A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  A man of prodigious energy, he was politician, publisher, philanthropist and hockey head all at the same time—and still it did not use up all his available time. His restlessness could be seen in his fingernails, which his second wife, Jessie, insisted he stop biting. Robertson’s “crusty benevolence”9 was by no means limited to hockey, where he was exceedingly generous with both his time and his money. He was Toronto’s most renowned early historian and archivist, leaving his collection to the city’s library system. Most significantly, his dedication to helping the young almost single-handedly created the Hospital for Sick Children, an organization to which he bequeathed a considerable endowment.

  In 1890 he became grand master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Canada West and, in a single year, travelled 10,000 miles in order to pay visits to some 130 lodges. “Wincing most of the way,” biographer Ron Poulton wrote. “His lumbago was particularly bad the day he hired a boy on skates to haul him in a sleigh across Rice Lake to visit some lodge brothers in Keene.”10

  Although Robertson had his detractors at the time, admirers were much more numerous. In 1896, with Toronto in an uproar over a series of unpopular concessions to the Catholic Church and the French language, he succumbed to public pressure to run for Parliament in East Toronto. Robertson aligned himself loosely with the small but radical McCarthyite League, made up of followers of D’Alton McCarthy, a onetime Conservative cabinet minister who had broken with the party over French-language issues and reform of protective tariffs. Presenting himself as an “Independent Conservative,” the Orangeman was swept to office—very rare for a third-party candidate in that era. He would later become one of very few Canadians to turn down both a knighthood and a senatorship.

  His leadership skills were also much admired by the Toronto hockey community. Robertson had already been involved in the sport for some time when he attended the OHA’s annual meeting in 1898. Robertson’s son, J. S. Robertson, better known as “Cully,” was a great sports fan and already on the OHA executive. Apparently impressed by its controversial defence of amateur principles the previous season, J.R. presented the association with a stunning new championship trophy, the John Ross Robertson Cup, and delivered “delightfully smart”11 remarks that brought the house down. History then records that at the next meeting, in 1899, he was by acclamation “persuaded to accept the position of President.”12

  Robertson’s well-known opinions were happily embraced by his fellow members of the executive. As he succinctly put it at one annual meeting: “Hockey as a recreation is all right, but hockey as a business is all wrong.”13

  The new president, however, did bring a new dimension to amateur advocacy: Canadian nationalism. Put simply, according to Robertson’s followers, to advance professionalism was to undermine the country itself. To be clear, this perspective was based on a national identity then firmly defined within a much different context from today. To his contemporary OHA audiences, their president’s message would have been clear: Canada, as an outpost of the traditions of the British Empire, had to stand on guard against the encroachment of the values of the American Republic.

  The idea that there was a patriotic cause here was not as far-fetched as it may seem now. The bourgeois establishments of Canada and the United States saw the world quite differently. Much of this country’s contemporary elite—particularly old-line Tories like Robertson—were the conscious heirs to a long evolution of British practices and traditions that, they believed, had created the greatest and most enlightened power in history: the British Empire. They saw U.S. society as inherently chaotic and their American counterparts as the offspring of rootless—and potentially dangerous—revolutionaries.

  Robertson and his colleagues felt more imminently threatened by the United States than do the anti-Americans of today. Indeed, our concerns at their worst would be minor compared to the sovereignty worries of those years. Although Canadian–American relations had improved considerably over the decades, the two countries were not then bound in alliance. Robertson’s cohorts had witnessed frequent periods of grave tension between the two countries. They might have known men who had lived and fought during the War of 1812; they certainly knew those who had lived through the American Civil War. “Muscular Christianity” was to them no mere theoretical concept. Developing young Canadian boys into tough men who could defend British North America against the possibility of U.S. invasion was a national imperative. In fact, Lord Stanley’s patronage of hockey was motivated, in significant part, by precisely this line of thought.14

  The OHA leaders could also look across the Great Lakes—at states like Pennsylvania and later Michigan—and see the corruption of their country’s beloved national winter sport by professionalism. There, hockey players had been more or less openly paid for some time—with hardly the slightest sense of outrage or offended public mores. This was not the under-the-table pay, or “shamateurism,” that was creeping into Canada’s senior leagues. It was the unbridled commercial excess of American culture, complete with all the violence and plebeian evils they believed it inflicted on athletics.

  It mattered not that precisely the same amateur-versus-professional debates were being played out both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, in much of the United States—where the clean-playing amateur star Hobey Baker was the game’s role model—the professional corruption of hockey was viewed as a Canadian phenomenon.15 Nevertheless, according to Canada’s amateur purists, this was a fight for Canada’s national game and national soul.

  Powerful institutions, especially those rooted in Anglo-Canadian culture, promoted strands of this thinking. One example could be found in the British schools, of which Robertson’s alma mater, Upper Canada College, was the quintessential Canadian example. There were also the military and paramilitary organizations, such as police and fire departments, as well as the homegrown NorthWest Mounted Police.

  Not surprisingly, the ultimate fortress of this philosophy became the Ontario Hockey Association under Robertson’s leadership. In effect, Robertson took the moral and social theories of amateurism and wedded them to a political ideology. At the 1903 annual meeting, he provided perhaps as clear and concise a contemporary articulation of this ideology as one will find:

  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.16

  The fanaticism of Robertson’s convictions has obscured his contribution to the sport. He had, in fact, been enthralled by hockey since he cobbled together a shinny team, the Simcoes, from among his boyhood friends. As OHA president, he virtually doubled the size of an already large organization, making it the richest and by far the biggest sports body in the country. Under his guidance, the association pioneered and promoted numerous rule changes that grasped the subtlety of the game: the delayed penalty, the goal net, the intermediary role of the captain, flexible interpretations of the offside pass, dropping the puck for a faceoff instead of laying it between the two centres’ stick blades. Other sporting entities envied and emulated the OHA’s publications and its organizational methods.

  John Ross Robertson. Love him or hate him, there was no figure in early Toronto hockey more powerful or more compelling.

  However, Robertson’s contributions came with a price: his breathtaking proclivity to control. This power was built not only through long hours of dedicated service, but also by constitutional manipulation and self-promotion bordering on self-mythologizing. He was hailed as the “father of pure amateur hockey in Ontario”17 and, quite erroneously, as the “father of the association.”18 Any person who had helped build up the OHA over the nine years before his presidency either became a follower or was simply swept away. Even his donation of
the eponymous championship trophy had the side benefit of brushing aside the Cosby Cup, which had been named after the organization’s real first president, Toronto investment manager Major A. Morgan Cosby.

  The new president sought total, unconditional victory over his opponents, wherever they might be. For example, by 1902 professionalism was widely known to be practised in the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League. Thus, Robertson told the annual meeting that “every guilty player should be given to understand that the axe of the O.H.A. will fall upon his neck just as surely for an offence committed in Pittsburg [sic] as for an offence committed in Toronto.”19 He gloated openly about his power to ruin such athletes in lacrosse and football just as easily as he could in hockey.

  In the name of amateur principles, Robertson would almost immediately begin tightening his personal hold over the OHA. At the annual meeting of 1900, a constitutional amendment allowed him to directly name two of the executive’s ten other members, ostensibly to ensure better regional representation. The next year, all but the immediate past president were dropped from the governing body.

  However, Robertson did have a vision. His speeches on amateur hockey were eloquent, powerful mixtures of morality, inclusiveness and unbridled nationalism. Take this passage from his address to the annual meeting of 1902: “You are with few exceptions, young Canadians. I am not exactly in the junior class, but, thank God, I also am a Canadian, and I am as young as any of you in my love for this country and this country’s winter game.”20

  Those who doubted him—and an increasing number did as the years passed—simply could not compete with his command, conviction and charisma. Four decades after his death, his younger colleague and confidant, former Star sports editor W. A. Hewitt, still marvelled that “Mr. Robertson was a big man in every way.”21

  Helping Robertson consolidate his power was newspaper ally Francis Nelson, the sports editor of the Toronto Globe. Nelson had joined the OHA executive with his Tely colleague in 1899. Two years later he would be named first vice-president. Nelson was also deeply involved with lacrosse, serving as first vice-president of the Canadian Lacrosse Association, and was, like Robertson, an unyielding opponent of professionalism in athletics. Alongside Robertson, he would find far more success in fighting it in the new winter sport than the much older and more established summer game. The Telegram and the Globe, then the two most powerful newspapers in the province, soon to be joined by Hewitt’s Star, would increasingly act as bully pulpits for Robertson’s iron control of Ontario hockey.

  Robertson’s ascendency to the presidency of the OHA would coincide with the rise of a provincial championship team that embodied the principles he stood for. This was the Wellington Hockey Club, which would be Toronto’s first genuine hockey dynasty. And it would, of course, be purely amateur.

  As was common in athletic clubs of the era, the Wellingtons were active in many facets of the Toronto sports scene—soccer, rugby, baseball and more. Also typically, its members were multisport athletes, and so the player roster varied little from sport to sport. The founding meeting of its hockey team took place in the fall of 1891.

  The progress of the Wellingtons was steady. The young team, led by captain Charles “Chummy” Hill, appears to have first played challenges before moving into the Toronto Junior league. In 1895–96 the club also put an entry in the junior division of the OHA. That season they took the Cox Cup, representing the city’s junior championship. The next year they took the provincial junior crown.

  Francis “Frank” Nelson. Sports editor of the Globe and first vice-president, under John Ross Robertson, of the Ontario Hockey Association.

  By the fall of 1898 the Toronto Wellingtons felt ready to compete in the top division of the Ontario Hockey Association, and their incredible run began the following season. In the winter of 1899–1900, they stormed back from a loss at home to upset the defending champions from Queen’s University 6–4 in a two-game, total-goals final. They again took the J. Ross Robertson Cup in 1900–01.

  The “Iron Dukes,” as the rising team was nicknamed,22 were known both for skill and toughness and were then captained by George McKay. As an eighteen-year-old McKay had scored the only goal for Queen’s University in its 1895 Stanley Cup game against the Montreal AAA. Queen’s losses that year and in 1899 had been the only Stanley Cup contests involving OHA teams to date. Nonetheless, the Wellingtons’ aggressive young secretary-treasurer, Alexander Miln, issued a challenge for the national title in December 1901.

  This was the era in which the Stanley Cup trustees, not the leagues themselves, decided which teams would be allowed to play for the championship of the Dominion. In this case, the Wellingtons’ challenge was promptly accepted by the trustees and a best-of-three series was slated for mid-January.23

  The Wellingtons would face the famed Victoria Hockey Club of Winnipeg, consistently one of Canada’s top teams. The Vics had been champions of the top-tier Manitoba Hockey Association nine consecutive times. In 1896 they had become the first non-Montreal team to hold the Cup, though only briefly. Since 1899 they had been in a series of toughly fought annual challenges, finally wrestling the Stanley Cup from the Montreal Shamrocks at the Montreal Arena in January 1901.

  The OHA challenger was viewed with considerable skepticism in the established hockey circles of Quebec and Manitoba. Ontario had never won the national championship—or even been close. The Wellingtons lacked recognized national hockey stars to match Winnipeg’s Dan Bain or Tony Gingras. Some doubted whether a Toronto club could skate on the same ice as a Stanley Cup champion.

  The Toronto papers shot back in defence of the OHA. They noted that the Victorias were the champions of a mere two-team Winnipeg league. Manitoba’s exclusion of the Thistles, a promising club from Rat Portage (later Kenora), was increasingly controversial.

  The Toronto Wellingtons’ trip to Winnipeg in early 1902 is often noted as the city’s first Stanley Cup voyage. It also constituted a quintessential display of the traditions and values of amateurism. Every facet of the adventure highlighted the concept of the amateur sportsman and his commitment to gallantry, toughness and fair play.

  The Iron Dukes were seen off at Union Station by a big crowd led by John Ross Robertson himself. To get to the Manitoba capital, they faced a railway journey of two days. They boarded with boisterous wishes of good luck, the OHA president chorusing a hearty cheer for the men.

  The party of team officials and nine players (seven starters plus two spares) were met at the other end by hundreds of wildly cheering Winnipeggers. Players and officials from the Victorias and other local sporting organizations then led the Wellingtons in carriages to their hotel. Their procession followed a route decorated brightly with the colours of the clubs. The train being late on the night before the first game, the Vics graciously gave their practice hours over to the visitors that evening.

  Although the Manitoba hockey world harboured strong doubts about the calibre of the Ontario champions, interest in the series was raging. The Cup was on display in the window of Dingwall’s jewellery store with large pictures of the two teams. Over 5,000 spectators squeezed into the Winnipeg Auditorium, with hundreds more left outside when the doors finally closed. The fans loudly waved pennants and streamers of their team’s colours as the marching band of the 90th Regiment provided pregame entertainment.

  Newspapers in both cities noted with pride that the Manitoba crowd gave the Wellingtons almost as big a welcome as the hometown champions and periodically cheered good play by the visitors. Even the referee was warmly applauded by the spectators. Still, gentlemanly wagers went between 21/2 and 3 to 1 against the Iron Dukes throughout the week.

  Interest was high back in Toronto as well. On both evenings, January 21 and 23, hockey fans spent hours at the offices of the newspapers, following the reports of the games sent by telegraph. The operators would loudly read out the Morse code “play-by-play” while fans cheered or groaned at the very latest news from Winnipeg. Robertson had made things
a bit easier for the general public by arranging the results to be broadcast by way of a giant whistle at the Toronto railway powerhouse. Between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. two soundings would mean the Wellingtons had won whereas three would mean the Victorias had kept the championship.24

  It would have been a fine game for Toronto fans to witness, if only there had been radio or television in 1902. The Winnipeg Auditorium, with a surface that measured 205 feet by 90 and had been hardened by frigid temperatures, provided a fast, exciting and toughly fought series. The Victorias beat the challengers two games in the best-of-three, both by a close margin of 5–3. While still a loss in their quest for the Stanley Cup, the Iron Dukes had won a measure of respect for the OHA game.

  The second game of the series saw an interesting innovation. Both clubs unfortunately sported the same dark red colour, which posed somewhat of a problem. Before the televising of games in 1950s black and white, clubs usually maintained only one set of jerseys, and each member of a league was expected to have a unique colour scheme. Thus, dilemmas like this could arise when teams from different leagues met. In this case it was agreed that the Wellingtons would use the jersey of the Victorias’ crosstown competitor, the Winnipegs, for the first game, while the Vics would do the same for the second. However, for game two the Vics appeared in a new, white club jersey—a very early foreshadowing of the protocol of the TV age.

  This Toronto–Winnipeg Stanley Cup series also became legendary for a number of incidents involving the puck. In one instance, a backhand lift became lodged in the rafters, forcing the players to throw their sticks up to dislodge it. In another case, the Wellingtons scored with half a puck when the disc split during play. Although the referee allowed the marker, future rulings forbade the granting of a goal for anything other than the full rubber entering the net. Finally, a fan refused to throw back a disc that had gone into the crowd, as had been the practice up to that point. Thus the tradition of the souvenir puck was born.