Bower was born John William Kiszkan into a Ukrainian Canadian family in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to Johnny Kiszkan, a labourer, and his wife, Betty. He had one brother and seven sisters. He taught himself how to play hockey, using a branch as a stick, and made himself goalie pads out of old mattresses. When he was 15, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Canadian Army during World War II; from 1940 to 1943 he was stationed in England as a gunner with the 2nd Canadian Division. He was discharged due to rheumatoid arthritis in his hands.\n', '

Kiszkan returned to Prince Albert in 1944 to play junior hockey there. In 1945, he turned professional in the American Hockey League (AHL), where he spent eleven seasons playing mostly for the Cleveland Barons in the late 1940s and 1950s.\n', '

Kiszkan began to use his mother\'s maiden name, Bower, after his parents divorced in 1946. He legally changed his surname during his first year of professional hockey, because sports writers often misspelled "Kiszkan".\n', '

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