False Gods and Profits

In the book Halifax: Warden of the North, one of the finest books ever written on Canadian history, the author Thomas H. Raddall, citing a British military diary from 1749, credits the Mi'kmaqs with an early influence on the Canadian game of hockey. He writes:

It is a fact little known in Canada, but a fact none the less, that ice hockey, Canada's national game, began on the Dartmouth Lakes in the eighteenth century. Here the garrison officers found the Indians playing a primitive form of hurley on ice, adopted and adapted it, and later put the game on skates. When they were transferred to military posts along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes they took the game with them and for some time afterwards continued to send to the Dartmouth Indians for the necessary sticks.

In 1888, Reverend Silas Tertius Rand a devoted missionary who had spent a lifetime among the Mi'kmaqs of Nova Scotia published the Dictionary of the Language of the MicMac Indians. For four decades Rand had recorded the tribal language in an attempt to preserve their words for future generations. Rand was aware of the cultural difficulties facing these and other natives. In the end, his work was an amazing accomplishment. He had identified 40,000 Mi'kmaq words and their meanings. The Dictionary stands today as one of the few examples of the 19th century where a religious leader actually tried to preserve native culture rather than destroy it. Even more remarkable, the printing of the book was paid for by the Canadian Government in Ottawa who themselves were enlightened enough to understand the importance of Rand's work. Today, the Dictionary, though reprinted in the 1970's, remains one of the rarest works in existence. Few anthropologists, historians or philologists have even seen a copy. What makes the Dictionary timeless is its reference to words associated with Mi'kmaq sport. Though the words hockey, shinny, or bandy are never mentioned, it is apparent by language terminologies that such a game did exist among the Mi'kmaqs.

Rand was an expert of the Mi'kmaq language. He was also a master of ancient Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, French, Italian and English. Throughout the Dictionary he points to examples where the Mi'kmaqs have borrowed from the French and English languages. This subtle technique allows one to differentiate the ancient words from the modern. It creates, in effect, a timeline between the ancient pre-European past and the present (1800s). It is important to note there are over 30 words or phrases, all of pre-European origin, that could be associated with Mi'kmaq hockey and ball games. These words are the proof to Mi'kmaq claims to have played a form of hockey prior to the arrival of the English. It also shows the Mi'kmaqs did not need to adopt English and French words in order to describe hockey as they already had ample descriptions to describe its play. Nowhere, among these words, is a Rand reference or linkage to a word of French or English origin. The best known, and most widely reported word is the reference to a stick used to play shinny. It is called an Oochamakunutk. Since Oochamakunutk and the other Mi'kmaq words represent the first language of Canadian hockey they are worthy of mention. The following is a list of key Mi'kmaq words and phrases that are or could be attributable to hockey:

1. A Ball Stick - Oochanakunutk.
2. A Stick - Kumooch; Nebesokun.
3. To Skate - Elnogumaase
4. A Skate - Elnogum.
5. Sport - Papimk.
6. Athletic - Melkigunei.
7. To Challenge - Telooemk.
8. Champion - Kenap.
9. To Cheat - Kespoogwadega.
10. To Come On The Ice - Wechkoogomae.
11. Crosier - Ukchepaduleas - ootopton.
12. On Each Side - Edoowu.
13. One On Each Side - Edoogooeek.
14. To Cause Him To Fall - Siktasimak.
15. A Foot-Ball - Alchamakum (kicking the ball with the foot was allowed in Mi'kmaq hockey).
16. To Play At Foot-Ball - Alchamei.
17. To Fall Forwards - Ogulumkwedesin.
18. Foul - Mejega.
19. To Foul - Mejegaadoo; Mejegaaluk; Mejegaluse.
20. To Carry It To And Fro - Asooaadoo.
21. To Swing It To And Fro -Asoodestoo.
22. To Fall To The Ground - Meskunadesin.
23. To Throw It To The Ground - Meskunadega.
24. To Hold It Up From The Ground - Epsitkoonum.
25. A Pass - Chijiktek Owte; Weegadigun Usedadegemkawa Oochit Seoweadimk.
26. The Game - Uksuboodakun; Nedoogoolimkawa; Kedantegawemkawaal; Weisisk Ak Sesipk Tanik Etlekedankoosooltijik.

Unfortunately, there is a darker side to the Dictionary. By examining the words and definitions closely one discovers that Rand's work has been sabotaged. The Dictionary was printed at the Nova Scotia Printing Company in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time of its printing, few Haligonians shared the same sense of enlightenment and appreciation of the Mi'kmaqs and their language as did Rand or the Canadian Government. Certain words, and their so-called Mi'kmaq equivalents, cannot be ignored. At first glance one is left with a sense of bewilderment followed by disbelief. Given Rand's expertise in language, and the sincerity and commitment of his work, it becomes apparent that someone took great care to discredit the translations. Among the more notable or notorious 'rewrites' found among Rand's work is: 1)Brothel - Badwoomuneeskwogwum (Bad Woman's Screw Wog Wum); and 2) To Fornicate - Winaasa (Win A Assa). It is said that Rand died within a year of the Dictionary's release. The question one must ask is whether or not he lived on to see his translations published or died in part as a result of discovering the vicious actions of some unknown person who tarnished his work and his years of effort?

The vandalization of the Rand Dictionary is an example of the contempt that many within Canadian society had towards natives during the later half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, it is no wonder that when it came to crediting the Mi'kmaqs with the origins of Canadian hockey their legacy was conveniently overlooked. Nothing apparently was sacred. Not even the writings of a dedicated clergyman.
In a letter to the Halifax Herald Newspaper on December 27, 1940, Joe Cope, an elderly Mi'kmaq native residing on the Millbrook Reservation near Truro, Nova Scotia wrote with regards to the origin of hockey:

I believe the honor and credit belongs wholly to the Micmac
Indians of this country, for long before the pale faces strayed to
this country the Micmacs were playing two ball games, a field
and ice game, which were identical in every way. Each had two
goals which the Indians called forts and were defended by the
owners. I do not believe any white man living today ever saw
an Indian field game played because it was suppressed by the
priests about 100 years ago on account of the somewhat cruel
nature; a good second to a prize fight. My father, who died in
1913 at the age of 93, saw ...Indians of the old Ship Harbor
Lake Reserve playing a skateless hockey game before the
Reserve was abandoned about 100 years ago. When the
Micmacs left the Ship Harbor Lake Reserve they came
to Dartmouth, and camped on what was then known as
Buston's Hill. Father said they played their old games in
Maynard and Oak Hill Lakes long before they moved up
to the Dartmouth Lakes. I was born in a birchbark wigwam
near the old Red Bridge on April 24th 1859, so I am no
longer a papoose. The old Indian field game should be
studied and revived by some sports enthusiasts for a change.
It is a 20 man game -- 10 on each side ....All this is sketchy,
I know, but it throws some light on the descent of the game
from Indians to whites in the region about Halifax.

Disease and poor living conditions had, for over a century, taken a toll on the Mi'kmaqs of Nova Scotia. By the mid-1850's there were only 237 Mi'kmaq families remaining in the colony. These were the survivors of a tribe that had once numbered in the thousands. By 1917, many of the Halifax-Dartmouth area Mi'kmaqs that remained had resettled along the shoreline of small community of Dartmouth, across the harbor from the City of Halifax. There they lived with their families with most still residing in native teepees or wigwams. The men worked the docks as low paid laborers or fishermen while the native women tended to the children and sold Mi'kmaq baskets and other items to the area Whites.

On December 6, 1917 an explosion occurred in the harbor when two ammunition ships bound for the war effort in Europe collided. The event would be known in the history books as the Halifax Explosion the greatest man-made explosion prior to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. The explosion and concurrent tidal wave swept across the harbor killing thousands and destroying the village. How many natives perished remains unknown as there was no complete record as to the size of the Dartmouth community. What is known however is on that day the true heirs of Canadian hockey perished leaving few survivors to refute the established elitist claims of hockey's origin. Today one of the great fallacies of Canadian history is that it continues to permeate the false myths of hockey's origins. Today there is no monument in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia or the lakes regions around Halifax-Dartmouth crediting the Mi'kmaqs with the origin of Canadian hockey.

The first written record of hockey being played by whites in Canada occurs around 1800 when English students at King's College School in Windsor, Nova Scotia, strapped on skates and played hurley-on-ice. Reference to this fact is found in the 1843 autobiography of Thomas Chandler Haliburton entitled Sam Slick in England. He writes: "Boys let out racin', yelpin', hollering and whoopin' like mad with pleasure . . . hurley on the long pond on the ice."

Later, as hockey's popularity grew, many attempted to claim credit for the game's origins. In Canada, where shinny on ice had been reshaped by merging aspects of Mi'kmaq hockey with the 1813 Boys' Own Book Rules, a number of English and Canadian individuals conveniently announced themselves as the game's originators. Some went as far as to write and publish their own versions of the so-called "official rules" in order to aid in their questionable declarations.

In the decades that would follow, historians and writers, unfamiliar with the game's past history, and basing their research on faulty historical references, qualified these claims, creating a ridiculous myth of origin which ignored the game's early development and conveniently erased all traces of influence associated with the Mi'kmaqs. So successful was this rewriting of history that to this day many of these falsehoods persists in the official historical records of Canadian hockey.

The earliest recorded use of the term "hockey," in Canada, is found in
written accounts of the famous Arctic Explorer and British Explorer and Naval Officer, Sir John Franklin. After a failed attempt to reach to North Pole in 1818, Franklin began the pursuit in 1825 of finding the North-West Passage. Franklin's expedition would be a partial success, as he mapped over 500 miles of previously uncharted territory, but, in the end, it would fail to find the passage. It was during this 1825 attempt, that "hockey sticks" were brought along, not only for enjoyment during the long periods of waiting for ice to recede, but, if need be, for firewood, as trees are a scarce resource in the extreme Arctic. In Henry Duff Traill's book The Life of Sir John Franklin, R.N., in 1896, he cites a November 1825 letter from Franklin to the British geologist, Sir Roderick Murchison. In it, Franklin writes of crew members playing hockey in the North West Territories. The letter states:

We have, as yet, had no severe weather, nor do I think we are likely to have
the temperature so low as at Fort Enterprise. We are, in fact, much less
elevated in this secondary formation than when in its vicinity, where the
rocks are entirely granitic. Until the day before yesterday we had
comparatively little snow, and this is the first day that our dogs have been
used in dragging sledges. Four trains of two dogs each were dispatched for
meat this morning. We endeavour to keep ourselves in good humour, health,
and spirits by an agreeable variety of useful occupation and amusement.
Till the snow fell the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning's
sport. At other times Wilson's pipes are put in request, and now and then a
game of blind man's bluff; in fact any recreation is encouraged to promote
exercise and good feeling . . .

Born in c.1786 AD in Spilsby, Lincolnshire England, Franklin, was educated for two years at the St. Ives Grammar School in c.1796 AD to c.1797 AD before attending school in Louth, England. Coincidentally, St. Ives is one of the areas where the first parish-sponsored bandy league had originated. It is this area and church where the deeply religious Franklin's first exposure to the game of hockey would have taken place, as his father had begun to groom the young boy for the priesthood. Against his father's wishes, Franklin rejected the idea of becoming a priest and at the age of 15 joining the Navy in 1800. In 1805, he fought in the Battle of Trafalgar against Napoleon Bonaparte's France, serving as a signal-midshipman on the HMS Bellerphon. Later, he would come to Canada to fight in the War of 1812 as second lieutenant on the ship HMS Bedford. In January 1813, he wrote in his diary about the war and his first experience with ice hockey in Kingston, Ontario:

. . . While so many of my relations are dying around me. Shall I be
permitted to finish this year? It is a question that I dare hardly ask, for
I know that I am not fit to die. Still I hope this year to go home, and
again see my dearest Father & Mother. What a happy meeting it will be, at
all events I think it will be happy; I hope I may not be disappointed . . .
Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on
the ice.

It is important to note that there exists a question as to the exact year of the above-mentioned passage. The diary entry, which is found on a single piece of paper and is housed at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, appears to be written in 1843 (the National Library of Canada indicates it as being such) but upon closer examination, and given the way Franklin wrote his the number "1" it could only have been penned in 1813.

If we are to believe the Canadian National Library's January 1843 interpretation, then Franklin would have been 57 years old at the time of this account, a curious age for this portly aristocrat to take up the sport and to "quickly" improve, especially in light of noting his play in the Northwest Territories 18 years earlier. If, as he stated, he did begin to learn to skate in Kingston, then it certainly must have been in Kingston, Tasmania since, at this supposed time (1843) Franklin was beginning his seventh year as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania). It is on this South Pacific island, where Franklin would live until his release from duty on January 12, 1844. In addition, if it was 1843, it must have come as quite a disappointment to Franklin, when upon his return to England, he found out his father had not lived to the ripe old age of 105 and that his mother was not preparing to celebrate her 90th birthday. Instead, all the "happy events" must certainly have been cancelled for time of personal reflection, upon hearing the astonishing news that his mother had died over thirty years prior and likewise his father nearly twenty years before his arrival in 1844. Although Franklin's grievous feeling must have been somewhat subdued as he could take condolence in prospect of knowing his own life was in safety. Since, of course, Franklin had just escaped the death-defying experiences of trying to establish Tasmania's first state educational system, along with other stately affairs, during a period where "so many of his relations were dying around him." The prospects of freezing to death in the Arctic must have seemed quite utopian to him in light of the terrors of governing the former convicts of Tasmania.

By the time Franklin had been dismissed from his Lieutenant-Governor post, only approximately 200 miles remained to be charted in order to find the elusive passage. Leaving Greenhithe, England on May 19, 1845 he set sail for the Canadian Arctic with two ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, a crew of 143 men, and enough provisions for three years. Unfortunately, the 8000 tins of food that was brought along had been sealed with lead. It is believed lead poisoning would become a major contributor to the expedition's disastrous results. It would be proven later, through testing of some of the dead men's remains, that the crew was suffering from lead poising. Lead poisoning can affect virtually every system in the body resulting in damage to ones nervous system while causing digestive, memory, and concentration problems. This was only compounded by the harsh climate and conditions of the arctic. During one of the rescue missions, looking for Franklin and his crew, Intuits reported seeing survivors from the two ships began to start eating each other. The Eskimos claim they had encountered a group of 40 men dragging a small boat southward down King William Sound and who had stated their boats had been crushed by ice. In Fergus Fleming's book, Barrow's Boys, he writes that when thirty dead men were eventually discovered "many of the bodies had been hacked with sharp knives and the cooking pots contained human remains."

Although credited with discovering the North-West passage, Franklin, and the remainder his crew, were never found. It is unclear if the heavy set Franklin, met his fate in a cooking pot. What is known is the first successful navigated voyage through the passage would come until 1905, therefore, possibly making Franklin's most significant contribution being his early accounts of hockey in Canada.

Strange and incredible as it sounds, today, some still naively argue that on Christmas Day in 1855 soldiers of the Royal Canadian Rifles, stationed at the British Garrison in Kingston, Ontario, were the first to play modern ice hockey. As the previous Franklin diary note shows, Kingston was home to hockey at least 42 years earlier then the "official" account. Halifax, Nova Scotia also lays claim to the origins of Canadian and modern ice hockey as British soldiers reportedly played the game there in 1867. The Province of Quebec also claims the origins of this ancient game, citing the "first ever" organized hockey game reported to be played at the Victoria Skating Rink in downtown Montreal on March 3, 1875. Almost two years later, McGill University would organize a hockey team and within a month they would print the "official" rules of ice hockey, a seven-paragraph text remarkably similar to those long in existence for English field hockey. Six years later, McGill would proclaim themselves the Canadian and World Champions after a two-team exhibition series in 1883, at the Montreal Ice Carnival. Today, McGill proudly claims to be the oldest hockey club still in existence. Many even believe that it was student's from Montreal who, in 1885, founded the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club, which lays claim to being the second oldest club in the world - next to McGill.

All these fraudulent claims are both false and historically embarrassing. They do nothing but promote a ridiculous timeline of ice hockey origin in Canada.

While the interest in modern ice hockey was continuing to spread across Western Europe, developments in the basics of the game were continuing in Canada. In 1885 the practice of seven-man aside ice hockey was "officially" adopted by McGill and two years later the five team Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) was formed. By 1890 the game was evoking great emotion not only from its players, but from spectators as well. Playing hard was an attraction. As the Toronto Globe reported after a match at the Granite Club:

It is greatly to be regretted that in a game between amateur teams some players should forget themselves before such a number of spectators, a good proportion of whom on occasion referred to being ladies, as to indulge in fisticuffs, and the action of some spectators in rushing on the ice is also to be deplored.

It was an Englishman, Lord Stanley of Preston, the sixth Governor General of Canada and the 16th Earl of Derby, who gave the Canadian game its most sought-after prize. In 1892, being familiar with the sport through the participation of his sons, Lord Stanley sent his aide, Captain Charles Colville, to England to purchase a trophy which would suffice as an annual challenge cup to be awarded to the recognized amateur champions of Canada. For a mere 10 pounds, Colville purchased what would become one of the oldest and most prestigious trophies in North American sports. Within a season, the first Challenge Cup Championship of Canada, later nicknamed the Stanley Cup, would take place.

With Lord Stanley of Preston immortalized today by the trophy which bears his name, it is particularly interesting that it was his sons who were the motivating factors behind the trophy. In fact, Stanley never played the game. Later, the Stanley brothers, would return to Britain and play a key role in the advancement of late-1890's British ice hockey. It was the Stanley boys who reintroduced ice hockey to the British Royal Family in hopes that the Royals would serve as the role models for all of England's youth to emulate. Lord Stanley's concepts on sport were in keeping with his time. During the 19th century, it had been the English who had introduced the concept of competitive sports to much of the world. In an age of the Victorians and Victorian ideals, sports were regarded as models of teamwork and fair play.

Inadvertently, by recognizing Canadian hockey Stanley had accomplished something more. He has given the game royal acceptance removing its status as a game of the lowly masses and creating a tiered sport based on club elitism and commercialism. It was no secret that the Stanley Cup was only to be competed for by select teams within Canada. At the time of its presentation, it was a symbol for self-promotion all-the-while serving a supposed need. In time, those who controlled the Challenge Cup controlled hockey, effectively creating a "bourgeoisie" sport.

The growth and interest in ice hockey had also developed in the United States. By the late 1850's the first record of hockey being played in the United States appears in the Journal of the naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Writing on April 24, 1859, Thoreau proclaims:

There is a season for everything. . . Boys fly kites and play ball or hawkie at particular times all over the state. A wise man will know what game to play today, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules . . . but let the season rule us.

It is important to note that the origins of American hockey dates to the 17th Century. New Amsterdam, later renamed New York City, was the location of the Dutch colonists in North America. Many of these individuals were familiar with the sport of Kolven and likely played the game during winters. To assume that hockey in this primitive European form did not exist at New Amsterdam is yet another example of ignoring the obvious. Kolven would have been played around the current-day Battery Park, Wall Street, and former World Trade Center areas of lower Manhattan. It would have also existed out on long island in and around Maspeth and Flushing, Queens.

By the early 1890's, there was a social movement among the American social elite to find and proclaim a birthplace for American hockey. Even though evidence existed of hockey being played by lower working class immigrants for decades through the New England States, and teams and leagues were already well established in Minneapolis, Detroit, and Baltimore, such facts were conveniently overlooked. In 1893, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, would declare themselves the birthplace of American hockey. Not to be outdone, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington D.C. followed, proclaiming themselves "the seedbed of American hockey."

Within two years, as hundreds of amateur and recreational hockey leagues came into existence across the United States and Canada, the first international contests in hockey were held as a steady stream of Canadian and American teams crossed over the Canada-U.S. border to compete against their respective rivals.

On December 14, 1894, the first indoor ice rink in the United States opened on the corner of Lexington and 101st Street in New York. Known as the Ice Palace, it was home to the New York Hockey Club, the first hockey team established in New York City. Early in 1895 the first official Manhattan ice hockey games would be played using New York League ice hockey rules subsequently published (in the Hockey Rules Revised) by the local East 60th Street Saint Nicholas Club. A year later, the first officially recognized American Amateur Hockey League was established in New York City comprised of four men's teams from the St. Nicholas Skating Club, the Brooklyn Skating Club, the New York Athletic Club and the Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn.

The Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn had originally been founded in November 1884 as a football club. Two years later it had expanded to an athletic club and by 1888, it was a corporation, incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. The clubhouse was located on Clinton Street, Brooklyn. In addition, a country club house with its boat house and grounds was located on New York Bay between 1st Avenue and 83rd and 85th streets - the region known today as Bay Ridge. In order to ensure that no "riff-raff" could afford to attend the games, an admission fee of $1.00 per person was implemented.

The developments in New York City did not go unnoticed. One hundred miles west, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the local press embraced the game espousing it as the sport of the future. On December 22, 1895, The Philadelphia Press printed the following:

Hockey the Coming Winter Game

It Combines Many of the Requirements
Of a Successful Outdoor Sport.

How and Where to Play It

Details of a Once Humble Game
Which Promises to Surpass Golf
in the Affections of the Fashionable Set.

Hockey will boom this winter. The golfers and foot ball players who find themselves cut off from their favorite sports by the rough weather will have an opportunity to combine the elements of both in this increasingly popular game. For hockey once looked upon as a mere schoolboy's game, and commonly called 'shinny on the ice' is to be dignified by the approval of New York's fashionable set. It will also be one of the popular college games this season.

In the past, hockey players have been too dependent upon the vagaries of Jack Frost for their favorite sport; but now, in several Northern as well as Southern cities, rinks are being built for all kinds of skating, and especially for hockey. One of these is being constructed at Sixty-Sixth Street and Columbus Avenue, New York. It is to be 80 feet wide by 180 feet long, and it will be covered with ice generated by a huge freezing apparatus in the under part of the building.

In Baltimore a similar rink of somewhat smaller dimensions is in active operation, and the society ladies of that city take regular morning lessons in the novel art of flying on wings of steel - for all who have ever worn them will agree that skates, on good ice, give the nearest attainable approach to the delights of flying.

It is the enthusiasm of the hockey clubs that has caused this recent boom in the skating rink enterprise; and it is likely also, that the encouragement afforded by a sheet of ice ready for players at all times and in all weather will have a strong reaction upon the lovers of the sport. In New York hockey clubs are being formed in the Seventh Regiment Athletic Club, the New York Athletic Club and the Crescent Club of Columbia College, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown and Princeton Universities are also organizing teams.

By 1897, aside from New York City, established teams and leagues were in existence in the eastern American cities of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore - a city reputed to be the "most enthusiastic hockey city in America." In 1898 in Newark, New Jersey, the Thomas Edison Company recorded the earliest known moving film footage of a hockey game showing young boys playing on the ice of a local lake.
Around the same time, hockey was coming into its own in the British colony of Newfoundland. Though not as well developed in play and popularity as in the case of Eastern Canada, the game held promise in the small, isolated, harbor communities and towns that lined the island's shoreline. Of all the places where hockey had taken root, Newfoundland was perhaps the most unique. The island's population at the turn of the century numbered less than 200,000. Outside of the provincial capital of St. John's, the island boasted only three communities with populations exceeding four thousand. Isolated and scattered fishing outposts were the norm, stretching the length of the island's rugged 6,000-mile coastline. The island population, for the most part, was of Irish and Scottish descent and no strangers to the games of hurley and shinny.

By the late 1890's, ice hockey was becoming a mainstream sport. In the wake of its growth, it attracted entrepreneurs and speculators who were eager to develop professional hockey. The first professional hockey league was the creation of Dr. Jack L. Gibson, a Canadian-born all-star hockey player and a dentistry graduate of the Detroit Medical School. While practicing dentistry in Houghton, Michigan in 1903, Gibson and a small group of local businessmen began to import Canadian hockey talent into the United States for the purpose of establishing an International Professional Hockey League (IPHL). Within a year, teams had been established in the Michigan communities of Houghton, Calumet, Sault Saint Marie, as well as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Sault Saint Marie, Ontario. The league adopted a six-man format and in turn created a faster and more spectacular game. With fewer men on the ice, the players could skate faster, and create more offensive action. The format worked and the crowds came in droves. For a while, Canadian hockey talent was in great demand and salaries paid to hockey players eclipsed those of American baseball greats. By 1905, Canadians such as Fred 'Cyclone' Taylor were making in excess of $5,000 a year - even more than the baseball's immortal Ty Cobb.
Hockey had become a game which gripped the interests of a growing segment of North America. So it was not surprising that ice hockey was both a source of recreation and entertainment for the gold prospectors who had swarmed the northern territory of Canada, known as the Yukon, after gold was discovered in 1896. Complete cities numbering tens of thousands of prospectors existed from Alaska to the Yukon with the largest of these communities being Dawson City, a city which boasted a population of over 150,000.

In 1904 the Stanley Cup Champions were the Ottawa Senators (known as the Silver Seven) captained by the famous 'One-Eyed' Jack McGee. Late in the year they received a letter from a group of hard-bitten gold rush miners from Dawson City, challenging the Silver Seven to a three-game, winner-take-all match for the Stanley Cup. It was a wonderful piece of bravado and great publicity for the game. The Senators agreed to the series and by doing so ensured a great story for sporting history for the miners would have to undertake a perilous journey which would take twenty-three days and cover 4,400 miles in order to get from Dawson City to Ottawa.

The Yukon challengers were sponsored by 37-year-old Joseph Whiteside Boyle, a native of Woodstock, Ontario, and one of the most successful men to emerge from the Klondike gold rush. "Gentleman Joe" Boyle was the self-proclaimed "King of the Klondike" and had a history of involvement with sporting ventures. In fact, he had been serving as the business manager of Australian boxer Frank Slavin, the so-called "Sydney Cornstalk," when word of the gold rush had drawn him to the Yukon and financial success. Boyle had always been a risk-taker when it came to hockey. As a child he had tested the limits of his abilities. Once during the 1870's while skipping school in favor of a game of shinny-on-ice, he almost drowned in a local pond when he fell through thin ice. He was rescued by his childhood friend, Joe Spice, who pulled him out of the water by lying flat on his belly and extending his shinny stick to the drowning Boyle.

In 1884, at the age of 17, Boyle left his home in Woodstock, Ontario, and headed for New York City to live with his older brothers. However, New York City was too confining for the lad and he would spend hours walking the walkways of Battery Park watching the sea vessels as they made their way in and out of lower Manhattan. That year Boyle himself would leave New York onboard the cargo ship Wallace as a deck hand headed for India. While docked in South Africa the young man would see first hand the excitement and unpredictability of the gold and diamond mining rush that was underway. He would never forget what he saw. It was likely this experience that helped convince him to travel north to the Yukon in 1897 to participate in the Klondike Gold Rush.

On December 19, 1904, the eight-man Dawson City Nuggets hockey team, led by the flamboyant Boyle, set out on their epic journey to Ottawa. All along their route they were met by groups of miners and local residents who lined the frozen expanse to cheer on their heroes. The season was far from the best time of the year for travel from the wild north and the group suffered many hardships in temperatures that plummeted to 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Some of the men developed blisters on their feet. So painful were the sores that a few could no longer wear shoes, and were forced to proceed bare-footed through the snow. As the men progressed towards Ottawa the American and Canadian press carefully recorded their journey. The Ottawa Journal reported: "The first day the Klondikers covered 46 miles, the second 41. The third day saw them struggling to cover 36 miles."

Delayed by the injuries and temperatures, the Nuggets missed their boat connection at Skagway by two hours, and sat idle for five days before embarking for Seattle. While waiting to leave Skagway, the team held one practice in a makeshift ice rink measuring 40 feet by 50 feet. The poor condition of the rink and the haphazard way the ice surface had been prepared (as half of the rink consisted of nothing more than a sheet of frozen dirt) only served to dull the minds and the skates of the players.

On December 31, 1904, the team boarded the steamship Dolphin and four days later they arrived in Seattle. At Seattle, amid large crowds of well-wishers and supporters, the team boarded a train and traveled 170 miles north to the Canadian-U. S. Border crossing over to Vancouver. In Vancouver, again amid a large crowd of well-wishers, the men boarded an eastbound train for Ottawa. While en route the men exercised in the train's smoking lounge sharing eight square feet of floor space. The limited area meant the only form of exercise that could be performed was push-ups, sit-ups, and rope-skipping with only one man exercising at a time.

When the team reached Brandon, Manitoba, Boyle and the men sensed they were not prepared for the upcoming series. They had suffered serious injuries and had faced unexpected training difficulties and so, needing an input of healthy talent, they recruited Lorne Hannay, a former team player who had returned home from the Klondike some months earlier after spending at least one season playing in the local Dawson City League.
When the team arrived in Ottawa on January 12, 1905, Boyle, serving as team spokesman, requested that the series be postponed for a week to give his men time to recover from the journey and to allow them an opportunity to practice. However, the Silver Seven refused insisting the first game in the series take place as scheduled the next day. It was hardly a sporting response but then the Nuggets did not appear to take the impending game too seriously spending the night partying well into the small hours of the morning.

During the first game, it became clear that by the end of the first-half, the style of play was becoming more and more physical as both teams battled along the boards. Early in the second-half the Ottawa's player, Arthur Moore tripped Dawson's top player, Norman Watt, resulting in a brawl. During the altercation, Watt would spear Moore in the mouth with his stick. The worse for wear, Moore skated back to his bench followed by Watt who subsequently broke his stick over the head of the already injured Ottawa player. Watt received a fifteen-minute penalty causing the Nuggets to play a large part of the second-half one man short. Though bleeding from the mouth and having been knocked out for roughly 10 minutes from the head blow, Moore continued in the game.

At the time of the altercation the Nuggets were down only by a score of 3-1 and were, by most accounts, taking the game to the Ottawa Seven. After the Nuggets were penalized, Ottawa reportedly scored six goals on their way to a lopsided 9-2 win. The win was not indicative of the true level of play that had been displayed by the Dawson City club. Later, P. D. Ross, the Challenge Cup (Stanley Cup) custodian would state:

Up to the time the Ottawans were leading 3-1 it was anyone's game and the Yukon men had the most of the play. . . It was only when the Yukoners tired and showed the effect of their long journey that Ottawa began to pile on the score . . . Add also that for a major portion of the game Yukon were playing a man short, and sometimes two, and it looks a bit better.

Unfortunately, this reference has been overlooked by sports historians who tend to mock the Yukon team and their efforts; preferring instead to concentrate on the end scores rather than the true nature of the game in order to enhance the reputation and skill levels of the Ottawa Seven.
Three days and party nights later, One-Eyed McGee (the game's most famous star) scored 14 goals as Ottawa humiliated Dawson City in a second game with 23-2 defeat. He was, however, one of the best forwards ever to play ice hockey - the game's first real star. McGee finished his career with 71 goals in 23 games, with another 63 goals in 22 playoff encounters, and scored five goals in a game seven times during his career.
As for the Nuggets, no team in Stanley Cup history had journeyed farther, partied harder, nor taken a worse beating. The one bright spot for the defeated challengers was their goaltender, Albert Forrest. Despite letting in a record high 32 goals in two games, the seventeen-year-old French Canadian from Trois Riviere, Quebec, was praised by the Ottawa sportswriters: "Forrest was sensational . . . Without him the score would have been double what it was."

After the series the Nuggets continued their eastern journey on to Nova Scotia where they participated in a number of exhibition games against regional teams. In Amherst, Nova Scotia, they defeated a local select All-Star team 4-2. Later the Nuggets moved on to Cape Breton losing 4-0 against a tough squad of players comprised of working class coal miners. In the five games that would follow, the Nuggets would post four wins and one tie record as they crossed over the island provinces. From Nova Scotia, Boyle and the boys moved to Quebec and later Ontario for a series of games against local Quebec and Ontario university squads. By early March the Nuggets had made their journey south to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, playing a three game series against Dr. Jack L. Gibson's newly formed IPHL. The Nuggets would win two of the three matches against the IPHL's top team. From Pittsburgh they returned north to Canada ending their tour in Brandon, Manitoba, the home of Lorne Hannay, and playing an exhibition match against the Manitoba Provincial Champions in which the Yukoners won 9-1. After the Brandon game, the Nuggets were dismantled and the players went their separate ways, each holding a small token share of the revenue obtained from the tour game receipts.

Overall, the challenge did not provide the promised spectacular win for the Yukon underdogs. It did, however, emphasize the spirit of determination and endeavor characteristic of both the gold rush and Canadian hockey. The Klondike Challenge had been one of the wildest moments in hockey history. The excursion had cost Boyle $3,000 and had made him and his team household names in Canadian sporting circles, although in time only Boyle would be remembered.

In the years following the series, and marked by the events surrounding the Great War, Boyle emerged again. This time as the leader and financial source behind an all-volunteer Canadian machine gun detachment that saw action on the European front. Awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel by the Canadian Army, he would later go to Russia in an attempt to aid the Russians in the rebuilding of their railroad system. Before war's end, he would be decorated for his service to the Allied cause by the governments of Russia, France, Romania, and Britain and would be rumored to have had a romantic relationship with Queen Marie of Romania. In 1923, Boyle died and at the time of his death, he was fifty-six.

1907 would be a turning point for ice hockey, one that would set the moral outlook for the sport for the 20th century. For it was in 1907 the sport lost its innocence, claiming its first official fatality. The game's increasing popularity brought an increase in the level of violence on the ice, particularly in Canada. It had become commonplace for players to have their faces sliced open by skate blades, heads cracked by sticks, and bodies and limbs broken by the impact of brutal body hits and violent assaults.

On March 6, 1907 in Cornwall, Ontario, Owen McCourt (Cornwall's leading scorer) died after being hit on the head with a stick by the Ottawa Victoria's player, Charlie Masson. During a scuffle between McCourt and Art Throop, Masson attacked him with a stick. McCourt left the ice bleeding profusely from a head wound and was rushed to the local hospital where he passed out. Later he fell into a coma and died from his injury. Masson was charged with murder. At the trial, witnesses testified that Masson had not been the first person to hit McCourt with a stick, that another nameless Ottawa player had hit McCourt on the head before Masson had swung. Unable to determine whether or not Masson had been responsible for the fatal blow, the Judge acquitted him.

Later that same year in Montreal, another violent incident occurred. The press dubbed the event as, "an exhibition of brutality," and again the judicial system turned a blind eye to the offences being perpetrated in the name of sport. This effectively laid a foundation for Canadian ice hockey to become a bastion for thugs and social misfits, a place to settle old scores, where violence would go unchecked and be perceived as being above Canadian laws.

Such an attitude allowed men like Sprague Cleghorn to thrive. This was a player who, during the span of his career, sent more than fifty men to hospital on stretchers and served jail time in 1918 for severely beating his wife. Yet he and players like him were rewarded for their brutality both financially and sometimes, as was the case with Sprague Cleghorn, by being immortalized in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Cleghorn and others represented a breed of athlete the likes of which were seldom seen in other sports. These players were little more than 20th century Neanderthals whose only purpose in the sport was to wield a stick like a weapon, and to inflict pain and damage upon players of superior skill and ability. In other words, men like Cleghorn were nothing more than demons on ice in search of a sporting prey; hunters in search of the hunted.

The following year, in 1908, North American hockey continued to undergo monumental change. In the same year that Lord Stanley died the Stanley Cup was used for the first time as the championship symbol of professional hockey in Canada. The Allan Cup, donated by Sir H. Montague Allan, would in turn become the emblem of excellence for the Senior Amateur Championship of Canada. It would be the Allan Cup Champions who would later represent Canada in World Championship competitions.

Throughout this period, Canadian professional hockey struggled financially. In January, 1910 the country's top hockey league, the Canadian Hockey Association, folded without concluding the championship. Its teams quickly amalgamated into the newly formed National Hockey Association (the "NHA") for the 1910-11 season - the forerunner of modern day professional-level National Hockey League ("NHL"). The NHA, eager to attract bigger crowds than its previous counterparts, (especially in Canada's largest city of Montreal) organized and founded the Canadien Athletic Club on December 4, 1909, which would later became the Club de Hockey Canadien ("CHC") in 1917. This newly formed Athletic Club's permitted only French Canadians to play for the squad. Later nicknamed "the Flying Frenchmen," the Montreal Canadiens would one of the greatest and most successful sports franchises in North American sports history - second only to baseball's New York Yankees.

At the time, however, they were simply created to serve a need - as an NHA promotional ploy, a dumping ground for French Canadians allowing English city teams a way to rid themselves of French-speaking Catholic players. Aside from giving Quebecers and Catholics a team of their own, the Canadiens would become the focus of pervasive English Canadian anti-French/Catholic sentiments - fueling controversy as well as ticket sales.
By 1911 professional hockey was being played on the west coast of Canada. With the founding of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association ("PCHL") by the Patrick Brothers, Frank and Lester (hockey stars in their own right), the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster joined the list of professional hockey cities. The PCHL invigorated hockey becoming the first league to put numbers on players' uniforms for identification.
They were the first to tabulate assists, and taking a lesson from a lesser-known league in Nova Scotia, the first professional league to allow goalies to flop to the ice to make saves. Borrowing from English rules of bandy, they painted blue lines on the ice. They also allowed forward passing and introduced penalty shots, again borrowing from the Nova Scotian hockey. In addition, they also created a playoff system. In time, the league would expand both east through the Canadian prairies and south into the United States. Eventually, the Canadian cities of Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg as well as the American cities of Seattle, Spokane and Portland would all become homes to the PCHL.
Although 1907 had seen the collapse of Gibson's International Professional Hockey League in the United States, its failure had been, at least in part, due to the very high player salaries rather than a lack of local public interest. Ice hockey was continuing to emerge and grow as a major sport of interest in the United States. One reason for the American growth was the emergence of an American superstar, the Pride of Princeton University Hobart Amory Hare Baker.

Born on January 15, 1892 in Wissahickon, Pennsylvania, Hobey Baker was perhaps the greatest hockey player of his generation. A one-man-wonder, he had captained Princeton University to two collegiate championships and, along the way, gained national and international attention for his skill and scoring abilities. A man who could do no wrong, Baker was idolized by those who witnessed his athleticism and soft-spoken manner. At 5'9" tall and weighing only 160 pounds, he was not a physically imposing man. His handsome features and blonde hair made the Ivy League graduate a favorite of the ladies. His ability to endure the physical punishment inflicted upon him by opposing players, without retaliating or showing anger, earned Baker the admiration from the toughest foe.

After graduating he had moved to New York City, taken a job as a clerk at the Morgan Bank in the heart of Wall Street, and immediately signed to play for the St. Nicholas Hockey Team. Baker was an immediate New York sensation. Fans clamored to watch him play. The newspapers ran stories on him akin to a modern day movie idol. Following the St. Nicks defeat of a highly touted Canadian hockey team, the Montreal Stars, a Canadian journalist wrote: "Uncle Sam had the cheek to develop a first-class hockey player [Baker] who wasn't born in Montreal." A year earlier, The Boston Journal had written that Baker was "without a doubt the greatest amateur hockey player ever developed in this country or in Canada."

By the spring of 1914, the popularity and growth of ice hockey in Canada was well established. With a national population of less than 8 million, there were almost 4,000 amateur men and boys' hockey leagues throughout the country. From the Yukon in the far northwest to the American border in the south, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, hockey was the one common thread that bound Canadians together. Unbeknownst to all, the frozen ponds and ice rinks of Canada would begin to fall silent as a generation of boys and men marched off to a distant war in Europe. At the time, no one could imagine the horrors that lay ahead. Over the next five years, Canadian hockey players would find themselves wearing a new team uniform and playing a different type of game - the game of their lives.