A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  The OHA executive—once it got its money out of Smiths Falls—decided on a rather unusual resolution to the whole mess. First, it declared both games null and void. Then it ordered a sudden-death final to be played March 7 on neutral ground in Peterborough.

  Hundreds came in by train from both places to see the showdown, paying as much as five dollars a ticket. A near riot ensued when the travelling Marlie fans initially could not get into the building. In the end, Toronto beat Smiths Falls by a convincing 9–3 score, Bruce Ridpath leading the Marlboros with four tallies. Knowing that any spark could set off fireworks, Referee Fraser had called literally everything from the outset.

  The officiating in the final game was certainly strict, but was it fair? The Marlboros, not known to be much in the tough going, were bound to benefit. Smiths Falls claimed that Hewitt, there representing the OHA, was actually giving instructions to the referee from the sidelines. To some, it all just confirmed the long-alleged Hogtown bias of the OHA.

  This version of events, combined with the legendary Taylor saga and the earlier Belleville rulings, paints a not-so-pretty picture of the OHA secretary and his apparent conflicts of interest. If it is to be believed, Hewitt’s machinations consistently catered to the Marlboros’ Stanley Cup aspirations. And there was much bitterness. Although Toronto proclaimed itself satisfied the best team had won, Smiths Falls, disgusted with the wrong they believed had been inflicted on them, was finished with the OHA. It quit the association and joined the Federal Amateur Hockey League for the next season, completing the OHA’s loss of senior hockey jurisdiction east of Kingston.

  In truth, it did not really matter whether Hewitt was trying to engineer another Stanley Cup run for the Marlboros. The delay in deciding the OHA championship had effectively scuttled any immediate shot they might have had at the mug. The Dukes did manage to get in a couple of well-attended exhibitions at Mutual against Rat Portage on that team’s way home from Ottawa. They also played a postseason series against Winnipeg’s Rowing Club in the Manitoba capital. While competitive against both the Thistles and the Rowers, this was as close to the national playoffs as they would get in 1905.

  It was apparent that the odds of the OHA winning the Stanley Cup would be even longer in 1905–06. The war between the CAHL and FAHL was largely resolved. Under pressure from the owners of the Montreal Arena, the best clubs of the two leagues combined. The new, stronger organization would be known as the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association. The ECAHA included both the Ottawas and the Wanderers, two teams that met in an epic Cup showdown at the end of the season.

  Competition to the west was also stronger. By “the west,” one now meant not just Manitoba, but the professional parts of the United States as well. The International Hockey League had had its hiccups, yet it was still going strong. IHL scouts were scouring Canada for recruits, and the sincerely “amateur” OHA was easy pickings. At the end of the previous season, the league had sent its Michigan pros to play some exhibitions in Winnipeg. The missionary work of hockey was beginning to flow both ways.

  As usual, the OHA began its campaign with delegates heading to Toronto in late 1905 for the annual powwow. They did so with the knowledge that John Ross Robertson would not be seeking re-election after an unprecedented six years as president. In his final address, his advocacy of strict amateur principles reached new extremes.

  Professionalism might be rampant outside Ontario, said Robertson, but fidelity to amateurism in hockey was not merely about loyalty to the OHA; it was a question of patriotism itself:

  We have a great game, a great country and a great empire—if you gentlemen are as great as the possibilities of the O.H.A., if we Canadians are as great as the possibilities of Canada, and if we Britons are as great as the glory of our Empire—the flag of amateurism in your hands will be as safe from harm as the Union Jack was in the hands of your fathers and mine!10

  Robertson said he was departing with “a regret that is deep and sincere.”11 Yet if anyone thought he was actually leaving, they were terribly wrong. He was simply preparing to run the OHA without the bother of seeking election.

  Shortly after the annual meeting, the OHA executive created a powerful new “subcommittee.” Soon to be famously dubbed the “Three White Czars,” it would consist of Robertson, Hewitt and a third, rotating member. According to Hewitt, the men rather enjoyed their nickname. “Occasionally we exiled members to hockey’s Siberia,” he later wrote, “but generally we weren’t too severe.”12 To the subcommittee were delegated virtually all routine matters, including questions of player eligibility.

  In short, through his control of this small group, Robertson was still effectively in command of the OHA. And Robertson was preparing the ground for his most controversial decision yet: to take Ontario out of Stanley Cup competition. At the annual meeting, he had talked about the possibility of an OHA challenge, but not if the Cup defenders were “ineligible according to our rules.”13 Since the other Canadian senior leagues were clearly not eligible for amateur play in the eyes of the OHA, the die had been cast.

  John Ross Robertson’s Telegram office—a modest chamber for the OHA’s great “Czar.”

  In reality, the trustees of the Stanley Cup had long since given up fighting professionalism. If the Cup was to be contested by the very best players, they had concluded, such resistance was hopeless. P. D. Ross, one of the Stanley Cup trustees as well as the editor of the Ottawa Journal, was increasingly outspoken on the matter:

  To tell the plain truth, I feel rather bewildered about the conditions in our athletic sports. I can’t help feeling sympathy for the men at the heads of our various senior lacrosse, football and hockey leagues. They all would prefer simon pure amateur sport. And none of them know how to get it. Neither do I.14

  The matter came to a head in late January. Ross had written the country’s three major leagues—the Eastern Canada, Manitoba and Ontario associations—to propose that they set up a permanent committee to govern the national playoffs. The reply of the OHA executive, under the pen of Hewitt, was not subtle:

  The feeling was that the O.H.A. senior championship was sufficient honor [sic] for any one club, and that it would not be wise to mix with the other leagues named, where veiled professionalism is winked at.15

  Outside the OHA elite, this edict was undoubtedly very divisive. While the usual voices—including Ross’s Telegram, Nelson’s Globe and Hewitt’s Star—chanted approval, the News vocalized the outrage of many Toronto fans. It declared bluntly that Ontario wanted its champion “up against the real thing.” Its further contention that “the O.H.A. seems disposed to mind everybody else’s business rather than its own”16 reflected a widespread belief that financial incentives were as prevalent in Ontario as anywhere else.

  The OHA was not only aware of such suspicion; it was determined to address it—with a vengeance. Soon, in a pre-emptive crackdown, dozens of players were being hauled before the subcommittee and ordered to make amateur declarations. New president D. L. Darroch, evidently under the sway of Robertson, declared that the association was prepared to lose as many teams as necessary to retain its principles.

  The OHA’s hunt for transgressors led to more ugly public scraps. In 1905–06, the circus revolved around Bobby Rowe, the youthful star of a serious senior-level contender that was emerging in Barrie. Rowe had been excused after admitting to a couple of games with the Houghton Portage Lakers in 1902–03, when he was still a teenager. However, a letter from “one of the most prominent men in the copper country … over this gentleman’s signature,”17 which enclosed a picture of Rowe on the team, persuaded the OHA to change its mind. So, on the eve of a playoff game between Barrie and the Toronto Argonauts, the association decided to suspend Rowe after all. Feelings ran so high that Darroch was pelted with eggs when he attempted to walk down a Barrie street.

  It got worse. Harry Jamieson, the OHA’s executive member from Barrie, took the association to court. At trial division he won a clear victory. Ch
ief Justice William Glenholme Falconbridge slammed the OHA for proceedings that he declared unwarranted and void, transacted without reasonable notice and lacking any valid legal evidence.

  If the czars were embarrassed, they did not show it. Nelson’s Globe dismissed the judge’s injunction by simply declaring, “in the meantime the season is over.”18 Robertson’s Telegram wrote that “the Rowe case is in the courts but it is quite settled in the O.H.A. councils.”19 The association would later get the decision overturned on appeal, but for an organization based on the maxim of gentlemanly fair play, the whole episode did not look terribly “principled.”

  Philip Dansken Ross. Former Ottawa star player P. D. Ross became an influential newspaperman and a Stanley Cup trustee. Originally a proponent of amateurism, he found his views evolving with the times.

  Unfortunately, the public spectacles at the OHA’s Toronto headquarters in 1905–06 were not compensated for by performances on local ice. An extended early-season thaw delayed the start of the campaign. It also kept the city’s players dangerously out of condition. Very quickly, it became evident that area clubs were not going to have great seasons—especially the fan-favourite Marlboros.

  The Marlboros had again lost some key men in the offseason. This time, however, no new crop of regulars stood ready to bridge the gaps. Despite the allegations in Barrie and elsewhere of a capital-city bias, no OHA rulings came to the club’s rescue, either. The subcommittee’s pre-emptive crackdown gave the Marlboros no breaks on amateur declarations or residency certificates. Jack Earls, son of club founder John Earls and brother of former captain Lal Earls, was denied permission to play after returning from a work stint in Buffalo. Conversely, mainstay defenceman Pete Charlton was permitted to defect to Berlin.

  There were other player losses as well. Cover point Harold Armstrong joined Smiths Falls in the Federal league. Studies took Chuck Tyner and Rolly Young out for much of the season. Bruce Ridpath, along with veterans Herb Birmingham and Edgar Winchester, anchored a decent forward unit, but the rest of the lineup was a shifting mess. After two almost perfect years, the Marlboros started losing games consistently—and sometimes badly.

  It was becoming inevitable that Toronto would hear calls for an alternative to the OHA. While the Telegram and its allies bragged that even OHA intermediates could win the Stanley Cup, no one was buying it. Toronto was out of the running for the national championship because of the provincial association’s edict. To top it all off, the amateur season concluded sourly, with the Argonauts losing the city’s provincial title to Berlin—the first non-Toronto champion in seven years.

  Then, on March 7, a bombshell hit the newsstands. It was a story out of the boomtown Temiskaming League—a circuit known for wild betting backed by frantic player recruiting. Bobby Rowe had headed up there, to Haileybury, when it was clear his OHA career was over. Now it seemed irrefutable that Marlboros idol Bruce Ridpath and teammates Rolly Young and Harry Burgoyne had appeared as Rowe’s opponents in a game at New Liskeard.

  The Haileybury–New Liskeard game had occurred back on February 23. The Marlboro trio had initially escaped detection by playing under assumed names. When the gate receipts proved insufficient to pay these ringers, local proprietors passed the hat and came up with $265. It was sham amateurism at its worst. It was also very clear that the Marlboro stars were going professional.

  Nevertheless, while the Marlboro case appeared to be open and shut, the OHA suddenly chose to proceed with unusual caution. The executive met and decided it would hear more from the men themselves before acting. In the meantime, Ridpath and company kept dressing for the Dukes. Was this because the club’s president and secretary, both fine Toronto gentlemen, had assured the subcommittee the boys could be cleared? Was the OHA a bit gun-shy because of the ongoing Rowe litigation? Was it simply in denial of the possibility that its chosen successor to the thoroughbred Wellingtons could actually be a Trojan horse of professionalism?

  The truth was that OHA leaders were considering the full implications of expelling the Marlboro stars. The Telegram warned that such a move would remove the final hurdle to the assembling of an “out-and-out professional organization”20 in Toronto. Worse, the Globe opined, it might suggest “the Marlboros are not now, and never were, on the level as an amateur organization.”21

  The panic among the executive ranks of the OHA literally spills off the pages. And their concerns were fully justified. For one, out-and-out professionalism was inching ever closer to reality in the Queen City. Bellingham’s abortive efforts to form a “Toronto Hockey Club” back in 1903–04 were being repeated by others. In 1904–05, the risk had been the number of lacrosse outcasts around the city, although, in the end, the most talented went to the International League. This season, though, there was now more than just a player pool on which to build in Toronto. The OHA had provided the raison d’être for professionalism: to compete for the Stanley Cup.

  The defection of key members from its flagship franchise proved to be a rare occasion on which the OHA would hesitate to deal with professionalism.

  In fact, by February 1906, a Toronto professional hockey club was taking shape in the city. Eight senior players were known to be practising full-time. They included veteran hockey travellers Roy Brown (cover point), Bert Morrison (centre), Charlie Liffiton and Jack Marshall (wings), who were joined by locals Clarence Gorrie (goal), Hugh Lambe (point), Jack Carmichael (rover) and Frank McLaren (spare), the only man to play on both the Wellington and Marlboro teams that challenged for the Stanley Cup. It was a creditable lot.

  Three different names were associated with these efforts to get a paid Queen City team together. One was local promoter W. A. Patterson, who was known to be trying to arrange games with International League teams. Another was Chaucer Elliott. A highly rated OHA referee who had gone to the IHL for the season, he had become a big advocate of the professional game in the Toronto press. In March, he managed to sign Walter Forrest of the Portage Lakers to the fledgling pros in the hopes they might get into the IHL the following season.

  The most important of the trio was Alexander Miln, now manager of the Mutual Street Rink. Mutual was the home base of the pro club. Since none of its men played anywhere else in 1905–06, one can surmise that Miln was paying their retainer. He was also talking to the management of Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens about plans for artificial-ice rinks—and a corresponding league—for Toronto and the other large cities of northeastern North America.

  Throughout February it was reported that games between the Toronto pros and IHL clubs were imminent. There were also notices of a coming match against a similar group of southwest Ontario pros being organized by Brown in Brantford. Nevertheless, the winter wound down without anything happening on the ice.

  The OHA leaders may have thus felt that they could simply dodge the pro hockey bullet in Toronto. It seemed to make sense. If they delayed dealing with the Marlboro situation, the outfit at Mutual would scatter harmlessly to other regions of the hockey world. Soon, however, any thoughts that the OHA could easily work around the growth of professionalism were to be shattered.

  On April 28, 1906, the country’s largest sports club, the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, voted to allow professionals to play with amateurs on its sports teams. The pressures on the MAAA had been most acute in lacrosse, where other major clubs were openly going professional. Indeed, the country’s leading summer league, the National Amateur Lacrosse Union, would soon vote to remove the word “Amateur” from its name. It was evident that Canada’s hockey capital, Montreal, would be a base for unapologetic professionalism the following winter.

  The overwhelming attitude of the Montreal men was that they were simply accepting reality. One vocal opponent had warned that the city would be visited by floods, earthquakes and other signs of God’s wrath as punishment.22 But for the vast majority, the time had come to end the hypocrisy.

  An early all-round professional athlete, Edwin “Chaucer” Elliott was best kn
own in hockey as a colourful and exceptional referee. He was one of three men associated with the effort to organize a Toronto pro club in 1905–06.

  The prevailing view was very different in the Queen City. John Ross Robertson had been presented with the possibility of mixing professionals and amateurs in the same club, but he could abide it no more now than he could those $10 gold coins in Berlin years earlier. Indeed, at the 1904 annual meeting of the OHA, he had addressed this very subject. Quoting Lincoln on freedom and slavery, he declared that the organization “cannot honorably [sic] be half amateur and half professional.”23

  Honest Abe and his men had chosen to take their nation to war to defend their principles. Faced with insurrection in Montreal, Robertson and the amateur sport leaders of Toronto were prepared to do no less.

  • CHAPTER FIVE •

  THE REBELLION BEGINS

  The Toronto Hockey Club Is Born

  Professional hockey in Toronto promises to flourish till the frost comes. Then like other flowers it will fade away and die.1

  —Toronto Telegram

  As 1906 unfolded, John Ross Robertson’s world must have felt increasingly under siege. Professionalism in hockey was everywhere. Even in Toronto, the capital of the Ontario Hockey Association, some pro hockey players had been openly practising with the intention of forming a team. Worse still, the Toronto Marlboros were maintaining on their roster men who, there could be no reasonable doubt, had played for pay. In three short years, this club, which was meant to succeed the Wellingtons as the epitome of the OHA’s amateur principles, had instead become a symbol of the changing times.

  Even more ominously, the highest bodies in Canadian sports were on the verge of endorsing professionalism outright. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, long the country’s most powerful such organization, had announced it would hire pro players for its (otherwise amateur) teams, including hockey’s legendary Montreal Wheelers. It seemed only a matter of time before the country’s national governing body, the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union, would follow suit.