A centennial for ice hockey on Vancouver Island

Professional hockey made its debut on Vancouver Island at this magnificent arena in Oak Bay on Jan. 2, 1912. The arena was one of two built by the innovative Patrick brothers. The Arena burned to the ground on Nov. 11, 1929. Modest apartment blocks have been built on its site.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
January 2, 2012

VICTORIA

The arena opened to great fanfare. A ticket was sold for every seat. The standing-room area was packed to the building’s timber rafters.

A band struck up the national anthem when the lieutenant-governor entered the building. The hockey teams skated onto the ice, the home side first, followed by the visitors.

The vice-regal officer then stepped onto ice made hard and cold by an ingenious system of pipes beneath the surface. Thomas Wilson Paterson, a railway contractor and former politician, dropped the puck for a ceremonial opening face off.

One hundred years ago today, on Jan. 2, 1912, the exciting sport of ice hockey made its professional debut on Vancouver Island at a new arena built in Oak Bay, just outside the city of Victoria’s borders.

“The sport is all it was cracked up to be and more,” trilled the Daily Times after the game.

“With all due reverence to cricket, we think hockey is a trifle faster.”

It seems hard to imagine the game now so deeply associated with Canadian identity needed any introduction at any time in the Dominion. Hockey was played in the province, especially in the mining towns in the frozen valleys of the Kootenays, but fair weather on southern Vancouver island only permitted the occasional children’s game of shinny on a frozen pond.

On that day a century ago, the seven members of the New Westminster Royals sailed across the strait to play the Victoria Senators in the inaugural game of the three-team Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

The modern arena with artificial ice, the three teams and the league were all the product of Frank and Lester Patrick, ambitious and far-sighted brothers who had made a fortune with their father in the lumber business.

Both brothers had played pro hockey back east. They figured another fortune was to be made in promoting the sport in Canada’s booming Pacific cities. They also intended to challenge for the Stanley Cup, even then inspiring fevered dreams of hockey glory.

In Vancouver, the brothers built a grand, $175,000 arena on Georgia Street overlooking Coal Harbour. It boasted a seating capacity of 10,000, making it the largest arena in the Dominion. Incredibly, the city’s population was just 120,000, though it had doubled in five years.

In Victoria, they built a more modest, but still modern building of wood. It stood at the corner of Cadboro Bay Road and what is now Epworth Street. (The arena burned to the ground in the early morning hours of Remembrance Day in 1929. The flames, first spotted by a passing milkman, lit up the night sky. The site is now occupied by a pair of three-story apartment blocks across the street from the Oak Bay Secondary sporting grounds.)

Jack Ulrich

The world-class arenas helped lure to the coast some of the best-known names in hockey, including Newsy Lalonde, Harry Hyland and Tom Dunderdale. (The Vancouver Millionaires also employed a 19-year-old player called Silent Jack Ulrich, as he was deaf and mute.)

The Royals wore black and orange sweaters, while the Senators sported a red, white and blue combination.

The sportswriters wrote in purple.

“Every moment provided a fresh sensation and never while playing was going on was the blood given time to cool,” ran a report in the Daily Times. “As the puck darted hither and thither with such dazzling rapidity that at times it was impossible for the crowd to follow its course, the most phlegmatic were stirred to their deepest depths; as spectacular burst crowded upon spectacular burst in almost unending succession, this unrestrained delight brought the spectators up all standing.”

Of course the referee came in for criticism from the Daily Colonist for having missed “one or two rough house stunts.”

The Victoria arena opened to the public with an offer of free skating on Christmas Day, leading several downtown stores to advertise their new stocks of equipment.

James Maynard’s store in the Oddfellows Block on Douglas Street suggested “hockey boots and skates make fine Xmas gifts for all.” Peden Bros. boasted carrying a complete stock of the best skate makers, including Lunns, McCulloch, and Automobile. A pair of McPhearson’s skating boots for ladies costing $3, a pair of Gales hockey boots for men at $5.

J.R. Collister, at 1321 Government St., now occupied by The Gap, also sought customers interested in the new skating rink. “Be in the swim, join the merry throng, and remember you can procure the latest model skates here,” the store stated in an advertisement placed in the Daily Colonist. “All kinds, all sizes, and of the very best makes. HOCKEY MODELS, used by amateurs and professionals the country over. The blades are remarkably hard and tough, retaining a keen edge through long use. OUNCES LIGHTER THAN ANY OTHERS.”

Bert Lindsay

Victoria lost the first game at the arena by 8-3. In goal for the home side was Bert Lindsay, 31, who had been lured away from the Renfrew (Ont.) Creamery Kings by the Patricks. Lindsay spent four seasons on the coast before returning east, where he played for the Montreal Wanderers and Toronto Arenas in the inaugural two seasons of the National Hockey League. Lindsay’s son also became a hockey star. Terrible Ted Lindsay is now 86.

The Patricks are credited with such innovations as permitting forward passing, adding blue lines, and substituting skaters while play continues.

At the end of the short 1912 season, Frank Patrick suggested the Stanley Cup be decided by a series of games, not just a two-game playoff as was the practice.

His league sent a letter to the Stanley Cup trustees offering to send their champion to Eastern Canada to challenge for the trophy. The suggestion was rejected, as the natural ice used in rinks in Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City would be too slushy by late March. By the end of the year, the Arena Gardens (later known as the Mutual Street Arena) in Toronto had artificial ice

These days, the Stanley Cup finals end in balmy June. And the storied trophy has even been won by a team in Florida.

A forgotten arena in Victoria was once the stage that showed how such wonders were possible.

Lester Patrick and Frank Patrick were the masterminds behind pro hockey on the Pacific coast.

The Millionaire forgotten by the Stanley Cup

Ken Mallen beat the great Cyclone Taylor in a speedskating showdown and was widely regarded as the fastest skater of his era. He won a Stanley Cup championship with the Vancouver Millionaires in 1915. For reasons unknown, his name was left off the trophy. Mallen is shown here wearing the sweater of the New Westminster Royals. Photograph from the City of Vancouver Archives, Sp P113.01.

By Tom Hawthorn
The Tyee
June 8, 2011

The final seconds ticked off the timekeeper’s clock, bringing an end to the hockey season and a championship to a Vancouver hockey club.

The Millionaires, a nickname used in 1915 to praise, not denigrate, a professional athlete, completed a three-game sweep of the Ottawa Senators. The final game ended 12-3, a drubbing that reflected the series.

The skaters retired to their dressing room in the Denman Arena, a hulking brick building overlooking Coal Harbour at the entrance to Stanley Park. Thousands of spectators had clamored to get into the rink for the games, the swells amongst them dropping a stiff $1.25 for a pasteboard to the best seats. Others made due with a 50-cent admission for a rush seat in the steeply-sloped upper deck. Special streetcars delivered fans to the arena. A hardy handful rode the intercity railway from as far afield as Chilliwack, a three-hour milk-run journey that departed at 5 p.m. and brought them home at 2:30 a.m.

In the bowels of the building, the celebrating Vancouver players were joined by their rivals, who crowded in to offer congratulations. “You have a great team here,” Ottawa manager Frank Shaughnessy said.

The victory meant the Millionaires had claimed rights to a silver punchbowl purchased for 10 guineas (about $50) in London and on which had been engraved “Dominion hockey challenge cup” and “From Stanley of Preston.” It was the first time the Stanley Cup, then 23 years old and already storied, had been won by a team west of Winnipeg.

Alas, the Ottawa side neglected to bring the trophy with them on the transcontinental train trek, “a thoughtless bit of work,” as one local reporter noted.

The Cup arrived six weeks later. Later still, an engraver tapped into the silver the names of nine Millionaires, recording for posterity their great achievement.

A tenth player, a veteran forward and a regular during the regular season who skated in two of three games of the finals, was inexplicably overlooked.

Ken Mallen is the man whose name was left off the Stanley Cup.

After the finals, the Senators left for Seattle on their way to San Francisco to attend the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, a showcase for a city devastated nine years earlier by an earthquake and fire.

The Millionaires scattered. Barney Stanley returned home to Edmonton and Jim Seaborn to Winnipeg. The cattle on Lloyd (Farmer) Cook’s prairie ranch needed tending. The sure-handed Mickey MacKay, known as the Wee Scot, left for Grand Forks, B.C., where he was to join a survey party for the summer.

Frank (the Pembroke Peach) Nighbor, a gentlemanly player whose brilliant poke-checking drove opponents mad with frustration, departed for the Ontario hometown that gave him his nickname. The goaltender Hughie (Old Eagle Eyes) Lehman returned to Berlin, Ont., an industrial city whose name was soon to be changed from that of an enemy capital to Kitchener, after the British war minister killed in action.

Only four of the Millionaires lived in the Lower Mainland. Frank Patrick played defence and managed the Denman Arena, which he had built four years earlier when he and his brother, Lester, established a professional hockey league on the Pacific Coast.

The great Fred (Cyclone) Taylor served as an immigration inspector. It had been his job the previous year to patrol the Komagata Maru to prevent the passengers, most of them Sikhs, from disembarking. The freighter and its suffering passengers remained moored in Coal Harbour for weeks before being chased off by an armed navy boat, a standoff for which the Canadian prime minister apologized just three years ago.

Si Griffis, the Millionaires’ captain who sat out the finals with a broken leg, watching the games from the penalty box, sold advertising for the News-Herald.

Mallen spent his work days as a clerk at New Westminster City Hall. He lived at 238 First St., across from Queen’s Park, a boarder in a home named Bundahie, built in the style of a classic Edwardian box and owned by a widow who taught piano.

Mallen, a speedy skater, had been lured west by the high contracts on offer by the Patrick brothers in the fledgling Pacific Coast Hockey Association. He was an original member of the New Westminster Royals in 1911, netting 14 goals in 13 games. When the Royals moved to Portland, Ore., he was traded to the Millionaires.

Born in Morrisburg, Ont., he also had two brothers who played professional hockey in the early days. In 1904, the 5-foot-8, 160-pound skater joined the Calumet (Mich.) Miners of the International Hockey League. Known for his agility and his stickhandling, he netted 38 goals in 24 games to finish second in league scoring.

He quit the Miners soon after the start of his second season to protest the violence of the game. “Realizing that he was one of the best and fastest men in the league, it has been the effort of some players to lay [Mallen] out,” reported the Daily Mining Gazette. “Scarcely a game was played but that several times he had to be carried off the ice in an almost unconscious condition.”

He eventually wound up wearing the sweaters of the Ottawa Senators and Quebec Bulldogs of the National Hockey Association, the premier pro league in Eastern Canada. His debut in Stanley Cup play came on Jan. 5, 1910, when Ottawa, as holders of the trophy, accepted a challenge from Galt, champions of the Ontario Pro Hockey League. An older brother, Jim, played forward for Galt. The Senators held off their provincial rivals before defeating the Edmonton Eskimos. Ottawa then lost the N.H.A. championship — and with it the Stanley Cup — to the Montreal Wanderers.

After moving to the coast, Mallen took part in a series of speed races designed to showcase the circuit’s high-paid talent. He blew past Griffis and Cyclone Taylor, who had earned his nickname in recognition of his madcap rushes. The triumph cemented Mallen’s reputation as the fastest man on ice.

Just as the Stanley Cup champs were about to begin defence of their title, Frank Patrick signed a new star player in Art Duncan of Edmonton. The Millionaires released Mallen, who immediately signed with the Victoria Aristocrats, operated by Lester Patrick. The capital city newspapers were thrilled. “Mallen is the speediest player,” noted the Victoria Daily Times. “He possesses a wicked shot, and should add considerable strength in the local attack.”

Meanwhile, the N.H.A. and the Patrick league continued raiding players, as skaters regularly jumped contract for more lucrative offers. As well, a battle over rights to the Stanley Cup was fought in boardrooms and on the pages of newspapers. The N.H.A. feared Frank Patrick would not defend challenges for the Stanley Cup. He promised to do so. The Cup’s trustees declared the trophy to be emblematic of a world championship, not just a Canadian honour.

It was in that atmosphere that the Cup finally arrived by train in Vancouver on May 12, 1915. (During the six-day journey, the civilian passenger steamer Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat, killing 1,198.) As N.H.A. champs, Ottawa claimed to be Cup winners, engraving their title on the base. (Their claim to the Cup is not recognized.)

At the time, the custom was for a championship team to engrave their triumph on the base. Added to the Cup were the words: “VANCOUVER, B.C. / 1914-15 / DEFEATED OTTAWA / 3 STRAIGHT GAMES.”

In 1907, the Montreal Wanderers had 20 names of players and club executives engraved on the interior base of the bowl. No other team matched that audacious decision until the Millionaires had engraved on the interior fluting of the bowl the names of nine players.

For some reason, Mallen’s name was missed.

The reason for the snub remains unknown. Perhaps he had already left the club by the time of the engraving and so was excluded. Perhaps his departure had not gone well. Perhaps it was inadvertent, a clerical mistake. In any case, Mallen, who died of pneumonia in his hometown in 1930, aged 45, is deserving of the recognition afforded Cyclone and the Wee Scot and Old Eagle Eyes.

The engraving of player names on the trophy only became standard practice after 1924. It is the goal which each of the Vancouver Canucks seeks this month, an honour that has eluded the club for 40 seasons. Should they succeed, they can take a moment while chugging champagne from the bowl to read the names of nine men who beat them to the punch 96 years earlier.

The 1915 Vancouver Millionaires, led by the scoring of Fred (Cyclone) Taylor (back row, second from left), defeated the Ottawa Senators to claim the Stanley Cup. It was the first time the storied trophy had been claimed by a team west of Winnipeg.

1925: Victoria Cougars bring home the Stanley Cup

This photo of the 1924-25 Victoria Cougars is listed with a $1,000 opening bid at a Classic Collectibles auction.  

CBC Radio's On the Island host Gregor Craigie interviews Tom Hawthorn about the glories of the Victoria Cougars, Stanley Cup champions in 1925:

In 1925, Victoria was gripped by hockey fever. The Montreal Canadiens were in town to battle for the Stanley Cup. Fans began lining up at a ticket office on View Street at 3 a.m.

The “rush for pasteboards,” a newspaper reported, resulted in “fights, fainting scenes, attacks upon ticket sellers, near smashing of windows, and other things.”

The Cougars played out of Patrick Arena along the streetcar line on Cadboro Bay Road in Oak Bay. The 4,000-seat building was home to such stars as Jack Walker, Frank Foyston, and goaltender Hap Holmes. The top player was square-jawed Frank Fredrickson, a gifted scorer who had survived the sinking of his troop ship during the First World War. He won an Olympic gold medal with his hometown Winnipeg Falcons, a squad of military veterans of Icelandic heritage. Though born in Winnipeg, Frank did not learn English until entering school at age six. His parents only spoke Icelandic at home.

Cougars manager Lester Patrick was a hockey genius, whose many innovations are today’s fundamentals.He introduced the blue line, forward passing, substitutions during play.

Those five Cougars have all been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Victoria beat Montreal three games to one to claim the Stanley Cup. “The skated like fiends,” reported the Victoria Daily Times, “passed the puck like masters, shot like machine-guns, and their defence was as hard to penetrate as the side of a battleship.”

A jubilant mayor presented the players with engraved watches at a victory banquet.

The cup itself, in those days, a bowl atop a modest base, was placed on display at a downtown jewelry. Later, Patrick kept it at his Oak Bay home. His two mischievous boys, Muzz and Lynn, used a nail to scratch their names on the inside of the bowl. They later both had their names engraved on the Cup in the usual fashion.

The Cougars lost the Cup the following season to the Montreal Maroon, the last time a non-NHL team challenged for the storied trophy. A few weeks later, Patrick sold the team to business interests in Detroit. The Detroit Cougars became the Detroit Falcons before becoming the Detroit Red Wings.

For decades, the city’s greatest sporting triumph went unheralded. In 2001, a cairn was unveiled on Cadboro Bay Road outside Oak Bay High. Across the street, where now stand two modest apartment blocks, a Victoria team once won the Stanley Cup.