2] His daughter-in-law Martha has expressed in her book that she felt sure that Hart was well aware of his students' limits and never meant to actually harm any of them, stating that he was always careful not to apply too much pressure on any of his holds and intended more to scare them than maim them.

[55] Despite this, she also disclosed that her husband Owen had long been scared of his father during childhood due to his fearsome reputation and hearing his brothers as well as other trainees' screams from the family's basement where Hart's training hall was located.

In the same documentary his third son Keith explained that many may have believed his father to be a psychopath at first glance but that you had to know him intimately to understand that he wasn't anything like that beneath the surface.

Wrestling manager Jim Cornette has theorized that his cruel upbringing and tough early development may have played a part in the seemingly contradictory behaviour from Hart, as both a dedicated family man and apparently sadistic tormentor of his students.

[66] Hart was also a good friend of wrestling promoter Jack Pfefer, whom he asked to be the godfather of his son Ross,[67] as well as Calgary Mayor Rod Sykes[15] and ice hockey player Brian Conacher.

Stu and Helen raised their twelve children in the Hart mansion, Smith, Bruce, Keith, Wayne, Dean, Ellie, Georgia, Bret, Alison, Ross, Diana and Owen.

He was cremated and his ashes were later interred at Eden Brook Memorial Gardens in a plot with his wife Helen, who had died almost two years earlier in November 2001.

[lvi][lvii] Hart is regarded by many as one of the most important and respected[80] people in the history of professional wrestling,[68][xli][81][lviii][lix][82][lx] and an icon of the art.

[lxxix][lxxx][lxxxi][lxxxii][lxxxiii][lxxxiv][lxxxv][lxxxvi] As of 2005 Hart is part of a permanent exhibit at the Glenbow Museum.

A generous supporter of community life in Calgary, he is a loyal benefactor to more than thirty charitable and civic organizations including the Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children and the Alberta Firefighters Toy Fund.