A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  Riddy kept his youthful looks, but largely lost the fame hockey had brought him. He became a sales representative for a sporting goods company. Bruce also remained a bachelor—it is remarkable how rarely these early hockey stars appear to have married—and ran a summer camp for boys where, naturally, canoeing was a key activity.

  Ridpath also never fully shook off the health effects of his head trauma. In the spring of 1925 he suffered a minor stroke while playing cards with friends. A week later, he had a more serious seizure and was taken to St. Michael’s Hospital. Bruce never regained consciousness and passed away three weeks later, on June 4. He was only forty-one.

  Bound for the Hockey Hall of Fame before fate intervened, Ridpath is the ultimate “forgotten Leaf.” His role as the founder and first captain of the original Toronto Hockey Club was washed away as quickly as the memory of that team. So too was his role as the designated captain of the reborn Toronto Hockey Club. This is even more striking in that, as manager, it was he who, against all conventional wisdom, assembled the Stanley Cup lineup, Jack Marshall included.

  And yet, when the Blue Shirts took that historic first Stanley Cup, no mention, let alone credit, was given to Ridpath.

  The same anonymity was not in store for the other of the Toronto Professionals’ two big stars. As Ridpath stood in street clothes, watching helplessly from the sidelines, Newsy Lalonde stood at centre ice as the captain of the Montreal Canadiens on December 25, 1912. Booed out of Toronto in 1909—and booed in Toronto many times after that—he was by then well on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the history of the game. On January 5, 1910, he had scored the Habs’ first-ever goal. By the spring of 1916, Lalonde would be their playing manager, leading the club to the first of its two dozen Stanley Cup championships.

  Ridpath would almost certainly have been one of two Toronto Professionals in the Hockey Hall of Fame had fate not intervened. As it was, his passing was still of some local note a dozen years after he left the sport.

  Newsy Lalonde has been gone for so long that his legendary careers in both hockey and lacrosse have gradually faded from popular culture. Yet it took a long time because, for the first two decades of the twentieth century, he was arguably the single most dominant player in both of Canada’s national sports. A true gentleman off the ice, Lalonde established himself as one of the fiercest and roughest competitors the rink has hosted.

  Lalonde’s various fights and ongoing feuds were epic even for the time. Demanding only the best effort from himself and others in every match he played, he probably dropped the gloves in more circumstances than any other player in history. At various times, Newsy punched out not only opponents, but also fans, officials and even teammates. At least once, as a referee himself in a lacrosse game, he pummelled a player who gave him too hard a time. Still, Lalonde was one of those who lived by a hockey “code,” refusing ever to speak or act against an opponent outside the arena.

  Newsy also honed his instinct for scoring in a way that would completely overcome his average skating ability. In fact, before the arrival of Maurice Richard, Lalonde was the highest scorer in pro hockey history. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. He was chosen to light the torch for the Sports Hall when it opened in Toronto in 1955. He was a grand old eighty-three when he passed away in 1970.

  Not surprisingly, Lalonde was named “Athlete of the Half Century” for lacrosse in 1950. In 1998, The Hockey News ranked him thirty-second in a list of “The 100 Greatest Hockey Players.” This placed him highest among those who had played prior to the founding of the National Hockey League.

  One other major character to fade only slowly from public memory was the bane of the existence of every Toronto Professional: John Ross Robertson. In 1921, a school was built in his name in the north part of the city. Thereafter, each year in late spring, a delegation of Telegram editors and school children would visit the family plot and remember the great man. In 1947, the mythical “father of the OHA” became an early member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

  Yet the pilgrimages to the grave site stopped after 1942.26 Three decades later, in 1971, the Tely itself vanished, having been on the wrong side of too many business decisions, labour disputes and editorial choices. Today, only a few Toronto library archivists and Hospital for Sick Children administrators can recount something of Robertson’s life and achievements.

  Lalonde became a hockey legend in Montreal, attending games at the Forum until his death in 1970.

  As for his role in hockey, did Robertson actually change the course of the game? Might things today have been different without him? What if the pragmatists had won the Athletic War? Could, as they preferred, an element of the noncommercial ethic have been preserved at the highest level of the national winter sport? Would top-level hockey have evolved on a more community-oriented, less purely commercial basis, perhaps even preserving the National Hockey League and the Stanley Cup as Canada’s own?

  Those who hold this view sometimes have the Canadian Football League and its Grey Cup in mind.27 The parallels seem to make sense. The inspiration for the Interprovincial Amateur Hockey Union was the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union—which eventually became the CFL’s Eastern Division. Indeed, Earl Grey’s mug had originally been conceived, not as a football award, but as the amateur hockey alternative to Lord Stanley’s.

  These simple similarities ignore some important differences. Unlike hockey, Canadian football is a unique national game, not an international sport. The last time American football seriously tried to enter the country—the Toronto Northmen of the World Football League—it was saved by good old-fashioned government protection, not by the structure of the Canadian sport. And it was ultimately the Americans themselves who, in 1995, thwarted the CFL’s own continentalist ambitions.

  In other words, while the Athletic War doubtlessly delayed the future, a skeptic must doubt whether it really altered its eventual outcome. After all, at the time, the forces behind amateurism were international in nature. The revived Olympic Games of Pierre de Coubertin gave the amateur purists a worldwide reach. Likewise, commercial forces, rooted in our natural American export market—and deeply imbedded in Western society generally—were already aggressively shaping the business side of hockey. Perhaps, truth be told, the pragmatic “mixers” never had a chance.

  On the other side of the argument, it is easy in hindsight to see the Athletic War’s victors as nothing more than excessively powerful, old white men fighting for the values of a dying culture that gave old white men excessive power. Yet we still do hear the echoes of these amateur advocates’ cry against professional hockey. They told us that one played for either the love of the game or the money. The pros protested that one could do both. Living in the shadow of four NHL labour shutdowns in twenty years—including one lost season and a recent one nearly so—it is no wonder the old doubts remain.

  Wage cycles have been a big part of the business story of hockey ever since the professional game was first established over a hundred years ago. On the one hand, there have been periods of intense competition between leagues and players. These have been marked by rapid salary escalation, pools of red ink for management and increasing franchise instability. On the other hand, there have been times of remarkable constancy—most notably the quarter century of the NHL’s Original Six. In such eras, the dominance of the market by a tight cartel meant healthy profits for owners and ironclad contracts that reduced players to little more than serfs. The inability of successive collective bargaining agreements to establish equilibrium is only the latest episode in this long story of volatility. Interestingly, the amateur advocates of Robertson’s time predicted all of this.

  The most recent labour turmoil, some would say, has exposed millionaire players as motivated more by personal greed than by any devotion to the national game. The same critics point at the even wealthier owners, making profits off a ridiculously long season and a largely need
less playoff system. Watching it all, they see the fans, living vicariously through the stars rather than playing the sport themselves. Those in the small communities breeding many of the players have long been squeezed out of the game’s top echelon. For the rest, team loyalties have been sold as commodities, constant player movements rendering them little more than “cheering for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld once observed.

  That is not the way everyone sees it, but I have no doubt that it is the perspective John Ross Robertson would take. We can even visualize him barging into a sports television studio today to comment on the state of the game and to address the critics of his actions. Yes, he would concede, he now sees he lost the war. All those furious battles were indeed futile assaults against the inevitable.

  So, would John Ross Robertson do it all differently if he could? I think he would pause and answer, “A poor man is he who journeys through the mazes of a busy world with no purpose in view, no ambition to serve.”28

  In other words, and without hesitation, he would do exactly the same.

  The Queen’s Hotel, Toronto. In 1890, this landmark stood on the site of the Royal York. Even then, it was a prestigious address.

  The victory of Doc Gibson’s Portage Lakers over the Montreal Wanderers in 1904 showed that open professionalism would be the future of championship hockey.

  The Schenley Park Casino (c.1895), the predecessor of Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens, was North America’s first artificial-ice arena.

  Winnipeg’s Main Street in 1907, five years after the Toronto Wellingtons’ Stanley Cup excursion to the city.

  Winter sports were quite varied in Toronto. As in most of Canada, hockey became the pre-eminent one by the 1890s.

  The Aberdeen Pavilion, site of the Ottawa–Marlboros Stanley Cup confrontation of 1904.

  This depiction of a ladies’ hockey team is from about 1910. Starting with the governor general’s daughter, Isobel Stanley, female players were a feature of the game.

  The Amphidrome in Houghton, Michigan, was the home of Doc Gibson’s Portage Lakers, the first avowedly professional team.

  This postcard illustrates an 1890s match between the Montreal (AAA) Winged Wheelers and Victorias at the latter’s rink, now considered the birthplace of hockey as an organized sport.

  Toronto Osgoodes jersey (1897–98).

  Toronto Wellingtons jersey (1901–02).

  Montreal Wheelers jersey (1901–02).

  Toronto Marlboros jersey (1903–04).

  Before action photos were feasible, it was common for newspapers like the Toronto Star to run sketches of matches in its game reports.

  Ottawa’s Dey’s Arena (here and following image) was a significant hockey landmark, but an unlikely one for Hobey Baker’s final game as a member of the Princeton team.

  Bruce Ridpath displaying his canoeing prowess.

  This postcard shows Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens – hockey’s leading artificial-ice arena – in its heyday.

  Toronto Professionals jersey (1906–07).

  Kenora Thistles jersey (1906–07).

  Montreal Wanderers jersey (1907–08).

  Toronto Professionals jersey (1907–08).

  Toronto Professionals jersey (1908–09).

  Toronto St. Michael’s College jersey (1910–11).

  Toronto Tecumsehs jersey (1912–13).

  Montreal Canadiens jersey (1912–13).

  Toronto Blue Shirts jersey (1913–14).

  Renfrew’s Creamery Kings became known as the Millionaires, but their all-star lineup never did land the Stanley Cup.

  Early hockey trading cards such as these were included in packages of tobacco and cigarettes.

  Whether it was played on the big city rinks or the frozen ponds of Sarnia Bay, hockey quickly became a permanent part of Canadian life.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My work on this book began back in 2004 as a distraction from the hectic and obsessive nature of political life. I had become unusually interested in hockey history as a youngster growing up in Toronto. As a studious and rather unathletic boy, this pastime helped to compensate for my conspicuous inability on the ice. Two people deserve some credit for cultivating this interest of mine. First and foremost, my father, Joseph Harris Harper, was himself an avid researcher in many fields and a role model in all things. Some mention is also due to an individual whom my dad much admired, the late W. Harold Rea—the man who also gave me my first ticket to an NHL game.

  The Society for International Hockey Research is the foremost organization of its kind and is largely responsible for reviving my attention to this boyhood hobby. Past president Lenard Kotylo, who possesses a wealth of information on all aspects of hockey history, provided a number of documents at the outset of my research. His initial help truly got this project off the ground. Lenard closed the loop by providing an expert review of the final manuscript.

  Lenard also connected me with a couple of other walking hockey encyclopaediae, Eric Zweig and Glen Goodhand. Eric also did a thorough review of the final product, finding an embarrassing number of inaccuracies and digging up some good stuff on Bruce Ridpath. As for Glen, his unpublished work on the Ontario Professional Hockey League has long been the only one of substance relating to the Toronto Professionals hockey club. (Kevin Slater’s recent opus on the OPHL is now another.) Reverend Glen, through Professor Jo Behrens of the University of Omaha, was also helpful in tracking down information on the theological career of Chuck Tyner. As well, James Milks and Ernie Fitzsimmons of SIHR were helpful on matters relating to the statistical record.

  The laborious task of combing through the original news reports of the era was handled by this project’s researcher, Greg Stoicoiu. Greg’s contribution is significant. An expert in hockey memorabilia, he has solid knowledge of the subjects he was digging into and a good eye for relevant material. That good eye also provided the jersey drawings that colour the inserts. Let me state for the record that Greg was paid by me personally, not by the taxpayers of Canada.

  A number of organizations and their people were supportive in tracking biographical information. This includes Ian Wilson, Marthe Seguin-Muntz and Neysa McLeod of Library and Archives Canada. They were particularly helpful for those players who served in the First World War. Patrick Deane, Rick Stapleton and Alexandra Lawson of McMaster University assisted with details of Rolly Young’s academic and sports career at that institution. Guy Lauzon, MP, pointed me to Tracy Cameron of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, David Hill and George and Bev Runions, all of whom provided information on Zina Runions. Reverend Lauren Lyon of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City shared a number of pictures and stories of Chuck Tyner’s career there. Jim Miln of Winnipeg and Bruce Miln of Victoria supplied some family trees on namesake Alexander. Kevin Shea also provided some useful bits of information on the hockey history of St. Michael’s College.

  More general sources of information included the Toronto Public Library. Special thanks go to Jane Pyper and a number of people whose assistance she procured, including Nancy Marshall, Linda Mackenzie, Mary Rae Shantz, Bill Hamade and Christopher Coutlee. They were especially accommodating in reproducing articles and photographs from the local newspapers of the era. Craig Campbell of the Hockey Hall of Fame deserves special mention for opening its files and photographs collections. A similar thanks is owed to Chuck Puchmayr and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in New Westminster.

  I know that Greg would also like to convey some additional appreciation to those who helped him. The folks at the Calgary Public Library, the University of Calgary McKinney Library and the Glenbow Museum and Library were of great assistance in getting newspapers on microfilm and navigating genealogical information. Suzanne Plouffe and Janet Seally of the Waterloo Public Library and Crystal Williamson of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons were eager to aid in tracking down Rolly Young’s later life story. Finally, Jim Woodland assisted Greg in getting some local information while spending time in Toronto.

&
nbsp; After seven years of slow but steady progress, I finished the first version of this work some two years ago. It was then that I began the process of seeking a publisher. That led me to my dedicated agent, Michael Levine—a veteran expert who literally knows everyone—and ultimately to the good people at Simon & Schuster.

  Simon & Schuster retained Roy MacGregor to be my principal editor. What an experience and a pleasure it has been to work with him. Roy would admit that he wrote very little of the revised product, but he did provide copious commentary and advice. At his suggestion, elements of the narrative were reordered, its timeline extended (from December 1912 to March 1914), and key characters and their great moments filled out (but not fictionalized). The result is a book that, while in some ways not very different, is at the same time a great deal better. So here’s a big thanks to journalist and writer Roy MacGregor, who once again demonstrated the superiority of the consummate professional to that of the aspiring amateur.

  It was also largely Roy who dealt with the publisher. I know he and I want to thank Kevin Hanson, Phyllis Bruce, Brendan May and Lloyd Davis. This is a great team from top to bottom—one that has been supportive (and patient) every step of the way.

  I tried to ensure this project had minimal impact upon my staff; nevertheless at various times Myles Atwood, Alison Barrett, Ranelle Massey and Dennis Matthews put through phone calls and obtained documents from the Library of Parliament and the internet. Myles, Sean Speer, Andrew MacDougall, Carl Vallée and also the Rt. Hon. David Johnston offered to read the manuscript and provided many good suggestions. Nigel Wright similarly assisted with advice and liaison with Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, whose office was forthright and constructive.

  At last, I would be more than remiss if I did not thank Laureen, Ben and Rachel for their patience during this project and their love and support in all things. It is an understatement to say I would not have completed this book—or much else in life—without them.

  One final note: to all these people and organizations I owe considerable credit, while reserving to myself any responsibility for this work’s errors and deficiencies.