A Great Game Read online

  Toronto Professional Hockey Team, 1907

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  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  INTRODUCTION

  Facing Off

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Old Order in Hockey’s Second City

  From Good Beginnings to the Osgoodes

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Rise of “The Paper Tyrant”

  All Is Well Under the Wellingtons

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Enemy in the Open

  The Ascent of the Marlboros

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Road to War

  The Defection of the Marlboros

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Rebellion Begins

  The Toronto Hockey Club Is Born

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Uprising Spreads

  Professional Hockey Appears Across Ontario

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Pros on the March

  The Ontario Professional Hockey League Is Formed

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Brush with Eternity

  The Torontos Reach for the Stanley Cup

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Pros in Retreat

  The Garnet and Grey Hit Cracks in the Ice

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Triumph of the Amateurs

  The End of the Toronto Professionals

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Old Order Restored

  The Era of Amateurism Returns to the Queen City

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Revenge of History

  A New and Stronger Toronto Hockey Club Emerges

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The New Order in Hockey’s Second City

  The Blue Shirts Take the Stanley Cup

  OVERTIME

  An Era Fades Away

  Color Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  About Stephen J. Harper

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  Statistical Records, 1906–1909

  Index

  To Canada’s military families, past and present.

  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!

  —JOHN ROSS ROBERTSON, PRESIDENT, ONTARIO HOCKEY ASSOCIATION, 1905

  INTRODUCTION

  FACING OFF

  March 14, 1908: Saturday night at the Montreal Arena at the corner of St. Catherine Street and Wood Avenue. Also known as Westmount Arena, the ten-year-old hockey rink with the natural ice and the novel rounded corners is the largest in the country. Along with many hundreds who will stand, 4,500 fans will cram into the rows of hard wooden seats they can soften and warm with rugs available for rent.

  Outdoors, it has been a mild, springlike day at the tail end of a soft winter in which the St. Lawrence River has remained open longer than it has for thirty years. Indoors, a battle for the Stanley Cup is about to begin.

  The visitors from Toronto step onto the ice amid the polite applause of the spectators. The local papers have reported that this upstart team is a decent aggregation, but no one expects them to beat the home side. Their Montreal Wanderers have successfully dominated hockey’s top tier for the better part of three seasons.

  One of the Ontario challengers is well known to—and highly regarded by—the Montreal fans. He is a grizzled veteran pro lining up in the key position of rover. He is flanked, however, by two even better forwards.

  At centre stands a young French Canadian who will someday be regarded as one of the greatest competitors of all time. And at left wing is the best player the city of Toronto has yet produced, with both great triumph and tragedy ahead of him. In a moment, the game will start and this handsome young star’s speed and skill will stun the overconfident Montrealers.

  The Wanderers are about to have the fight of their lives.

  But if the visiting team has been underestimated by Montreal observers, the hockey establishment back home in Toronto holds it in utter contempt. They may resent Montreal, but they detest this club, their own club, even more. Toronto’s leading newspaper has dismissed its Cup aspirations as the delusions of “false alarm hockey statesmen”1 hoping to collect some fast bucks from the gate receipts.

  In fact, from its beginnings the club has been the object of disdain and ridicule by the hockey powers in its hometown. Upon its formation in the fall of 1906, the same journal had wishfully mused that “professional hockey in Toronto promises to flourish till the frost comes. Then like other flowers it will fade away and die.”2 When the team lost its first game—an exhibition affair—by a score of 7–0, a rival paper said ticket buyers had only proved there truly was “a sucker born every minute.”3

  Things got no better the following season, when the team joined a full-fledged pro league. “All the world is laughing,” declared the powerful Toronto Telegram, “at a so-called professional hockey league that can only get players that real professional leagues don’t want. It’s not a professional league at all. It’s a disqualified amateurs’ league.”4

  In fact, the whole league experiment seemed jinxed. For the first game, a team from Berlin (later to be renamed Kitchener) had come to town by train, but the Saturday papers were not even thinking about hockey. They were consumed with the sudden passing of Ned Hanlan at the age of fifty-two. The “Boy in Blue” had been Canada’s first-ever world champion—a rowing prize he captured before 100,000 spectators on the River Thames—and he had been the city’s most beloved athlete for years. “The death of Edward Hanlan removed the most famous oarsman that ever lived,” proclaimed the Globe. “Nor is it likely that any other who comes after him will occupy so large a share of public attention.”5

  Things were even worse inside the rink, where a big winter thaw had taken its toll. The Monday papers were far more interested in the playing conditions than the play. The News labelled it “Hockey on Bare Floor” and observed that “by the time play ceased there was not ten yards of solid ice in the rink.”6 The World was no less kind, summing up the match with “The Flying Dutchmen of Berlin proved better mud horses than the Torontos.”7 The team had again lost its season opener by a shutout, this time 3–0. It seemed some local scribes even held them responsible for the weather.

  Yet the progress of the organization has proven remarkably steady and swift. Indeed, by the time of its arrival in Montreal less than three months later, it has been able to ice the best hockey team ever to wear a Toronto uniform. Less than a year and a half into its existence, the club has genuine hopes of capturing the Cup, much to the delight of its fans—but only of its fans.

  The truth is that in Toronto the hockey bosses are hoping the team will lose the game. They would rather “their” team and Lord Stanley’s mug did not even exist. We know this because they say so—often and loudly.

  Who were these Stanley Cup contenders and what happened to them? History has told us they were the original “Toronto Maple Leafs.” In fact, they were never, ever, called by this name.8 They were simply the “Torontos,” sometimes (at times sarcastically) the “Toronto Professionals.” So determined—and successful—would be their naysayers in obliterating their existence that even their name would be long f
orgotten.

  Their opponents are some of the most powerful people in Toronto. They are in the midst of leading one side in the national “Athletic War.” It is an extraordinary chapter in Canada’s social history—a sort of witch hunt against professional sports so intense and so divisive that the country may not enter the coming summer’s Olympics in London, England.

  Today, none of this makes any sense, not in a time when Forbes magazine has certified that Toronto boasts the most valuable professional hockey franchise in the world.9

  A century ago, however, Toronto was a very different place.

  • CHAPTER ONE •

  THE OLD ORDER IN HOCKEY’S SECOND CITY

  From Good Beginnings to the Osgoodes

  It’s grand to be an Englishman in 1910

  King Edward’s on the throne

  It’s the age of men1

  —“THE LIFE I LEAD,” FROM Mary Poppins

  It was the dawn of a new century. The sun, it was said, never set on the British Empire, and Toronto was a burgeoning bit of the Empire’s vast Canadian dominion. Toronto liked to be called the “Queen City,” which was certainly preferable to the pejorative “Hogtown.” The moniker reflected perfectly the self-image and aspiration of its—exclusively WASP and male—civic leaders. As the song from the Disney musical Mary Poppins would so perfectly put it, it was considered a “grand” time to be alive if you were part of the English realm.

  There was great optimism in the air. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier perhaps best expressed it in 1904, in an address to the Canadian Club in Ottawa: “I think that we can claim that it is Canada that shall fill the twentieth century.”2 Such was the growing confidence across the land.

  What links the Toronto of the early 1900s to that of the early 2000s is the experience of change and growth. Though a primitive time by today’s standards, technological progress had been sufficiently bold and rapid that it was unmistakable. Further, such advancement—and the positive social development it would make possible—was keenly anticipated.

  Throughout the world, but especially in Canada, the most meaningful developments had occurred in transportation. The steam-engine locomotive had replaced the horse and cart (or winter sleigh) for intercity travel, reducing travel times exponentially. The age of the horse had not been displaced locally, but wealthy citizens could purchase the new motor vehicles, while the many rode bicycles or travelled by electric streetcar for a five-cent piece of silver.

  The railways had their communications parallel in the telegraph, by which news could be rapidly transmitted throughout the world’s urban network. A growing array of daily newspapers could then disseminate it within hours rather than days, and to a much wider array of citizens. Toronto had six daily papers: the Globe, Mail and Empire and World in the morning, and the News, Star and Telegram in the evening.3 Citizens of reasonable means now also had their own telegraph parallel, the telephone.

  They were good times to be raising a family in the Ontario capital. It was said a woman could be outfitted for twenty-five dollars, a man could get three squares (“breakfast, dinner, tea”) for fifteen cents and a family could buy a home for $1,200. However, with a full-time labourer earning twenty-five cents per hour at best—ten hours a day, six days a week—life for many was not easy. Trade union troubles were growing. Nonetheless, compared to the past, the times were prosperous and generally becoming more so.4

  The growing wealth was sparked by the rapid expansion of industry and manufacturing. It was accompanied by the noticeable spread of urbanization and the rising values of city land, along with an increase in the time for and the type of leisure activities. These ranged from high culture to, as one newspaper advertisement read, “Stage always filled with lovely women.”5 However, all activity—except church services—shut down on Sundays.

  Recreational activities and sports entertainment were experiencing explosive growth. In 1908 alone, the city’s strict authorities charged 1,200 boys and girls for playing their games on public streets. When not playing, the lads and lasses would follow the exploits of their hockey heroes in the winter and their lacrosse, baseball and football counterparts in the summer. Without television or even radio, newspapers gave detailed sports coverage at every level of competition. Big games would often be reprinted literally play by play.

  It was the age of heavyweight champ Jack Johnson and his Canadian adversary, Tommy Burns. Ty Cobb ruled baseball. In track and field, no one was bigger than the country’s own Tom Longboat. Few were the days between scuttlebutt—good or bad—about the Onondaga long-distance runner from the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ontario.

  Sports took minds off the many challenges and problems those in the growing city faced. Despite the prevailing Protestant moral ethos, alcohol use and abuse were rampant. Major occasions would be marked by energetic celebrations into the night, followed by brawling till the early morning. At the same time, there was an obsessive concern about personal health. Every newspaper of the time was overloaded with potential remedies for infirmities of all varieties.6

  While basic services were improving, unreliable water quality, infestations of rats and the pollution caused by the widespread use of coal were commonplace. This was especially true for the poor. Toronto was not known for its poverty, but slums, squalor and desperate privation were certainly to be found if one looked. Divorce was exceedingly rare, but spousal abandonment was not.

  Nothing like the government payments and social services of our age existed. Active benevolent work was undertaken by extended families, neighbourhood interests and, especially, religious institutions. These were particularly important in Toronto’s central “foreign district”—the poor areas that already contained 7,000 Italians and 22,000 “Hebrews” according to the census of 1911.7

  Crime was also regularly reported, although one does not get the sense it was top of mind. This changed with the spread of the automobile. In the years leading up to the Great War that began in 1914, the escalating numbers of pedestrian injuries involving cars became a major issue. It was yet another sign of the changing times. Only a few years earlier, Edouard Cyrille “Newsy” Lalonde, the famous Cornwall athlete (and future Toronto Professional), had been robbed by bandits while driving his horse and buggy on an Ontario country road.

  All told, the problems of the era were notably lower in profile than the bold new ventures, emerging corporate empires and ambitious civic projects that were taking shape. The business district was growing rapidly, moving up Yonge Street beyond its traditional northern limit at College. Two-thirds of the roads of “Muddy York” were now paved, and electric lighting was soon to appear above them. The affluent had already established summer homes in Muskoka.

  Toronto in the early twentieth century covered only a fraction of its present-day territory.

  More than anything, Toronto was growing. From 1901 to 1911, Canada expanded from five million–plus inhabitants to just over seven million. The city, absorbing its growing suburbs, climbed from some 200,000 souls to around 375,000. By way of comparison, Toronto’s closest provincial rivals, Ottawa and Hamilton, would barely cross the 80,000 mark by the end of the decade. There was already no doubt as to where the power lay in the new country’s largest province.

  A “new” country it was. The Confederation that brought together the colonies of Canada West (Ontario), Canada East (Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1867 had since added Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and the immense lands that would later make up the Prairie provinces and northern territories. The Dominion now stretched a mari usque ad mare, from coast to coast (to coast), and was the world’s second-largest country, next only to sprawling Russia. And yet, still commonly heard was the terminology of pre-Confederation days: the “West” meaning Ontario, the “East” being Quebec. The Atlantic realms and the provinces and territories of the vast Northwest—increasingly stocked by people neither British nor French—seemed still somewhat beyond the everyday “national” consci
ousness of central Canadians.

  Canada then had only two cities of national significance, Montreal and Toronto. Of these, Montreal was clearly both the larger and more dominant in numbers and influence. It had grown earlier and its economy was more diverse. Although Toronto was beginning to make gains, it still trailed the Quebec metropolis by a good hundred thousand.

  Montreal was not, however, merely bigger and more powerful than Toronto. It was a decidedly different place. Whereas Toronto was dominated by its “British” character, Montreal was defined by its cultural diversity. “Us, them and the Irish” was the city’s reality, a reality marked not so much by hostility as by “much indifference and ignorance.”8

  Montreal had its class distinctions, but these were much less ethnically based than modern mythology suggests. It is true that the business elite was largely Anglophone, living in brownstone mansions on Dorchester Boulevard and Sherbrooke Street. However, there was also a new class emerging between the rich on the Mountain and the poverty-stricken closer to the river, a middle stratum “composed of both French Canadians and Anglo-Canadians.”9

  The other difference in Montreal was its palpably more flexible character. Whether this was a consequence of the accommodations of cultural difference is hard to say, but Quebec’s urban centre seemed a less rigid place than its Ontario counterpart. Ironically, this made it more in line with the contemporary mores of the Mother Country. There, the fashionable, adventurous and sometimes scandalous Edward VII, who had ascended to the throne in January 1901 upon the death of Queen Victoria, was defining a new age.