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.

Creator of Canucks logo returns to his hockey roots

A stylized heraldic lion is the logo for the new Victoria Royals of the Western Hockey League. It was designed by the same artist who gave the Vancouver Canucks their breaching orca.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
July 4, 2011

VICTORIA

After the owners settled on calling their hockey club the Victoria Royals, the artist Brent Lynch went to work.

“Once you’ve got a name,” he said, “you’ve got to come up with an image.”

Royals is a good match for a city named after a monarch. But how to capture the sentiment in a single, punchy image?

A crown? Too obvious.

Queen Victoria wielding a hockey stick? Too cartoony.

The commission to create a Royals logo for the team’s upcoming debut season marked a rare return to the graphic arts. The 57-year-old artist is more of a painter these days, having moved to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island three years ago. His works are sold in galleries throughout British Columbia and as far afield as San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. Though he has been widely exhibited, he is not best known for his landscape oils.

Everyone knows his work, though no one knows his name.

His artwork has been likely worn by more people in more places than any other in the province.

It is popular with students and retirees, businesspeople and homemakers.

Brent Lynch

You can find it in baby cribs and gangsta cribs.

Judging by recent unsavory events on Vancouver streets, even yahoos and yokels like it.

Before dedicating himself to painting, Mr. Lynch had a long career as a graphic designer. Among his clients was a certain hockey team for whom he developed an image that was ubiquitous last month.

The breaching orca representing the Vancouver Canucks? That’s the handiwork of Mr. Lynch’s fertile mind.

Logos, he said, are “the ultimate popular art.”

The logo was released 14 years ago, following the team’s original stick-in-rink design (now used as a pleasing shoulder flash) and the uninspiring downward skate. In beating out four competitors, Mr. Lynch settled on the orca, a creature that was “top of the food chain, dominant, and unique to the West Coast.”

The letter C from which it breaches was selected to give the Canucks’ sweater a classic look, as though it was an Original Six team.

The artist also prepared a lumberjack image of a bearded Johnny Canuck character, but the ownership at the time did not care for it.

He has been doodling for as long as he can remember. Family lore has the boy scrawling on floors and bedroom walls as a toddler, once even using as a canvas his baby brother’s bald head. His mother was an artist and his father owned a grocery in Ladner, where he held Hawaiian Days and Cowboy Days sales, the colourful graphics associated with the events inspiring a boy who liked to draw.

In school, Brent cartooned when he should have been listening, his caricatures earning him the admiration of his classmates if not of his subjects.

“A classic Canadian kid,” he said. “Drawing teachers and getting in trouble.”

He attended art school in Vancouver and London, England, before getting a job as an illustrator with the Vancouver Sun, whose editorial cartoonists at the time were Roy Peterson and the peerless Len Norris. Mr. Lynch soon after left to form his own eponymous design firm.

He has designed album covers and advertising campaigns, opera broadsides and sporting posters, beer labels and corporate logos.

One of his more familiar non-sports logos is for the Bread Garden, featuring a baker with fresh bread at the end of a long oven peel. In 2003, he redesigned the White Spot logo, dropping the familiar chicken with a fork and spoon for a circular image containing the words “legendary restaurant.”

For the Royals, he created an heraldic lion. The beast is rampant (rearing on hind legs) and langued (exposing tongue). The beast holds an upside-down hockey stick where tradition might dictate a flagpole.

“I tried to keep it pure and simple,” the artist said. “Lions represent good things like strength, courage and loyalty.”

Sometimes, Mr. Lynch finds a home even for rejected work.

The Johnny Canuck character he designed for the Canucks ended up as the image for the Vancouver Giants junior hockey team. It features a Paul Bunyonesque character carrying a hockey stick, instead of an ax, over his shoulder.

By coincidence, the Giants will travel to Victoria for the Royals’ inaugural Western Hockey League game on Sept. 24. All the skaters will be wearing Lynch logos.

Barry Wilkins, hockey player (1947-2011)

Barry Wilkins shovels a backhander along the ice past goalie Denis DeJordy to score the first goal for the Vancouver Canucks in their National Hockey League debut. Wilkins, a tough defenceman, was playing only his ninth NHL game. It was his second career goal. The marker made him the answer to a trivia question and something of a folk hero to Vancouver's long-suffering fans.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
July 1, 2011

Barry Wilkins, who has died, aged 64, scored the first goal for the Vancouver Canucks in their National Hockey League debut.

The bruising defenceman, playing in only his ninth NHL game, showed the poise of a veteran sniper on the play. He performed a spinning manoeuvre followed by an unlikely rush to the net. A backhand shot fooled Denis DeJordy in the Los Angeles Kings net.

Wilkins scored at 2:14 of the third period, on an assist from Len Lunde. The Canucks went on to lose by 3-1 the historic game played at the Pacific Coliseum on Oct. 9, 1970.

“I was surprised it went in because I didn’t really get good wood on it,” Wilkins said in an interview last year. “I guess it just went in the right place.”

With his Beatles haircut and muttonchop sideburns, Wilkins was readily identifiable on the ice. Like so many of the original Canucks, he compensated for a lack of skill through hard work.

Barry Wilkins in 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee card.

Barry James Wilkins was born on Feb. 28, 1947, in Toronto. He played junior hockey with the Oshawa (Ont.) Generals, where he was a teammate of Bobby Orr.

He played eight games over three seasons with the NHL’s Boston Bruins, but could not break into a stellar defensive corps featuring Orr.

The Canucks selected Wilkins with their ninth pick in the 1970 expansion draft. With earlier selections, Vancouver chose defencemen Gary Doak, Darryl Sly, and Pat Quinn, a future coach and general manager for the team.

At 5-foot-11, 190-pounds, Wilkins was known for his bruising body checks. He spent four full seasons with the Canucks before being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins early in the 1974-75 season. He later jumped to the World Hockey Association, where he skated for the Edmonton Oilers and Indianapolis Racers.

In 418 NHL games, he scored 27 goals with 125 assists. He was assessed 663 penalty minutes,a

After retiring from hockey, he moved to Arizona, where he worked for the Coca-Cola company.

He died of lung cancer on Sunday (June 26) at Chandler, Ariz. He leaves his wife, Marilyn; a son; two stepsons and a stepdaughter; nine grandchildren; and, two great-grandchildren.

Last year, Wilkins returned to Vancouver for events marking the club’s 40th anniversary. Joined at centre-ice by former captain Orland Kurtenbach, Wilkins, wearing a No. 4 sweater, dropped the puck for a ceremonial opening face-off. The disk was the one with which he had scored the Canucks’ first goal.

Mike Byers, hockey player (1946-2010)

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
February 9, 2011

Mike Byers scored an impressive 27 goals in his rookie season in the National Hockey League, yet his scoring touch was overlooked in an era of goon hockey.

A slick-skating forward with good hands, Byers played in 166 NHL games for five different teams. He had an audition on the right wing of a Buffalo Sabres line featuring Gilbert Perrault and Rick Martin, losing the coveted spot to Rene Robert, who would become an essential part of a trio celebrated as the French Connection line.

Byers jumped to the rival World Hockey Association, where he played in an all-star game and won a championship.

Michael Arthur Byers, who was born in Toronto on Sept. 11, 1946, joined the junior Toronto Marlboros at age 17. The Marlies played an exciting brand of hockey, attracting large crowds to games at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Byers scored more than 20 goals in each of his three seasons as a junior. In December, 1965, he was named to an all-star team for an exhibition against the Soviet Union’s national team. His all-star teammates included such future NHL stars as Bobby Orr, Danny Grant, Derek Sanderson and Serge Savard.

The Marlies were a powerhouse club during the mid-1960s, sending many players on to the professional ranks. In 1966-67, the roster featured such future NHL players as Brian Glennie, Gerry Meehan, Terry Caffery, Chris Evans, Mike Pelyk, John Wright, and Brad Park. That season, the last for Byers as a junior, the Marlies won the Memorial Cup championship, vanquishing the hometown Port Arthur (Ont.) Marrs in five games.

Painting by Kurt Kauper.

The Toronto Maple Leafs invited Byers to training camp at Peterborough, Ont. The young forward performed well, but coach Punch Imlach sent him and defenceman Jim McKenny, a Marlies teammate, to Toronto’s farm team at Tulsa, Okla.

“There’s no sense keeping these kids around and not play them,” Imlach said. “It’ll be to their benefit if they play regularly some place else.”

The forward spent most of the season split between the Tulsa Oilers and the Rochester Americans. While in the minors, he was scouted by Scotty Bowman, who soon after began a brilliant coaching career in the NHL. His verdict at the time: “Great speed, but he doesn’t have the puck enough. I like to see a player on top of that puck.”

Injuries opened a roster spot on the Leafs in March, 1968, and Byers was recalled from the minors. He scored his first NHL goal by shoving home his own rebound past Ed Giacomin of the New York Rangers in a 3-1 victory at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Byers began the following season back in Tulsa. The Leafs called him up again for five games of spot duty towards the end of the season before trading him to the Philadelphia Flyers in a five-player deal. Byers put in another five games with his new employers, but balked at first when they wanted to demote him to their minor-league affiliate at the start of the following season.

“If he applies himself, he can make our team,” said Flyers assistant general manager Keith Allen.

Byers spent the entire 1969-70 season with the minor-league Quebec Aces. The Flyers then traded him to the Los Angeles Kings.

He performed admirably in his first full season in the NHL, scoring 18 assists to go with 27 goals, the latter a club record for rookies that would last a decade.

Another trade put Byers with the Sabres, where he was reunited with Imlach. The fleet forward scored five goals in his first five games with his new club.

In the offseason, he jumped to the Los Angeles Sharks of the WHA, a new circuit whose owners were offering spectacular pay raises to players. Midway through the league’s inaugural season of 1972-73, the Sharks traded Byers to the New England Whalers. The club’s green,black and white sweater would be the ninth different one he donned in less than six seasons as a pro.

The Whalers were the class of the fledgling league, finishing first overall before eliminating the Ottawa Nationals, Cleveland Crusaders and the Winnipeg Jets to win the inaugural Avco World Trophy. Byers notched six goals and five assists in 12 playoff games.

He followed with his best pro season, scoring 29 goals for the Whalers. He managed to score even after taking 12 stitches over his left eye in one game.

As he neared age 30, though, his scoring slumped. After recording just four goals and three assists in 17 games to open the 1975-76 season, general manager Jack Kelley announced his disappointment in Byers’ play. The veteran right-winger was given an unconditional release after none of the league’s team claimed him for the $100 waiver price.

The muscular skater eventually signed as a free agent with the WHA’s Cincinnati Stingers, managing just three goals in 20 games. He ended his playing career in the minors with Rochester.

In 166 NHL games, he had 42 goals and 34 assists. In 263 WHA games, he had 83 goals and 74 assists.

After leaving hockey, he pursued a career in finance, becoming an executive with an investment firm in Los Angeles.

He continued to play old-timer hockey, once facing-off against a team including the actor Richard Dean Anderson, star of television’s MacGyver, in a charity match. The celebrity had been a prospect as a young man and found the old hockey ways bubbling to the surface during the game.

“This guy, Mike Byers, he started taking the stick across my chest, kind of holding me up and checking me real tough, and started getting higher and higher on my body, and finally it was across my neck,” Anderson told the Los Angeles Times in 1987.

“This was like a charity game and they’re winning, 9-3, and I took off my gloves. Now this guy was known to be able to hold his own in fisticuffs, and all my team members are going, ‘No, no, forget it!’ We both got two minutes.”

A few years ago, Byers was the subject of a portrait by the American painter Kurt Kauper, who earned notoriety for his imagined rendition of Bobby Orr in the buff. Byers’ image is based on his 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee hockey card, featuring him in the golden livery of the Los Angeles Kings, a rendition the New York Times described as “Christ-like.”

Byers died of cancer on Sept. 16, five days after his 64th birthday, at his home at Novato, Calif.

Once, during his playing days, Byers had an odd exchange with a literary figure. His brother, Stephen Byers, a musician, had befriended the Beat writer William S. Burroughs, whom he took to a game at Maple Leaf Gardens. After the match, the two spectators went beneath the stands to the dressing room, where Burroughs witnessed the sweaty player handing a signed hockey stick to a boy in a wheelchair. The “gentleman junkie” author of such works as “Naked Lunch” then demanded an autographed stick of his own, which Byers duly presented. What Burroughs did with the souvenir is unknown.

This 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee hockey card was the model for the  painting by Kurt Kauper.