William Abraham Hewitt was involved in sports of all kinds at all levels. Billy was also the third newspaperman to become a fixture on the OHA executive. Men like Hewitt saw no contradiction in running the OHA while also reporting on it—or even keeping some association matters secret.
“Billy” Hewitt was the perfect aide-de-camp for the commandeering Robertson. Short, young and mild-mannered, he assumed the position of secretary on what he believed was a temporary basis. Hewitt came from a family of journalists, yet he never learned to use a typewriter. At a time when there was no separation between sports journalism and sports promotion, Billy not only was secretary of the very hockey body his paper would be reporting on, but he later served as manager of the Argonaut football team. He acted as steward at the Woodbine horse-racing track and was manager of Canada’s Olympic gold medal–winning hockey team three separate times. He not only reported on the very first Olympic hockey match—Sweden versus Belgium at the 1920 Antwerp Games—he refereed it as well.10
Hewitt began his career as sports editor at the Montreal Herald, where he worked for Joseph E. Atkinson. When Atkinson left Montreal to take over the Toronto Star, Hewitt joined him. He was already a longtime friend of the Globe’s Nelson, the two of them being early promoters of hockey’s goal net. Though the idea was ridiculed by players and other sportswriters, the OHA was quick to approve the idea of nets and they soon became standard equipment.11
“Joe” Atkinson had become convinced that sports coverage would attract more subscribers to his paper, so he convinced Billy Hewitt to return to Toronto with him. “In my own department I had some ideas on sports writing that were considered unique,” Hewitt later wrote in his memoirs. “One was the story had to be accurate, and another that it had to be brief.”12 He said nothing about conflict of interest.
The new OHA secretary would soon find himself in the midst of a series of controversies over the rising trend of professionalism. It all started when Robertson, apparently convinced that all in the organization were safe from such outside influence, went on an extended business trip to Egypt and Europe. Shortly thereafter an association director, A. B. Cox of London, moved for the reinstatement of one Harry Peel.
The Peel case was a nuanced affair. The London boy had been thrown out of the OHA more than two years earlier when his team was declared professional. There was, however, no evidence Peel himself had known or done anything wrong. Unable to play in the association, he had then gone briefly to Pittsburgh, where he had been paid the weekly rate. He soon regretted the decision to accept money for playing hockey and came back to Ontario for the amateur game. Cox made his case based on strong character references, including one from one of the province’s leading clerics.
When Peel’s reinstatement was narrowly accepted, all hell broke loose. The first consequence was the resignation of an outraged Francis Nelson from the executive. The reinstatement was a break from the strict OHA policy of lifetime banishment for professionalism. A storm of denunciation came from the Toronto papers and their network of agents in the hinterland.
The executive refused to accept the Nelson resignation. Yet Cox was unrepentant, stressing the concept of rehabilitation: “We are dealing with boys playing games, and not with criminals.”13 Besides, he warned, accumulating exiles would only lead to a whole network of potentially professional players and teams in the province.
The presence or absence of various executive members had an ongoing effect on this and other OHA disputes—most notably a simmering issue concerning Aeneas “Reddy” McMillan. McMillan was the star of the Belleville Red & Whites, a team steamrolling towards the intermediate championship. When Reddy was accused of a fast run around the association’s residency rule, the case soon came before the executive, in which Belleville’s member of Parliament, Gus Porter, was a member.
Porter and Nelson’s on-again, off-again resignations, along with new and conflicting information, led to farcical consequences. The executive suspended McMillan, let him play again, suspended him a second time and then threw out the whole club for refusing to go along. The fact that the suspension resolution was moved by the executive member from Peterborough, whose team then became the district champion, did not help matters.
It was the second bitter blow to Belleville’s championship aspirations. The year before, the OHA executive had intervened to overturn the club’s apparent victory over the Toronto Marlboros in the playoffs. It had suddenly ruled forward Jack Marks ineligible because he had once played pro baseball—a fact the OHA had known but had never had problems with before.
It is interesting to note that, in both cases, new secretary Hewitt had strongly supported the resolutions, which strengthened the title hopes of the Marlboros. This would tie into growing rumours of Hewitt’s favouritism towards that club, which his sports department often lauded. In the meantime, with Belleville now doubly enraged, Porter decided to take his case to court. In a lawsuit that dragged on for months, he eventually persuaded a local judge to block Peterborough from playing for the OHA championship.
Perhaps the most serious case, from a long-term perspective, originated with the earlier defection of Sault Ste. Marie. The complication of a pro team in Ontario became immensely worse when Toronto’s Varsity squad was invited to play in the Soo. The players accepted the invitation, took the trip north and faced off against both its Canadian and American professional teams.
Although the university itself was furious about the northern hockey excursion, it did not see things in quite the same light as the OHA. The fact was that the colleges recognized professionalism as playing for real money, not merely playing in an exhibition, as the Varsity team had against the two Soos. The CAAU likewise refused to apply full sanctions. Thus the OHA was left to expel the University of Toronto—effectively ending the OHA’s governance of intercollegiate hockey in Ontario.
With amateurism reversals outside Ontario and professionalism crises inside the province, 1903–04 was a difficult season for Toronto’s hockey establishment. It had begun with the death of the beloved Wellingtons. Yet there were to be some highlights that suggested all was far from lost. Chief among these new was the emergence of a new troop of amateur heroes: the Toronto Marlboros.
Like its Wellington counterpart, the Marlborough Athletic Club had long been active in Toronto team sports. It set up its hockey branch in 1899, initially joining the Toronto Lacrosse Hockey League. The club took the league’s junior honours in 1900–01 and added the senior title the following year. The shorter spelling of the official team name took hold in those early seasons and the “Marlboros” were soon a household name in Toronto.
Recognized early as a skilled if light septet, the Marlboros formally applied for admission to the OHA intermediate and junior divisions in the fall of 1902. The manager of the team was Fred Waghorne, later to gain renown as the first referee credited with dropping the puck for faceoffs. That first year, the “Little Dukes”14 were finalists in the intermediate series while winning the junior circuit outright. They were ready to aim higher.
The new Marlboro seniors would join an OHA loop that included ten other teams, one being the Toronto St. Georges, a well-established rival that had been quick to pick up most of the available Wellingtons. On paper, it seemed the St. Georges would reign supreme, but the Marlboros would prove far stronger than had been anticipated for a rookie senior outfit.
The new Queen City aggregation began the year in impressive fashion, hosting the powerful Montreal Wanderers for two games. The Marlboros tied one match against this squad of former Stanley Cup champs and lost the other by a single goal. They then went undefeated in the OHA season—a feat the Wellingtons had never accomplished. In the home-and-home total-goals final against the Perth Crescents, the Dukes won by an incredible margin of 28–9.
A big reason for the season’s success was the addition of a tall, dark-haired young man from Rat Portage, Tom Phillips. The sheer speed and skill of the Marlboro rover caught everyone’s eye imme
diately. The News summarized local opinion nicely: “Phillips is without doubt the best hockey player that has ever been seen on Toronto ice, and is a whole team in himself.”15
This should not really have been a surprise. Phillips had long been a top prospect in the Manitoba Association. He had also spent the previous season in Montreal, where, with the Wheelers, he had starred in their defence of the Stanley Cup against the Winnipeg Victorias. As well, he had been rumoured as a candidate for Bellingham’s abandoned Toronto pro club. Interestingly, none of this rapid shifting around seems to have bothered the Toronto-centric OHA brass.
The official reason for Phillips’s appearance with the Marlboros was the same one that had taken him to Montreal—a change in his college studies. That was good enough for the normally suspicious amateur barons of the Queen City. Toronto now believed it had a real shot at the Stanley Cup, something that few wished to see more than the Star’s own Billy Hewitt. The gentlemen sportsmen of the OHA badly wanted a crack at the Ottawas, the team that had angrily defected from their ranks a decade before. It was widely believed the Silver Seven had taken the Cup more by brute force than through lightning skill. Secretary Hewitt personally filed the challenge before the playoffs had even concluded. Toronto was not going to wait till the next winter and repeat the problems with early-season conditioning that it believed had sunk the Wellingtons.
Toronto Marlboros (1903–04). The pride of the OHA would prove no match for the Ottawa Silver Seven. Standing: G. Vivian, J. C. Earls, E. Marriott, J. Earls, R. Burns, F. Waghorne, W. Smith. Sitting: F. McLaren, A. Wright, P. Charlton, T. Phillips, E. Giroux, L. Earls. Reclining: E. Winchester, H. Birmingham.
The Stanley Cup trustees accepted the challenge and the series was scheduled to be a best-of-three in the Dominion capital. The visitors arrived in Ottawa a day early, with about a hundred supporters from Toronto in tow, and skated through a light practice. Local Ottawa hockey scouts were generally impressed, especially after another peek at Phillips. He looked big, fast and dangerous. Nevertheless, informed odds still had the champion Silver Seven as two-to-one favourites.
The Marlboros arrived with a couple of spares from their own system. They hadn’t acted on rumours they would pick up a couple of heavier players from other elite OHA clubs. The Ontario Association felt that such a move, while strictly permitted, would not be appropriate for a club of sporting gentlemen. According to Phillips, the confidence was warranted: “Don’t you believe all you hear. There are just as good hockey players in Toronto as in the east, and I think that the Stanley Cup is about due to come here.”16
It looked that way for the first half of game one at the Aberdeen Pavilion on February 23, 1904, with the Marlboros outscoring the Ottawas 3–1. Then the roof fell in. The Silver Seven came back with five unanswered goals in the second segment to win 6–3. Future Hall of Famer “One-Eyed” Frank McGee17 had netted three of them before the 2,000 Ottawa fans. What caused the turnaround would become a source of furious accusations between the two cities.
Everyone seems to agree that the Marlboros outplayed the Silver Seven in the first frame. After that, the complexion of the game—and the coverage of the series—changed dramatically. According to the Toronto papers, Ottawa had turned it all around by resorting to nothing short of thuggery. Francis Nelson’s Globe, for example, claimed the capital septet “endeavor [sic] to incapacitate their opponents, rather than to excel them in skill and speed.” The paper sniffed that “so long as the game was hockey the Marlboros were the leaders” and that the famed Silver Seven were not up to the skill level of “an O.H.A. intermediate team.”18
Hewitt’s Star offered the ready excuse that the Marlboros “were unaccustomed to the style of game that permits downright brutality, cross checking in the face and neck, tripping, hacking, slashing over the head and boarding an opponent with intent to do bodily harm.”19 Both Toronto journals were defensive and protective, listing a litany of injuries to the various Dukes while proudly noting their club’s general disinclination to retaliate.
Ottawa observers told a far different story. The Citizen felt the Silver Seven had simply played poorly in the first half, but had got back on track in the second. It found the game rough on both sides and singled out Marlboro star Phillips for dirty play. The local newspaper also tried to claim there were no ill feelings at the end of the first match.20
There is more agreement on what occurred in game two on February 25. It was a thoroughly gentlemanly affair—and the Marlboros got creamed. McGee had five tallies in the 11–2 thrashing. The Ottawa papers emphasized the superior skill of the Silver Seven in every department. However, Toronto’s take was again at odds. Queen City reporters suggested instead that their team was banged up, dispirited, even intimidated. Most agreed that only goalkeeper Eddie Giroux and Phillips seemed to have their hearts in it. Ottawa opinion was blunter, though, calling Phillips “much too fast a man for the company in which he is traveling.” As for the rest of the Marlboro skaters, they “looked like a bunch of old women chasing a hen.”21
The Citizen poured on the disdain: “The squealers from Squealville-on-the-Don raised an awful howl against the alleged brutality of the holders of Lord Stanley’s silverware.” The paper even ripped the Toronto newspapers for claiming the outcome would have been different had the teams stuck to hockey: “But they got their answer good and hard last night.”22
There is strong reason to believe that neither side was telling the whole truth. For instance, a careful reading of the Citizen’s game-one report makes clear that Marlboro players were hurt by hits on several different occasions. And dirty play by Ottawa in Cup games had been witnessed on more than one occasion.
However, if the Ottawas were really so vicious, would at least elite opinion in the capital not have expressed some dismay? There seems to be no evidence it did. Indeed, it is hard to believe that His Excellency Governor General Lord Minto would have agreed to drop the ceremonial puck for the series if the champions were the butchers the Toronto press made them out to be.
In reality, in spite of all the documented bangs and bruises of the Marlboro players, all but one played in the second game two nights later. Lal Earls replaced Edgar Winchester at left wing, but he did so to give the team more weight, not because of injury. It was also conceded that the most serious mishap by far—right winger Frank McLaren breaking his ribs in game two—was accidental.
There are other holes in the tale told by the client papers of the OHA’s Toronto headquarters. Why, if Ottawa’s play was so flagrantly illicit, did no one blame the referee for not calling it? The independent Toronto News hinted at a rather different version of events. Its initial postgame report conceded rough play, especially by Ottawa, but also acknowledged the champs’ superior skill.23
At the series’ conclusion, the News also printed a telling, if anonymous, letter. It blamed the Marlboro debacle on the Ontario Hockey Association for not permitting tougher hockey.24 Another outside organ, the Belleville Intelligencer, took the argument further. It accused the OHA of “making hockey a sort of cross between croquet and ping-pong, instructing their referees to rule men off for what is considered perfectly fair in other associations.”25 The charge was repeated by the era’s greatest player, William Hodgson “Hod” Stuart. The rough-and-tumble Ottawa native, who had turned professional with the Pittsburgh Bankers a year earlier, claimed that in the OHA, “I could not lift my stick off the ice.”26
The Tale of Two Cities. Someone reading the rival press accounts would have found it hard to believe that the reporters had watched the same game.
There can be no doubt that the OHA was using its iron grip to consciously develop a less physical brand of hockey in the province. At the end of the 1904–05 season, First Vice-President Nelson bragged to a reception in Berlin that the OHA had not had a single serious injury.27 This was quite a record, given the nature of the sport and the hundreds of games that constituted an OHA campaign. Nor was it coincidence that only Phillips seemed not
to be slowed by Ottawa’s hitting. Though born in Toronto, he had grown up and learned his hockey at Rat Portage, under the control of the Manitoba Hockey Association.
In truth, the OHA had been linking a Marlboro defeat to “eastern” rough play before the series had even begun. Robertson’s Telegram had proclaimed that “to beat Ottawa on Ottawa ice under an eastern referee is a big undertaking.”28 Faulting the referee was contrary to OHA culture, but throughout the series there were suggestions that non-OHA officials simply did not understand the fine points of OHA rules.
It is clear, however, that not everyone agreed with this direction in Ontario hockey. Teddy Marriott, the Marlboros’ manager at the time of the series and a notable Toronto proponent of tough hockey, was not making any excuses. Contradicting his OHA superiors, he stated simply that “we were beaten by a better team.”29
There would be one other intriguing take on the series—that of W. A. Hewitt. In his autobiography, published some fifty-four years later, the OHA secretary suggested the Ottawas had salted the ice during the halftime of game one to slow down the speedier Marlboros.30 The problem is that there is no contemporary reference to any such theory, even in Hewitt’s own Toronto Star. So it seems that, a half century later, Billy Hewitt was still making excuses for the home team.31
There is no doubt that the OHA brass was genuinely upset by the roughhouse eastern hockey that had taken down the Marlboros. Nonetheless, they must have been much more worried about the state of their own association. The uneven handling of the Peel and McMillan cases had greatly aggravated already controversial situations. With Robertson overseas and absent for much of the season, there were increasing questions about the way the OHA was being run.
A Great Game Page 6