A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  Professional hockey increasingly looked like a wreckage yard. All that remained of pro hockey in western Canada was a fledgling new league in Saskatchewan and a declining club in Edmonton. In Ontario, there were just two associations—one in the southwest, the other in the northwest—and both were small groups of modest-sized towns. The commercial game was still in its infancy in the Maritimes, and Doc Gibson’s pro ranks had vanished entirely from the United States. Even worse, the war with the CHA had left the new big league, the NHA, weighed down by unsustainable costs.

  While the pro hockey war of 1909–10 was an eastern phenomenon, its effects were felt elsewhere. Indeed, the elevated level of instability had ramifications throughout Canada. In Ontario, for example, the money-losing OPHL was further squeezed by the high salaries offered during the CHA–NHA showdown. Also, amateur Toronto, the war’s “western front,” was, ironically, the site of some minor skirmishes during the professional hostilities.

  The truth was that, while the Toronto Professionals had died fairly quietly, they had not done so in complete silence. Some voices had decried—and resisted—the club’s demise. As well, eastern pro hockey barons had begun looking at the prosperous, heavily populated Ontario capital as a potential marketplace.

  Even within the Toronto Hockey Club itself, Miln’s decision to embrace Simon-pure amateurism had not been uncontested. Foremost among the dissenters was Teddy Marriott, the second-in-command at both the Mutual Street Rink and its pro club. Marriott proposed to run the OPHL squad himself and was putting out feelers to the local veterans. Miln remained adamant that he would not allow a professional team in his building.

  A more determined attempt to keep the club alive was made by former player Herb Birmingham and his brother Hilliard. The Birminghams were a powerful political family of well-connected provincial Conservative organizers. Herb and Hilliard were leading a players’ consortium that aspired to move the team into the ECHA. The trouble was that they also lacked a rink to play in.

  To this obstacle, the Birminghams had a rather unique solution. They proposed to put a large canvas tent over the open-air National Rink on Brock Avenue. This rink was located on a large baseball field that would provide plenty of space to build a permanent facility later. The short-term cost was reckoned at just $2,000.

  Teddy Marriott was always willing to bet on a hockey game, his winning ways being legendary. The veteran hockey manager—who also served as Miln’s assistant—wanted to keep pro hockey in Toronto. He was, however, the sort of fellow the business was leaving behind.

  The idea attracted howls of laughter from the local press. “Any circus stunts to be done in the Eastern Pro. Hockey League will be done in Montreal and Ottawa, not in Toronto,”9 wrote Billy Hewitt’s Star. Nevertheless, the Eastern Association seemed ready to at least give them a listen.

  To most observers’ genuine surprise, the Birminghams got their franchise. It was not for the tent scheme, however, which was judged too shaky. Instead, on the condition they build a new indoor rink, the ECHA granted Toronto a franchise for 1910–11. When the ECHA evolved into the CHA, it extended the same terms. Of course, that possibility died with the league.

  Seeing the CHA attempting to corner the prospective Toronto market, the NHA moved quickly to do the same thing. Its leaders arranged a meeting with Miln, but were also unable to dissuade him from his opposition to any new pro venture. The league then acted swiftly to find other partners.

  The NHA first granted a Toronto franchise to Lawrence “Lol” Solman, an entrepreneur involved in sponsoring local sports since the heyday of his brother-in-law, Ned Hanlan. A big businessman with big facilities, he was the kind of person who would control high-level hockey in the future.

  These turned out to be pro baseball men E. J. “Eddie” McCafferty of Montreal and Lawrence “Lol” Solman of Toronto. McCafferty, who had connections to the Wanderers, was also the NHA’s secretary-treasurer. Solman’s Toronto Baseball and Amusement Company had myriad other sports and entertainment interests, including the Toronto Island ferry franchise and the Tecumseh Lacrosse Club.

  The NHA offered this group the same terms as the CHA had to the Birminghams: a Toronto franchise in 1910–11, conditional on a new rink.

  With the conclusion of the CHA–NHA war, talk of pro hockey in Toronto all but died for the rest of the season. In its place, shinny attention in the city focused on St. Michael’s. Under the direction of Jimmy Murphy, St. Mike’s would repeat as OHA champions and, this time, capture the Allan Cup.

  With the amateurs having finally brought the Queen City a national hockey crown, the Ontario capital now appeared utterly in their grip. It is hard to overstate the hold that John Ross Robertson’s Ontario Hockey Association had taken over the city’s hockey culture. Professional hockey was covered in the local papers, but usually with reminders from OHA leaders that the chaotic competition for the ringer-infested Stanley Cup had become a “joke.”10

  Even the once-independent Toronto News had now become a disciple of Robertson’s amateur puritanism—for example, castigating Bruce Ridpath when the former Toronto Pro idol made remarks suggesting that clandestine pay had long existed in the OHA.11

  That same Ridpath had sold his Yonge Street sporting goods store in December 1909. He was moving to Ottawa permanently. For Toronto professional hockey, all hope seemed lost.

  John Ross Robertson was almost too busy to savour his seemingly total victory. If the suffragette movement had been a distraction and an annoyance, there were now far larger issues to concern the publisher and his powerful newspaper. He was, after all, a man of principle dedicated to the propagation of a firmly developed worldview. Robertson might have united Toronto editorial opinion on the question of amateurism in sports, but there were greater battles to fight. And if they divided his sports allies, then divide them he would.

  The most volatile split was between Joe Atkinson’s (and Billy Hewitt’s) Star and Robertson’s Telegram over the question of Canada’s war readiness. The Star could see no threat of war coming. Atkinson attacked the “jingoism” of the British press and declared that “this whole German scare is simply a nightmare.” Germany, the Star believed, was “a nation now wholely [sic] friendly.”

  Robertson’s Telegram, on the other hand, viewed the German naval buildup as a “danger to humanity, to liberty, to everything.” Both the Star and Frank Nelson’s Globe argued that if Canada must build up its naval power, it must be the Dominion’s own, as Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier preferred. Robertson aligned his paper with Opposition leader Robert Borden, saying Canada should build battleships for the Empire and its Royal Navy.12

  Yet, while they debated such weighty affairs, all the Toronto papers continued to pontificate on the evils of professional hockey. They would sometimes take the argument even further. It was not just that pro hockey should not exist; rather, as the Queen City had demonstrated, it was that it really could not exist.

  Robertson’s Tely was, predictably, the most vociferous, postulating that the commercial sport had a fatal logic that could never be overcome. The clubs engaged in professional hockey, it argued, were inexorably faced with a no-win choice: “to decide between paying big salaries, in which event the players would take all the gates, and then some, or paying small salaries and having no gates worth mentioning to pay them with.”13

  In March 1910, James A. Murphy took St. Michael’s College to Toronto’s first national hockey championship. A coach and advisor to Alex Miln’s Professionals, he was better known as the former boss of the Toronto Lacrosse Club and future president of the National Lacrosse Union.

  As the 1910–11 season approached, even some in the NHA must have wondered if this was indeed true. It had won the war with the CHA, but at a price it could not continue to afford to pay. Indeed, the preseason began with the loss of three of its seven previous clubs. The Montreal Shamrocks, in over their financial heads, took advantage of the AAUC’s transition rules and returned to the amateur ranks. And th
e O’Briens, bathing in red ink as the backers of four of the league’s teams, decided to unload some of their franchises.

  First, the Renfrew group managed to transfer their Cobalt Silver Kings to Quebec City. This allowed the Bulldogs to re-enter top-level hockey. Then they had to deal with George Kennedy (né Kendall), the owner of Montreal’s Club Athlétique Canadien. Kennedy was threatening to sue them for stealing his trademark when the NHA’s Canadiens had been created.

  From the outset, it had been the O’Briens’ intention to secure local French-Canadian ownership for their Montreal club. In a sense, the arrival of Kennedy on the scene was a blessing. However, for reasons unknown, the franchise the O’Briens sold to Kennedy before the 1910–11 season was Haileybury’s, not the Canadiens’. True, Kennedy got control of the name and signed most of the Montreal club’s players, but the O’Briens retained legal ownership of the original Canadiens entity.14 This was to have some implications later. For now, the Renfrew owners opted to keep the original Canadiens franchise dormant, putting all their money into another attempt at getting the Stanley Cup for their Millionaires.

  When the dust had settled, the NHA was left with five operating teams. They were, however, saddled with the salary expectations created by the prior year’s bidding war. In truth, this sort of thing had been a recurring problem since the days of the International league. Ideally, it had long been claimed, hockey would set up a national commission to enforce contracts, limit salaries, schedule playoffs and regulate player movements between leagues and clubs, as baseball had done in the United States. The rival pro hockey organizations had periodically discussed such an arrangement, but had never been able to nail anything down.

  The National Hockey Association, now clearly dominant in the pro hockey world, decided to act unilaterally. It launched a number of reforms, including a highly disputed salary cap. No club could have a payroll exceeding $5,000—less than half what most had spent the year before. In short order, the pro association had an employee rebellion on its hands.

  The workers, led by stars Art Ross and Bruce Stuart, threatened their own, long-rumoured scheme: the formation of a players’ union. As this “insurgency” spread it became more elaborate. Most of the leading NHA performers signed on to an attempt to establish an alternative, player-run league. Failure to secure an arena in Montreal ultimately scuttled the project, but deep divisions between management and players—and among the players themselves—persisted throughout the year.

  While some clubs doubtlessly cheated, the salary cap did have an impact. Payrolls came down considerably, though to levels still historically quite high. At the same time, the NHA’s infighting helped breathe some life back into rival pro leagues.

  As alternatives for the players, the Saskatchewan and New Ontario circuits trudged along. An Interprovincial group sprang up in the Maritimes. And the struggling OPHL also seemed briefly to revive, establishing a new division east of Toronto.

  The ongoing financial challenges of the NHA kept it from drifting to the Queen City, at least for the time being. Yet it would have been a logical development. In that other big national sport, lacrosse, the precedent had already been established. After emerging as the biggest pro circuit in the country, the Montreal-based National Lacrosse Union had secured good markets—both home and away—by expanding into Toronto in 1906.

  However, the Queen City in 1910–11 remained its own, isolated hockey realm, under the restored order of Simon-pure amateurism. The city had seven senior teams in the Ontario Hockey Association that season, including the defending Allan Cup champions. Local matches were well attended and rivalries were keen. And the OHA view of the world remained the position of virtually all Toronto media.

  The amateur advocates did sometimes still worry that pro hockey could have a future in Toronto. They knew that the exploits of departed OHA stars—Bruce Ridpath, Cyclone Taylor, Dubbie Kerr, Marty Walsh and the like—were followed closely by the city’s hockey fans. A quiet elation swept the town as Ridpath and company helped the Senators regain the Stanley Cup from the Wanderers in 1910–11. The News even admitted ruefully that “although the N.H.A. has nothing to do with Toronto, local fans are immensely interested in the doings down East.”15

  The OHA’s propaganda, of course, had effectively killed any possibility of a return to Toronto by its immediate competitor, the Ontario Professional Hockey League. The OPHL’s 1910–11 expansion into eastern Ontario proved to be an unqualified failure. By the end of the campaign, it was apparent that even its established western clubs might soon give up the ghost.

  In reality, ever since the departure of its flagship Toronto club, the OPHL’s remaining towns had struggled in their compact circuit of southwestern Ontario. Writers from the provincial capital had constantly and mercilessly ridiculed this so-called “Trolley League.”16 Locked out of the big-city market, the Ontario Pro league became even less competitive in the hunt for the best pro players. Its champions, likewise, became even less convincing as contenders for the Stanley Cup.

  The OPHL’s image was not helped by the antics of Buck Irving. It has been said of Irving that “the league’s father he may have been; but if it had been actual paternity involved, the Children’s Aid would have declared him an unfit parent.”17 Buck hopscotched from Guelph to Galt to Waterloo to Belleville and finally to Brantford. His bravado efforts to establish a viable pro hockey club became increasingly less credible and less welcome.

  The new Arena Gardens had long been planned for the site of the Mutual Street Rink. By the time it came to pass, however, a whole new consortium—minus Alexander Miln—would be in charge.

  Thus, the attention of the Toronto hockey community remained focused where the OHA papers told them it should be: on the OHA. Each spring after the demise of the Professionals, crowds of up to 3,000 would pile into the creaking old Mutual Street Rink for the association’s biggest games. In 1911, it would crown a new senior champion, which in turn promised to bring the Queen City the Allan Cup.

  This winner of the John Ross Robertson trophy would, sadly, serve only to remind Torontonians that the restored amateur order had neither forgotten nor learned from any of its earlier absurdities.

  The team was the Toronto Eatonias. It was the creation of the Eaton’s Athletic Association, a group of employees of the city’s famous department store, also one of its largest employers. The Eaton’s club repeated as OHA senior champions the following season, 1911–12, playing for, but failing to capture, Sir Montagu’s mug.

  There would be no third Ontario championship for the Eatonias, however. Prior to the 1912–13 season, the titleholders were expelled by the OHA. The reason? No, they had not been found guilty of professionalism; they had not really even been accused of playing for pay. Nonetheless, because they were linked to a commercial entity—the department store—they were deemed to be potentially professional.

  Whereas decisions like this might have once caused a firestorm, they did no more. The OHA’s annual meetings had become highly scripted, lightly attended affairs where the association’s permitted business would still be authored by the Three White Czars—John Ross Robertson, perennial secretary W. A. Hewitt, AAUC representative Francis Nelson—and a handful of their followers. Virtually all the offices went routinely uncontested. Besides, the executive rarely met, leaving most important business to Robertson’s “subcommittee.”

  Instead, delegates would be treated to Robertsonesque orations from the OHA president of the day. These spoke of the glory of Canada’s national winter sport, comparing it with—you guessed it—the grandeur of the OHA itself. Welland newspaperman and former Olympian Louis Blake Duff gave one of the most eloquent in his 1910 address:

  Today, after these score of years, we find the domain of the OHA reaching to the uttermost West of Old Ontario, east to within hailing distance of Montreal, north to the edge of civilization and south to the edge of winter—a domain that would make a dozen European principalities.

  The game has
taken a tremendous hold upon the interests of the Canadian people, and it is not strange, for it typifies wonderfully the sturdy pluck, the courage, the stamina, the resolution, the dash and go, that is lifting this country up to the heights of splendid achievement … The hockey stick struck a responsive chord in the breast of young Canada, and in the breast of Canada that is not so young.

  John Ross Robertson was saving his own speeches—and his enormous energies—for the biggest issues of the day. As 1911 progressed, this was clearly the proposal of the Laurier government for “reciprocity”—i.e., free trade—with the United States. It was not hard to predict what the Telegram would think of the idea of letting the protective walls of the Canadian Dominion come down against the ravenous encroachment of the American Republic. Robertson’s right-hand man, Tely editor John “Black Jack” Robinson, declared that free trade was “the enemy of Toronto” and that the streets of the city would be soon covered over in grass if a deal with the United States went ahead.18

  Robertson had spent part of the summer in Great Britain, but had returned in early September to launch his own campaign against free trade. Speaking in Montreal, the proprietor of the Telegram told his audience that “the people of the great province of Ontario have not changed their party allegiance. They are simply voting almost as one man against the reciprocity agreement the government has concluded with the United States.”

  His province, Robertson claimed, was aroused as it had not been since the people rose up and threw out the corrupt provincial government of Premier G. W. Ross in 1905 following allegations of vote buying in the previous election. Ontario, he predicted, would vote in overwhelming majority for the opposition in the federal election that would be held the following week.19

  “Ontario is Awake,” proclaimed the Gazette headline over the Montreal newspaper’s account of Robertson’s speech. And the old man was right—the Laurier government and reciprocity were indeed trounced at the polls. Still, as Robertson celebrated another great victory, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his earlier one was beginning to slip away.