A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  The Cup trustees, P. D. Ross and Sheriff John Sweetland, both of Ottawa, had decided that the league holding the trophy would first settle its own title and then accept challenges. Unfortunately, the AHAC regular season that year resulted in a four-way tie, which led to protracted negotiations between the clubs, followed by a lengthy period of playoffs. Accommodating the OHA was the least of the AHAC’s concerns.

  The defending champion Montreal Wheelers were eventually victorious. But by the time they clinched, on March 22, the chances of playable ice for a Cup final, even in Montreal, were remote. Osgoode Hall, now out of practice, let its challenge to the MAAA quietly pass.

  The Toronto Osgoodes remained a serious OHA contender for the next several years. After the departure of the Ottawa Hockey Club, however, the next OHA dynasty fell to Queen’s University. The Kingston club won the senior title in four of the next five years. The one exception was 1897–98, when the “Legalites” again beat Queen’s to take the title. For whatever reason, Osgoode made no attempt to challenge for the Dominion championship and quietly vanished from the Stanley Cup scene.

  The year of the Toronto Osgoodes’ second senior title coincided with a big battle over the second of the OHA’s recurring themes of controversy: the definition of an “amateur.” When the founders of the OHA spoke of “clean” hockey, they meant far more than an absence of rough play; they also had in mind a moral philosophy of athletics. That philosophy was “amateurism”—and the term then meant much more than not paying athletes.

  Amateurism embraced the belief that sport for its own sake, not for money, was the root of all virtue in athletics. Indeed, professionalism in athletics was believed to be the source of all vice. Without money, sport was regarded as a noble calling in which the young man nurtured heroic qualities—endurance, courage, self-sacrifice for the team—all to attain the glory of the championship. Once paid, the athlete was labelled socially disreputable, morally deviant and, as we shall see, even disloyal to the nation. The belief was simply that, once professionalized, athletics were no longer “sport” at all, but simply the worst kind of illicit moneygrubbing.

  Today, such a stark dichotomy may strike the reader as almost unbelievable. It is, however, exactly how hard-line amateur advocates saw the world. Indeed, a significant element of society was determined to destroy the career—on and off the ice—of any young athlete who accepted money to play sports.

  This article highlights the social discrimination to which the professional athlete was subjected a century ago. Such attitudes were already becoming controversial.

  An account of the plight of young John P. “Jack” Carmichael, which appeared in the Toronto News on February 2, 1901 (with his name misspelled), illustrates perfectly the disgrace in which some held paid athletes. Carmichael’s previous hockey friends refused to be on the same ice surface with the “now notorious professional” and a prospective employer denied him “a lucrative position.” His crime? He is reputed to have accepted a small fee for playing a game “gentlemen” played only for sport and fun.

  In the eyes of the amateur sporting authorities of the day, to be professional warranted a lifetime ban. One would be barred not just from the sport in question, but from any sanctioned athletic activity and all associated social circles. And a professional was not merely someone who accepted pay for play; it included anyone who ever played with or against a professional. So serious was the charge of professionalism that, contrary to British legal traditions, the accused was required to prove his innocence.

  The reality is that the argument over professionalism in sport was one of the great moral debates of the era throughout the Anglo-American world. The paying of athletes in those days has been compared with the use of performance-enhancing drugs today. The key difference is that the latter is almost universally condemned—at least where such drugs are intentionally employed. Conversely, the question of professionalism a century ago created deep social divisions.

  Why amateur advocates believed these things so passionately—indeed, fanatically—is now rather hard to explain. Suffice it to say that “respectable” sports in Great Britain had long been the preserve of “gentlemen” who neither needed nor sought remuneration. There were clear class distinctions when it came to sporting activities. “Gentlemen” were, of course, amateurs. “Professionals” were, for all intents and purposes, “undesirables.”23

  Amateurism had its roots in the noncommercial society of the aristocracy. The nobility had established elite recreations as an offshoot of military training. In an evolving United Kingdom, the ascendant bourgeoisie gradually assumed aspects of this athletic culture. It also developed the exclusive sports clubs, with a proscription on pay gradually replacing explicit class criteria.24

  Amateurism also dovetailed with the dominant Christian thinking of the period. The idea that “play” could be “work” seemed nonsensical to the values of both industrious Protestantism and otherworldly Catholicism. Play was for boys; work was for men. Athletics could not be seen as an occupation. Rather, its social utility was viewed as restricted to the development of the young.25

  The most robust manifestation of such ideas in the Victorian era was the concept of “muscular Christianity.” While the idea could be traced back to the apostle Paul, it was the contemporary writings of such authors as Thomas Hughes in England and Ralph Connor in Canada that re-energized the thinking. Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days, published in 1857, was hugely popular for decades.

  The simple story portrayed the friendship between two youngsters, Tom and Arthur, and their development as God-fearing, decent young men who were as diligent with their nightly prayers as they were as fair-playing, determined teammates on the cricket pitch or rugby field. As true “gentlemen,” the notion of playing any game for rewards other than health, fitness and friendship would have appalled them.

  Hockey on Ottawa’s Rideau Canal, Christmas 1901.

  It was believed that such athletic activity, by instilling the values of toughness and teamwork in young men, would engender a dedication to wider civic responsibilities. As in aristocratic times, this would include both the fitness and the willingness to participate in military service. Robert Baden-Powell’s scouting movement famously began as an exercise in such training, building up the manhood of young boys through the teaching of noncombat skills that could be applied to battlefield situations. Lord Baden-Powell had been influenced by the writings of Canadian author and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, himself a firm believer in muscular Christianity.

  Amateurism in Canada had experienced some unique frontier twists. Although the country never had an aristocratic “leisure class,” its first amateur codes did contain the old-world restrictions against labourers. To these it added barriers based on race and ethnicity. Often cited is the 1873 rule of the Montreal Pedestrian Club, one of the country’s earliest definitions of an amateur: “One who has never competed in any open competition or for public money, or for admission money, or with professionals for a prize, public money or admission money, nor has ever, at any period of his life taught or assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises as a means of livelihood, or is a labourer or an Indian.”26

  As in Britain, Canadian amateurism by the end of the nineteenth century had come to be defined by the absence of pay rather than the absence of social standing. What remained incontrovertible, however, was that amateurism by its nature was rooted in an agenda of social exclusion. The “amateur” was never himself defined; he was only what he was “not.” The amateur was not the “professional”—that is, not one who possessed professional characteristics or engaged in professional behaviours. Exclusion was thus the essence of all amateur definitions.

  In its defence—although such rationalizations are difficult—this aversion to professionalism also had a basis in historical experience. “Professional” sports had their origin in the culture of the working-class tavern and the travelling show, realities that had likewise been brought from the Mot
her Country. Sports as business had thus long been associated with things like bare-knuckle fisticuffs, cockfighting and “hippodroming.” The last were barnstorming tours of the countryside exhibiting “supposedly authentic athletic contests engaged in solely as a means of making money and drawing a large gate.”27 Usually such “contests” involved horses, but also team sports and fighters, and are considered to be the precursor to professional wrestling.

  This early “pro” athletic culture was not pretty. Promoters and their clients did often engage in cheating, rigging, intimidation, violence, hooliganism, gambling and even less savoury activities. Most shockingly, they did not hesitate to desecrate the Sabbath, an affront that was particularly unacceptable to those who lived in and believed in “Toronto the Good.” To the social establishment—the bourgeois leaders who were establishing the various forms of modern, organized, “scientific” sport—all such behaviour was ultimately attributable to the very nature of “professionalism” itself.

  Of course, amateur definitions were in practice self-fulfilling. Those denied “respectable” sponsorship and status in all sports as “professionals” were relegated to disreputable activity and standing. Further, it was argued even at the time, the prohibition on pay was just a thin veneer covering deeper issues of class and racism. Athletes who most required pay were those who tended to come from underprivileged or ethnic backgrounds.

  Yet one should not underestimate the degree to which amateurism had consciously evolved from a social system to a moral one. By the time the OHA arrived, it was personal character, not personal characteristics, that had become the focus. Amateurism’s avowed goal was now to evangelize its values to all. Indeed, as long as one did not accept money, OHA hockey was widely accessible to the population. But being paid to play the sport was viewed as little more than a form of prostitution.

  In reality, when the OHA was founded, professionalism in serious athletics was exceedingly rare in the young Dominion. International champion rower Edward “Ned” Hanlan—by far the most famous Canadian of his era—would be the notable exception. It was virtually unknown in team sports outside of the American importation of baseball. Hockey in 1890, though on the cusp of its explosive growth, could certainly not have then supported a pro athlete.

  This did not stop the league from defending the faith with zeal. As hockey’s following grew and its competitions intensified, the OHA became ever more vigilant against any taint of professionalism. One manifestation was an ever-stricter residency rule, designed to weed out suspicious player movements. Then, at its annual meeting of 1897, the association unanimously adopted the notorious “reverse onus” rule—in a stark reversal of the principles of British justice, anyone accused of professionalism was presumed guilty.

  The rule would soon be tested. As the 1897–98 season began, there were rampant rumours of professionalism around the hockey clubs of southwestern Ontario. The Berlin (now Kitchener) Hockey Club was favoured to repeat as the league’s intermediate champion. After a big win over rival Waterloo, city mayor and club manager Oscar Rumpel presented the boys with $10 gold coins in the dressing room.

  There would have been no problem if the gifts had been, say, gold watches or gold rings. With these souvenirs in the form of currency, however, the OHA stepped in and accused the club of engaging in remuneration. The team was thus expelled for professionalism—even though the coins had been returned.

  The OHA was not finished there. Waterloo was thrown out next. Accusations had surfaced that star forward Joseph “Grindy” Forrester had once competed in a bicycle race for cash prizes. While no one suggested Forrester had taken any money, he was judged unable to convincingly “prove” his innocence.

  Most of the Berlin and Waterloo players were eventually reinstated by the OHA, but by then the season was over. It was to be the beginning of a history of strained relations between the provincial association and the leading cities of the region. The controversy would also give rise to two of the most interesting builders in hockey’s long history.

  One of these was John Liddell MacDonald Gibson. “Jack” Gibson was the star defenceman of the Berlin team. Exiled by the OHA, he would wander outside its jurisdiction and eventually, in the United States rather than Canada, become widely known as the “father of professional hockey.”

  The other man is perhaps the most powerful, charitable, tyrannical and enigmatic figure in the history of the sport. Drawn by the OHA’s demonstrated commitment to amateurism, he would take its crusade to a level that would divide not only the hockey world, but the country itself.

  His name was John Ross Robertson.

  • CHAPTER TWO •

  THE RISE OF “THE PAPER TYRANT”

  All Is Well Under the Wellingtons

  The Ontario Hockey Association is a patriotic organization, not in name exactly, but in nature most assuredly. A force we stand for is fair play in sport, and sport is one of the elements in the work of building up the character of a young nation… . We have tried to live up to the ideals which are part of our birthright as Canadian sons of the greatest of countries, and as British citizens of the grandest of empires.1

  —JOHN ROSS ROBERTSON

  More than a half century after his passing, his biography was published under the title The Paper Tyrant—words that would suggest his power and influence, yet only hint at the breadth of John Ross Robertson’s reach.2 His was a life of great adventure—at one point he was even imprisoned by Louis Riel during the Red River Rebellion. Robertson found enormous financial success as a Toronto newspaper publisher, became a philanthropist of the first order and, not least of all, was for many years the aspiring hockey professional’s worst enemy.

  Robertson’s reputation as a puritanical tyrant has had great lasting power. In a 2012 episode of the popular Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries the long-ago head of the Ontario Hockey Association is portrayed as a central figure in an episode entitled “Murdoch Night in Canada” that involved the fictionalized death of a star Toronto hockey player. “This game is being taken over by rogues and capitalists, Mr. Murdoch,” Robertson, played by actor Guy Bannerman, complains at one point. “I’m doing all within my power to stop it.”3 The hockey murder and dialogue might have been made up, but John Ross Robertson was very, very real.

  Robertson was the founder of the Toronto Telegram, which by the end of the nineteenth century was the country’s most powerful newspaper. He was also an ardent British imperialist who distrusted the involvement of the United Kingdom in Canada’s affairs; an antiracist, antislavery advocate who regularly employed racial slurs and railed against French Canadians and the Catholic Church; a staunch Tory who consistently opposed the Conservative Party; a strict disciplinarian who indulged his children to their ruin; a figure popular and respected, yet authoritarian and controversial. John Ross Robertson was nothing if not complex.

  The dichotomies of his life seem endless. He ran for Parliament demanding sweeping change, won spectacularly and then chose not to pursue his political career. He established the Telegram as a leading publication, yet sowed the seeds for its eventual demise after his own passing. He had a high opinion of his own social standing, but would later turn down both a British knighthood and a Canadian Senate seat.

  Robertson had a large head, expanded by fleshy jowls and a beard worn in variations of the style made popular by U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. This, along with deep-set eyes under forbidding brows and an overbearing, powerful personality, may have made him seem larger than life. Contemporaries described him as standing six feet, tall for the age, yet his own grandson, John Gilbee Robertson, described him as “short and pudgy.” And while Toronto charities, particularly the Children’s Hospital, heaped praise upon Robertson for his generosity and for such touching contributions as his willingness to dress up as Santa Claus, the grandson had a decidedly different impression: “I did not like the son of a bitch.”4

  Yet there was one thing on which Robertson was not complicated: he was
opposed to professionalism in all sports, but particularly in the one he loved the most: hockey. As he succinctly put it: “There can never be the shadow of a justification for professionalism in hockey.”5 He would live every breathing moment of his six-year tenure as president of the Ontario Hockey Association as if his very existence depended on that principle. He was “the embodiment of the OHA’s iron fist.”6

  There can be little doubt that John Ross Robertson’s devotion to amateurism was bred at Upper Canada College, the country’s leading private school. There, as a sixteen-year-old in 1857, he founded Canada’s first student newspaper, the College Times, leading to a confrontation with the institution’s authorities. He had nevertheless fully absorbed their doctrine. As he proclaimed at his first address to the OHA in 1898: “Sport should be pursued for its own sake; for when professionalism begins true sport ends.”7

  After his school experience with the College Times—and also with a satirical magazine he called The Grumbler—Robertson became a journalist, first working for the Globe, then trying to found his own newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, which failed. He was twenty-eight years old when he found himself sent to the Northwest Territories to cover the Riel uprising. His reports were more graphic than the staid, impersonal accounts that were traditional in the Globe. It was this style he later brought to the Telegram, which he founded in 1876 and which soon became a pre-eminent journal in the city and the country. The Telegram was staunchly Orange—this zealous devotion to all causes Protestant perhaps having something to do with Riel’s treatment of the young reporter. At his death he was said to have marched in fifty-three Twelfth of July Orange parades.8