The truth is that, for some years now, the gap between the principles and realities of amateur sport in Canada had been widening. The CAAU had been attempting to paper this over with an uneasy compromise: it would not go after professionalism in team games as long as the practice remained unofficial. This was also the approach taken by the trustees of the Stanley Cup. After all, when Lord Stanley had first announced his intentions of contributing a “challenge cup” in March 1892, it was stated that the trophy would go to “the champion hockey team in the Dominion.” Nothing was said of the winners being “amateurs.” Of course, no one then imagined the possibility of “professional” ice hockey. Outside of a handful of elite players, the sport was largely a pastime being enjoyed by, among many others, the governor general’s own children.
To Robertson and his acolytes at the OHA, the CAAU’s notion of compromise was simply an abandonment of principle. As the country’s most powerful advocate of pure amateurism, the association could not tolerate such thinking, and, early in 1906, Robertson’s group had taken the extraordinary step of officially dropping out of Stanley Cup competition. The OHA, from this point on, would have nothing to do with the increasingly famous and coveted mug. Robertson was also using the association to increasingly rally opinion in Toronto sports circles against the actions of the Montreal-based CAAU.
The amateur athletic leaders of Montreal and Toronto were now headed for an inevitable collision. True, they were all rapidly coming to the view that the hypocrisy of amateur athletics was no longer acceptable. It was an open secret that many of the best players were being paid under the table. However, they had two diametrically opposed ways of resolving the situation.
In Montreal, Canada’s leading commercial and sports city, the opinion was that amateurism had to accommodate the inescapable professional pressures in team sports. In Toronto, the country’s rival power centre, the position was that pure amateurism had to be enforced.
The 1906 annual meeting of the CAAU was set for October 27 in Montreal. Topping the agenda would be a proposal to amend the definition of amateurism to allow amateurs and professionals to mix in team sports. As the big date approached, opposing bands of sports leaders in Quebec and Ontario escalated the conflict. Each threatened to secede from the CAAU if its position was not upheld.
The Montreal men were confident of victory. This Anglophone elite had long been the source of the nation’s top sports executives, and as such, they were convinced of the wisdom of their conclusions. To them, it was clear that professionalism at the senior level of popular team games like hockey was inevitable. After all, baseball and lacrosse—then still the country’s most popular summer sport—had already turned pro. But there were soon signs that they had overreached.
The determination of hard-line Canadian Amateur Athletic Union leaders to pursue a witch hunt against their opponents would make Canada’s Athletic War inevitable. It would not be pretty.
Despite the powerful MAAA’s backing for commingling, there was strong resistance—even in Quebec. The CAAU’s outgoing president, Captain P. Gorman, was known to strongly favour stricter amateurism and was, in fact, far closer to Robertson’s thinking than to that of his fellow Montrealers. Gorman had come to believe that the leniency shown lacrosse was a mistake. The organizers of lacrosse’s main rival, rugby football, were also resisting the idea of professionalism at the senior level.
The showdown turned into a rout. To the shock of the Montreal establishment, and to the delight of John Ross Robertson’s followers, mixing pros with amateurs was defeated by a majority of 39 to 13. Some delegates went further, openly suggesting that the MAAA should be thrown out of the Union altogether. And a Toronto purist, the aptly named William Stark, the city’s deputy chief of police, was voted the new president of the CAAU.
Even in the relatively sympathetic News, the founding of the Toronto Professionals was only briefly noted.
But the victors were not content to stop there. Stark, egged on by another Ontario hard-liner, Frank Grierson of Ottawa’s Civil Service Amateur Athletic Association, was soon announcing a special investigation of eastern team sports. It was claimed that, in an environment of rampant professionalism, eastern hockey players were making as much as $1,350 per season. Grierson began to publicly name dozens of suspects. These included some of the country’s most prominent athletes, whom he labelled as “scum.”2
Under Stark’s leadership, the CAAU investigation would be handled by a new National Registration Committee. Akin to the OHA’s Robertson-led subcommittee known as the “Three White Czars,” this body would conduct ongoing accreditation of and investigations into amateur athletics countrywide. An OHA man, James G. Merrick of the Argonauts, was Toronto’s point person on the new committee. It seemed, for the moment, that the Robertson forces had taken not only the day, but the country itself.
However, if the Union’s new leadership thought the Montreal gentlemen would simply sit back and allow themselves to be tried, condemned and executed by the registration committee, they were badly mistaken. On February 1, 1907, after considerable groundwork by the 2,000-strong MAAA, the Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada was announced. The AAFC would be the “realistic” alternative to the new fundamentalism of the CAAU.
With Canada now possessing two “national” athletic organizations, the first shots had been fired in what would quickly come to be known as the “Athletic War.” Both the CAAU and AAFC claimed to be the true governing sports body of the country. To prove their respective claims, each began blacklisting the other’s athletes, clubs, meets and associations. Across all sports—and across all of Canada—sides were being taken.
The country’s national winter game would be a prime battleground.
Originally from Lakefield, Ontario, David Bruce Ridpath moved to Toronto as a teenager. “Riddy” was only twenty-two when he announced the founding of the Toronto Professionals.
It at first appeared that the pragmatists had the upper hand in hockey. The Montreal-centric leagues—the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association and the residual Federal Amateur Hockey League—had aligned themselves with the AAFC. The decision of the ECAHA to withdraw from the CAAU, taken on November 10, 1906, was particularly important.
By making the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers officially open to professional players for the 1906–07 season,3 the ECAHA effectively forced the hand of everyone in the hockey world. The Manitoba Hockey League split, with most of the teams going openly professional while the venerable Winnipeg Victorias and others left in protest. The Maritime Provinces Amateur Athletic Association forbade New Glasgow to pursue its Stanley Cup challenge against the Montreal Wanderers in December. It did anyway and was expelled, setting Atlantic hockey on a professional course.
The amateur purists, so triumphant at the October 27 meeting, were instantly and unequivocally on the retreat, especially in the hockey world. Even as far away as New York, it was observed that “there is a general rebellion in Canada against the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union.”4 The big exception was Ontario, where professionalism existed only on the northern and eastern fringes—the former embodied by the International, Manitoba and Temiskaming leagues, the latter by the ECAHA and FAHL. In Canada’s biggest province stood the one force resolutely resisting the trend: the Toronto-headquartered, Robertson-led Ontario Hockey Association.
Roland Wilbur “Rolly” Young of Waterloo was talented and tough, if somewhat undisciplined. In the Torontos’ first season, Rolly combined pre-medical studies at McMaster with playing for the club, moonlighting in other pro leagues, and coaching the OHA junior team at Upper Canada College.
Indeed, the OHA had come foursquare behind the newly Simon-pure CAAU. At the annual meeting in November, the Globe’s Francis Nelson moved for formal affiliation with the Union. Like Robertson, he had not sought re-election at the annual meeting in 1905, but he was nevertheless aiming to become a permanent fixture on the executive. Membership in the CAAU would be his vehicle. Shortly th
ereafter, Nelson was named the OHA’s representative on the Union’s national board.
As the country’s self-described bastion of amateurism, the OHA once again set out to keep hockey in Canada’s largest province unsullied. It tightened its residency rule further, changing the deadline to August 1, and put curbs on its clubs playing exhibition games. As Nelson’s Globe observed, professionalism in hockey was on the rise, and “in view of the strenuous fight that must be waged for amateur hockey, the O.H.A. must at once look to its fences and tighten up for the trouble.”5
However, the OHA had a fundamental problem: it was now on the outside of competition for Canada’s national hockey championship, the Stanley Cup. Thus, the association made a remarkable and self-serving discovery: not only had an OHA team never won the Stanley Cup, but the association was now proclaiming it had never really wanted to win the Cup anyway.
“The O.H.A. has never considered that its function was the development of champion teams,” the Globe announced in rather arch tones, “… and it has not cared who won the Stanley Cup or any other of the cups that are a detriment to the games they were expected to promote. The O.H.A. looks with indifference on the battles for the Stanley Cup.”6
The difficulty for the OHA was that many fans in Ontario—including, most pointedly, Toronto hockey fans—wanted a shot at the Cup. They saw what the Stanley Cup meant to followers in places like Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg. It symbolized hockey supremacy, no matter what Nelson’s Globe, Robertson’s Telegram, Hewitt’s Star or the OHA might believe, and they wanted their local heroes to challenge for it. And it seems those local heroes, the top Toronto players, increasingly felt the same way. By the end of the 1905–06 season, not only were eight well-known pros practising at the Mutual Street Rink, but three of the fan-favourite Marlboros, including star Bruce Ridpath, had been exposed as closet professionals.
Harry Burgoyne, the third of the original Marlboro defectors, would spend several years as a journeyman in the pro ranks.
There can be little doubt that the threat of professionalism encroaching on its home turf was the reason why the OHA, uncharacteristically, procrastinated in dealing with the Marlboros. Despite overwhelming evidence of their activities as paid ringers in the Temiskaming league, winter, spring and finally summer went by with no action from the normally draconian association. The OHA had to be aware that this threesome, led by the immensely popular Ridpath, if joined to the nascent pro squad at Mutual, could become a potent combination in favour of Toronto professional hockey.
The OHA had no choice in the matter, however, if it was to hold its treasured moral ground and lead the national fight against open professionalism. Thus, on November 14, 1906, more than eight months after learning of their infamous game at New Liskeard, the OHA finally ruled that Ridpath and teammates Rolly Young and Harry Burgoyne were professionals and threw them out of the association. In better days, when it had exiled the likes of Doc Gibson and Cyclone Taylor, the OHA probably could not have foreseen that it was laying the institutional foundations of pro hockey. This time, it had to know that it was creating the critical mass for a bona fide Toronto pro team.
Hugh Lambe, star defender of the Toronto Lacrosse Club, was always a fan favourite. Though a good stickhandler, his lack of speed made him a stay-at-home defenceman.
That team was not long in coming. A mere eight days later, Bruce Ridpath announced the formation of the Toronto Hockey Club. “Riddy” would be the captain of the Torontos and head of their executive committee. The leading members would come from both the Marlboros and the aborted professional club of 1905–06.
Ridpath would be joined on the Torontos’ committee by Young and Pete Charlton. Charlton, having migrated to Berlin after two previous years with the Marlboros, had won three consecutive OHA senior championships. His ongoing movements had long been the basis of rumours that he was a clandestine professional. The final committee member was Hugh Boydell Lambe of the Mutual pros, who would act as secretary-treasurer. Lambe, a former defenceman with the Toronto St. Georges, was one of the many senior OHA players expelled in the lacrosse decision of 1904.
The hockey club announced that a manager would be appointed later. Indeed, an unknown figure, a Mr. B. Spanner,7 apparently did carry the title for a time. But the real boss had been there all along: Alexander Miln.
Ridpath may have been the captain of the Toronto Hockey Club in name, but it quickly became evident that the real skipper was the twenty-eight-year-old Miln. Aggressive and ambitious, the Scottish-born “Alex” had been around Toronto sports circles for years. He was a noted cyclist, horseman and sailor, belonging to both the Toronto Hunt Club and the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
Miln was most noted, however, for his involvement in hockey. He had been associated with a number of organizations, but by far the most important was the legendary Toronto Wellingtons. While it appears he played briefly with the club, his key role had been as manager of the squad in its heyday and, later, as its secretary-treasurer. After the men’s hockey team folded, he remained permanent secretary of the Wellington alumni and its ladies’ organization.
A bookkeeper by profession, Miln became a full-time hockey executive in the fall of 1905. John J. Palmer of the Toronto Type Foundry had purchased the Mutual Street Rink from the Caledonian Curling Club for the princely sum of $25,000. Shortly thereafter, he named Miln its manager. The Toronto News noted that it was a popular choice: “Mr. Miln has been connected with hockey clubs for many years, and a better man for the position could not have been secured by the new owners of the rink.”8
There is no doubt Alexander Miln was the driving force behind the Toronto Professionals. He is shown here holding the Robertson Cup in his days as secretary of the Wellingtons.
It appears that Miln’s hockey ambitions from the outset were focused on the Stanley Cup, the very prize that Robertson’s OHA so disparaged. It was Miln, after all, who had secured the Wellingtons’ challenge against the Winnipeg Victorias in 1902, and he had acted as the team’s spokesman in the Manitoba capital. A bitingly sarcastic letter in the Toronto papers the previous February had also betrayed a man not afraid to question the judgments of the association.
Although, like Robertson, a Conservative9 in politics, Miln’s independence on hockey matters became even clearer almost as soon as he took over at Mutual. He was publicly associated with the pro practice squad of 1905–06. He was also immediately engaged in extensive renovations of the old rink that betrayed bigger plans. Although the Caledonian building had been the preferred location of Toronto’s top-rank shinny almost from the beginning, by the end of the nineteenth century it was also widely considered deficient for the national winter sport of a major Canadian city.
The first problem was the capacity of the building. On January 16, 1904, the facility managed to cram in 2,674 paying customers (and no doubt a few others) to witness a showdown between the archrival Marlboros and St. Georges. This was a pittance compared with Montreal’s great Westmount Arena, which offered seating for 4,500 and standing room for hundreds more. The new Winnipeg Arena, opened in 1905, could take in 4,000. In Toronto’s much smaller venue, important games were often quick to sell out, leading to ticket scalping that could drive prices up tenfold.
The second problem was the size of the ice surface. This was linked to the first problem, because significant seating had been put in for hockey spectators only after the fact. Known to be jerry-built, these stands significantly reduced the width of the original, squarish skating area. “To settle all disputes,” the Toronto Star measured Mutual’s surface. It was a mere 153 feet, 4 inches long and 73 feet, 5 inches wide.10
This put the playing area well below the standard established in Montreal. The surface of its Victoria Skating Rink of 1875 had been 200 feet by 85 feet (the National Hockey League standard to this day). The ice of the contemporary Montreal Arena was even slightly larger. Mutual’s small surface could help against a visiting team of strong skaters, but it would handicap any
Toronto team that aspired to take the Stanley Cup on a full-size sheet.
The final problem was the amenities—or rather, the virtual lack of them. There were also design flaws for a major spectator facility, like windows low enough for young boys to crawl through for free admission. Most of all, this was the pre-Zamboni era, when “natural” ice had to be painstakingly created by work and weather. This sheet was constructed on top of sand, which, combined with the era’s poor lighting, made for a murky-coloured surface that rendered the puck only semi-visible to spectators.
No Canadian city of the time had an artificial skating rink; however, Toronto’s milder winters (compared to cities like Montreal and Winnipeg) were a more serious challenge. They made schedules much less reliable. They also caused regular practices to begin comparatively later in the season—sometimes as late as January—another disadvantage for a Toronto team seeking a national championship.11
As early as the 1890s, Mutual’s weaknesses were leading to stories about a “new rink” for Toronto. Soon, these reports began to follow an annual and predictable cycle. In the fall would come word of plans to construct a new artificial-ice complex the following offseason, usually said to be located on the site of the New Caledonian Rink. The idea would inevitably be based on the contemporary gold standard, Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens.
The New Caledonian Rink—the home of the Toronto Professionals—was the second of three rinks that stood on the Mutual Street site. It was designed for curling, not hockey.
Duquesne, comprehensively converted to a sports arena in 1895, was a 6,500-seat amphitheatre of brick and iron. It succeeded the Schenley Park Casino, North America’s first artificial-ice arena. Estimated to cost an enormous $300,000, Duquesne boasted a spacious promenade and palm garden, a soda fountain, heated stands and, of course, an artificial-ice system. Thus, hockey season in Pittsburgh commenced in November and lasted through the end of March, weather notwithstanding.
A Great Game Page 9