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.

Treasure trove of local memories is now online

James S. Matthews, Vancouver's first archivist, gathered recollections of the city's earliest pioneers into seven hand-typed volumes. The 3,300 pages include photographs and several of the archivist's sketches. Above is his illustration of Gassy Jack's first saloon in what is now Gastown.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
June 8, 2011

VICTORIA

The output of a life’s work can be found in seven tattered volumes on a shelf in a storage area at the Vancouver archives.

Fill out a requisition form and wait at a table. No food, or ink pens allowed. In a few minutes, the books arrive.

The leather bindings are scuffed and tattered. Three are in such disrepair — bindings cracked, pages loose — they are now stored in boxes of acid-free cardboard.

Open a book and one finds the story of a city at its founding — primitive shelters carved from the looming forest, a conflagration that nearly snuffed the settlement at its founding.

More than 3,300 pages — filled with hand-drawings, annotated photographs, and, mostly, single-spaced, typewritten text — tells the tale of the city by its earliest residents. These were compiled by James Skitt Matthews, the city’s first archivist and a man whose obsession preserved the story of a remarkable settlement that grew from hamlet to metropolis in a century.

He recorded the memories of pioneer settlers and of men such as August Jack Khatsahlano, who as a boy had watched the new-found city burn from the safety of Kitsilano Point, on which could be found the Squamish Nation village of Snauq (also Sun’ahk).

Some tales are priceless, some informative, some merely capturing the spirit of the times.

Mr. Matthews included his own reminiscences. Turn to page 70 of Volume One of his Early Vancouver to read about the Great Salmon Year of 1900, during which pyramids of scaly carcasses covered docks and beaches. The fish was sold at 5 cents each, if not given away, and he retells the story of having a salmon secreted within a newspaper under his arm when he was jostled on the streetcar. The slippery fish squirted free, flopping onto the floor of the streetcar to the mortification of his wife. Salmon, you see, was Indian food, not fit for the elite to eat.

James S. Matthews

A few entries earlier, one reads about a cougar hunted in Stanley Park in 1911 and a bear shot in what is now Kerrisdale the same year.

The onionskin paper crackles with each turn of the page. It is the sound of history having been made.

Mr. Matthews began his magnum opus during the Depression, continuing until 1956, by which time he had seven unique, hand-produced volumes. (He also created revised editions and copies, each typewritten, mostly by himself.) It has long been one of the most frequently requested resources at the archives, hence its battered state. The seven volumes are an invaluable tool for historians and a means to find the flavour of an historical age. The author Lee Henderson dipped into the idiosyncratic work while writing The Man Game, his well-received 2008 novel set in the frontier town.

For years, researchers have made a pilgrimage to the archives to consult the volumes.

Now, every page is available online in a format searchable by keyword, the result of hundreds a painstaking hours of digitizing and transcribing as part of a project financed by the non-profit Vancouver Historical Society. The online edition of Early Vancouver launched 11 days ago.

The effort to bring onionskin pages into the digital world was not without hiccups. An attempt to scan the pages did not work, as the thin paper and clunky ink blots from the typewriter made it difficult for the computer to make out words. As well, Mr. Matthews included lengthy, handwritten corrections and addenda to his entries.

“It’s opened it to a whole new audience,” said archives manager Heather Gordon. “And it’s given people who are familiar with it a whole new way of using it, and using it more efficiently.”

Mr. Matthews, who was born in Wales, arrived in Vancouver as a young man in the waning days of the 19th-Century. He worked for Imperial Oil and served in the militia (helping to repress a miners’ strike in Nanaimo in 1913), before being sent overseas to battle the Bosch in the Great War. He led waves of attackers from the trenches at Ypres, a bravery that no doubt led to his being promoted to major, a rank he used as a title for the remainder of his life. He died in 1970, aged 92,

He began collecting in the 1920s, accumulating a half-million photographs and reams of civic records and personal papers. He squabbled with city fathers, at one point removing his entire collection from City Hall and storing it at his home.

“A lot of people saw him as crusty and cranky,” Ms. Gordon said. “He’d be annoyed when you came in to see him. Kind of grumpy. But if you managed to convince him you were interested, sincere and genuine, he was animated and gracious.”

The original seven volumes of his Early Vancouver are housed in an archives building that bears his name. It is in Vanier Park, a few steps from the site where young Khatsahlano watched a fledgling city burn to the ground in the year of its founding.

City archivist James S. Matthews often added his own handwritten notes to rare photographs. The Wah Chong laundry was established two years before the city's founding.

Artwork sprouts on Fernwood's 'soul poles'

A telephone pole in Victoria's Fernwood neighbourhood gets the artistic treatment. Photo from Fernwood NRG.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
June 6, 2011

VICTORIA

The telephone pole in front of Beth Threlfall’s house bugged her.

Beyond the banal nature of an ordinary wooden pole, this one had been targeted.

An anonymous tagger had spray-painted a symbol on the pole. It was a glyph indecipherable to all but the tagger and, perhaps, those with whom he shared his exploits.

Like a dog marking territory, the tagger’s mark could be found throughout the neighbourhood.

It was unsightly.

The tags also gave the streets a menacing air — a vandal was working freely under cover of darkness.

Three years ago, she attended a talk at the local hall by Mark Lakeman, an urban designer from Portland, Ore., who helped found the City Repair Project. The volunteer-run group builds benches, reclaims parkland, and decorates intersections to make unpleasant urban areas seem, as the group’s motto states, “inhabited, known, and loved by its residents.”

Ms. Threlfall walked home from the talk, feeling inspired and wondering what she might do to make her neighbourhood more vibrant.

“What do I see around me that brings down our neighbourhood?” she thought to herself. “These telephone poles look absolutely terrible.”

The 40-year-old stay-at-home mother of two, who is a self-taught artist, decided she should simply paint over the tagged base of the telephone pole.

“I telephoned BC Hydro and said, ‘I’d like to paint my pole. It’s a disaster. It’s got this signature tagging all over it.’ ”

She got an okay.

Soon, she began painting a pole on Fernwood Road.

It is a narrow street with houses close to the sidewalk. The speed limit is 30 km/h. The act of painting street furniture made her a spectacle.

Cars honked. Neighbours gawked.

Her rendition of sunflowers, though no Van Gogh, was appreciated.

Voila, a soul pole.

Some asked her to do their pole next.

Soon, every pole in the 1600-block of Fernwood had been decorated.

“I’m not going out there and being a renegade. It’s not my property. I ask permission. I’m asking people if it’s something they want.”

Art work began to sprout on poles on the surrounding streets. Others asked just for a plain coat of paint.

She called her project Adopt-A-Pole.

Centered around the city’s oldest high school and a church transformed into a theatre, the neighbourhood feels like a village. It is often called funky, a description locals loathe. Outsiders teasingly refer to it as the People’s Republic of Fernwood.

The local neighbourhood association recently organized a pole-painting extravaganza, providing paints, brushes and stencils for volunteers. (The paint was scavenged from the Hartland Landfill, where discarded tins provided a rainbow cornucopia of colours.)

A free barbecue lunch was cooked. One hundred and one poles were identified for a paint job. About 300 volunteers showed up.

By the end of the day, the streets were decorated by poles sporting cattails in marshy browns and dandelions in glorious yellows; doves and cranes in brilliant whites; jumping frogs in whimsical greens; dragonflies with red bodies and green wings.

A perambulation along the streets offers displays of shocking pinks and funky purples; dashing reds and mundane greys; primitive caricatures and a spectacular Betty Boop, on a pole one block south of Vic High.

At the risk of being a snob, it must be said the art on some poles is more — er, um, successful — than others.

Angela Hemming, a blogger and digital media producer, took part in the paint-in, which she praised for contributing to the hood’s artsy vibe. She felt for those homeowners whose poles decorated by what she called “kiddie-splatter,” noting at least one such pole had been repainted a dignified grey by nightfall.

There have been other critics.

The students at the local George Jay Elementary worked with Ms. Threlfall in painting the poles surrounding the school. A neighbour so disliked one immigrant child’s rendition of the Mexican Day of the Dead, featuring dancing skeletons with flowered top hats, that she defaced his work by splattering paint over it.

Ms. Threlfall’s renewal project has given her insight into the mentality of the tagger.

“It became an addiction,” she said of her own pole painting. “You start and it becomes a compulsion. You think, ‘That corner would look so much better if it had a flower on it.’ You see this space and you need to fill it.

“Which is what they say about tagging.”

The difference is that taggers never ask permission.

The last time Vancouver won the Stanley Cup

The Vancouver Millionaires swept the visiting Ottawa Senators in three straight games in 1915 to bring the Stanley Cup west of Winnipeg for the first time.

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

VANCOUVER

The Ottawa team traversed a frozen continent to play hockey in a city bereft of ice except for an artificial sheet at the arena.

A party of 13, a “hoodoo number” complained some of the more superstitious among them, alighted from a Great Northern train at Central Station to be greeted by dignitaries bearing gifts.

Within hours, the athletes skated in practice, every maneuvre studied by fans who flocked to witness the spectacle of the Eastern champions in action.

The Ottawa Senators journeyed to Vancouver to engage a challenge for the Stanley Cup, commissioned only 23 years earlier. The visitors neglected to bring with them the storied trophy, “a thoughtless bit of work,” one reporter noted.

The local professionals were known as the Millionaires. In 1915, it was a superlative, not a salary.

Frank Patrick, whose father had been a lumber baron, assembled a brilliant — and expensive — aggregation of ice mercenaries.

The roster included Mickey MacKay, a dazzling goal scorer and smooth skater called The Wee Scot; Barney Stanley, a young forward who had only played five games as a pro; Lloyd (Farmer) Cook, a steady if unspectacular forward; Frank (the Pembroke Peach) Nighbor, a gentlemanly opponent whose patented poke-check drove rivals mad with frustration; Si Griffis, the capain, a quiet but effective leader on defence; and, Hugh Lehman, a goaltender so adept at blocking the puck he was dubbed Old Eagle Eyes.

The best of them was Frederick Wellington Taylor, a tough, hard-nosed player whose balding pate made him recognizable from the farthest seat. Mr. Taylor was dubbed the Listowel Wonder for the Ontario town where he made his hockey debut as a boy. He skated fast, so was called Tornado and Whirlwind, but the nickname that stuck was Cyclone.

Elsewhere, the Great War raged in Europe. An Allied fleet bombed Ottoman forts on the Dardenelles. Editorialists complained of “German swine” even as a front-page article assured worried kinfolk at home: “Life in trenches at front is not at all distasteful, writes Vancouver solider.”

Eager hockey fans thronged to buy tickets to what was billed as the world’s series of hockey, the first time a Stanley Cup game had been played west of Winnipeg. Top price was $1.25, while unreserved rush spots in the gallery went for 50 cents.

Before the best-of-five series began, the Senators enjoyed a motor tour of the city, rambling along Marine Drive and Stanley Park, named for the same man whose name graces the silver mug. They posed for a photograph at the Hollow Tree.

The manager of their hotel, the first-class Elysium, on Pender Street, entertained the players with a tour of Indian Arm by power launch. Loew’s Theatre offered ducats to a vaudeville show featuring an eccentric violinist, while the electric street railway company issued passes for the duration of their stay.

Ottawa manager Frank Shaughnessy welcomed the hospitality, but drew the line on attending banquets, as he did not want his players to be wined and dined before the series.

The first, third and fifth games were to be played under Western rules — seven players, including a rover, who skated behind centre; penalties forcing a team to play shorthanded; blue lines painted on the ice allowing forward passing in the centre-ice area. The Ottawa coach insisted the innovation would never catch on. “It makes a farce of the game,” Alf Smith complained.

The Easterners played six-a-side with no forward passing allowed at any time. As well, a penalized player was replaced by a substitute.

On the day of the first game on March 22, 1915, a mud slide engulfed the midnight shift at the Britannia Mines north of Vancouver, killing 56. The news dominated local newspapers that day.

In the evening, more than 7,000 spectators flocked to the Denman Arena, a hulking brick sports palace on the waterfront at the entrance to Stanley Park. Many rode special streetcars to the game, some riding electric trains from as far afield as Chilliwack. They cheered the Millionaires as they faced the famed Senators, led by the scoring of Harry (Punch) Broadbent with the dependable Art Ross on defence and Clint Benedict in goal.

Mr. Griffis, the Vancouver captain, watched the game from the penalty box, as he had been diagnosed with a cracked ankle suffered in an exhibition match. His replacement, Mr. Stanley, opened the scoring midway through the first period.

The Millionaires’ superior speed combined with a relentless pursuit of opponents — “Check back boys!” coach Lester Patrick, Frank’s brother, yelled from the bench — led to a dominating 6-2 victory.

In the second game, Vancouver scored an 8-3 win despite Ottawa targeting the best player on the ice.

“Cyclone was a marked man from the outset,” reported the Daily Province, “but his uncanny skating ability saved him time and time again.” Near the end of the second game, a stiff bodycheck finally forced him off the ice.

The Millionaires claimed the championship with a 12-3 drubbing. Cyclone ended the series with seven goals. The visitors blamed the low altitude and heavy sea air for their sluggish performance.

“Ignominiously routed,” reported the Ottawa Evening Journal.

After the game, the defeated players filed into the dressing room of the victors, offering hearty congratulations. “You have a great team here,” the Ottawa manager said. With that, the Senators embarked for San Francisco to attend the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, being held just nine years after the city had been devastated by an earthquake and fire.

About 16,000 spectators had attended the three games. The players share of ticket revenue, less the travel costs for the Ottawa club, provided about $300 for each Millionaire and $200 for each Senator.

A Vancouver Sun editorial hailed the championship as “no small achievement in a city where nature has not provided enough ice to make a slide for school children.”

The Stanley Cup did not arrive in the city until May 12.

The silverware was sent to an engraver who added “Vancouver, B.C./ 1914-15/ Defeated Ottawa/ 3 straight games” on a base ring. Along the fluted sides in the interior of the bowl, the artisan engraved the names of Frank Patrick and eight players.

Perhaps later this month, other players in the livery of a Vancouver team will be able to pause after swigging champagne from the cup to read the names of players better known as Cyclone and Eagle Eyes and the Wee Scot.


When Cyclone struck the Komagata Maru

The Japanese-owned freighter Komagata Maru arrived in British Columbia waters in May, 1914. Aboard were 376 Punjabis, most of them Sikhs, who had chartered the ship from Hong Kong.

The passengers sought to circumvent racist rules designed to keep British subjects from East India out of Canada.

Fred W. (Cyclone) Taylor

The order to tell them they would not be able to disembark fell to the No. 3 man in the local immigration office, a tough-minded athlete by the name Fred W. Taylor. Hockey and lacrosse fans knew him better as Cyclone.

Over the coming weeks, as the circumstances on board became ever more dire, Mr. Taylor roamed the decks ensuring no one left, or came aboard the vessel, which was anchored in Coal Harbour. Not surprisingly, the thwarted passengers became belligerent over time.

“They’d curse us and press against us and sometimes fought us off as we came aboard, shouting threats and insults,” he told his biographer.

The passengers tried to repulse boardings by throwing coal, other times by emptying chamber pots.

The two-month-long standoff ended when an armed naval cruiser threatened to attack the ship. The freighter was forced from Canadian waters, a black mark in our history for which the prime minister apologized just three years ago.

Less than a year after the confrontation, Mr. Taylor’s on-ice prowess helped the Vancouver Millionaires hockey club win the city’s first — and, so far, only — Stanley Cup championship.

In 1976, Mr. Taylor, then 92, met with Giani Kartar Singh, a frail and partially deaf 97-year old. The two men were believed to be the only living participants in the shameful incident.

The former adversaries, speaking through an interpreter, had an entirely amicable conversation.

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.

An end to the E&N

A steam engine from the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway's glory years.

By Tom Hawthorn

Boulevard Magazine

June, 2011

The train horn moans, a mournful honk echoing across the city.

It is heard twice a day, in the morning as the car pulls out of the station and again in the evening, as it returns from a roundtrip up island.

At my house, far from the station, the warning to vehicles and pedestrians acted as an alarm clock for the work day.

The reverberating groan instantly takes me back to my childhood. It is 1967, Centennial Year, and my family, not yet wealthy enough to afford a car of our own, will travel by train from Montreal to my Winnipeg birthplace to visit my grandmother.

For a boy, the grand concourse of Central Station is a bustle of hurly-burly excitement. Comics are purchased at the newsstand. A nickel bottle of Pepsi is added to our luggage. Then the family disappears down an escalator to the platforms hidden beneath the city.

One flight down, a waiting train seems to huff and puff like a waiting beast. Step onto a portable step and onto the train, climbing aboard for an unforgettable adventure. The miles pass, the clackety-clack of wheels against ties acting as a metronome, the rhythm of a long journey. We ate sandwiches over the long hours, saving our meagre funds for one special meal in the dining car.

At last the appointed hour arrives. We are seated at a table covered with a white cloth, an abundance of silverware arranged in an order unfamiliar to me. We feast. Just as the last bites are savoured, my younger sister finally succumbs to the constant rocking motion of the train and gets sick. My poor parents.

That experience did little to curb my appetite for riding the rails. I remember Rapidos and high-speed TurboTrains from my boyhood. I’ve snoozed in a berth on a sleeper car between Madrid and Lisbon, shared tamales with Mexican passengers on the way to Oaxaca, enjoyed the pleasures of a cappuccino before boarding a punctual train at the main terminal in Rome. In Havana, I explored a train graveyard in the shadow of the Capitolo, agreeing with the caretaker that someday his collection of junked engines and freight cars would make a fine outdoor museum.

Back east, trains remain a pleasurable way to travel, the better yet for avoiding airports with their interminable waits and uncountable indignities. two years ago, I made a leisurely journey from Toronto to Montreal, south along the Richelieu River and lake Champlain and the Hudson River to Grand Central Station in New York, before continuing along to the magnificent white granite Union Station at Washington, DC, whose grand concourse was once the largest room in the world.

Our own train station in Victoria is a more modest affair, a small brick building with a steep, shingled roof. It is at the eastern end of the Blue Bridge, the tracks blocked as they butt up against Store Street. It is literally the end of the line.

That rail was laid as part of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway. On Aug. 13, 1886, the prime minister, John A. Macdonald, wielded a silver sledgehammer to drive home a gold spike completing the route between the two cities in the railway’s name. A cairn now marks the location, about 40 kilometres outside Victoria near Shawnigan Lake.

Some years ago, VIA took over passenger service on the line, running Rail Diesel Cars once a day from Victoria as far north as Courtenay, return. The scenic journey includes spectacular trestles. The route was called The Malahat.

For decades, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to ride that train. Wanted to take the kids. Wanted a special occasion (maybe the Island MusicFest in Courtenay). Then, in the space of a few days this spring, the rolling stock was taken out of service for repairs, the rail bridge leading to the Victoria station was ruled unsafe, and the 225-kilometres of track was declared to be in need of millions of dollars worth of repair. VIA declared the service to be indefinitely suspended. The train was replaced by a bus. I am bereft.

It’s unknown whether the groups lobbying for funds will be successful in this age of tight budgets. Many up-Island communities depend on the line for tourism. Some 40,000 passengers rode the Malahat last year. After 125 years, I may have missed my chance. A little bit about what makes Vancouver Island unique is slipping away, lost to neglect and indifference. Some mornings, I note the silence, a reminder that the only thing sadder than a lonesome whistle is its absence.

Did water-taxi christening carry message in a bottle?

A new water taxi service is plying the protected waters of Victoria's harbour. The launch brought together political rivals in an age-old ceremony.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
May 30, 2011

VICTORIA

A taxi in familiar yellow and black-and-white checkered livery glides to a stop.

This is one cab you don’t want to hail by stepping off the curb.

A new taxi service has begun in the capital’s harbour waters. Passengers can telephone for service to and from 17 waterfront stops stretching from West Bay Marina in Esquimalt as far up the Gorge as Tillicum Landing.

Most of the stops are along the Inner Harbour connecting downtown to Vic West, a zone where fares are $5. The longest haul costs $20.

A pair of H2O Taxis are operated by Victoria Harbour Ferry Co., which has had a hop-on, hop-off service along the same waters for two decades. The company has a fleet of 14 ferries, each capable of carrying a dozen passengers.

Among the 44 skippers employed by the company are a practicing physician and a retired Swiss Air pilot, who has traded the controls of a passenger jet for the wheel of a putt-putt boat.

Those accustomed to racing along city streets in four-wheeled cabs driven by kamikaze daredevils will be relieved to learn the water taxis putter at a top speed of seven knots (about 13 kilometres per hour).

The company expects the taxis will be used by tourists and commuters.

“We’re confident it will be used by those who don’t want to fight traffic downtown,” said Barry Hobbis, the company’s vice-president of operations and one of four partners in the venture.

The taxis launched the other day with a traditional seafaring ceremony. The event inadvertently brought together political rivals. It did not go as planned.

“We’re all superstitious,” Mr. Hobbis said. “We wanted to make sure the service was off to a mariners’ safe start.”

That meant the two boats needed to be christened in the age-old fashion of having a woman smash a bottle of champagne across the bow.

It should be noted that the failure of a bottle to break is regarded as a bad omen.

Among the invited dignitaries was the mayor of Victoria. In his place came acting mayor Marianne Alto.

Ms. Alto, the labour candidate, defeated Mr. Hobbis, the business candidate, in a hotly-contested council byelection just six months ago.

For the ceremony, Mr. Hobbis purchased two christening bottles. These are filled with carbonated water in a breakable container, wrapped in a fine mesh bag to prevent fragments from falling into the water.

The company has incorporated H2O in the name of both boats.

The deputy mayor got down on her right knee.

“I christen this boat the H2Otter,” she pronounced. “God bless this ship and all who sail in her.”

She delivered a glancing, one-handed blow with the bottle.

Clunk.

“Whoops,” she said.

The next blow was delivered quickly with two hands.

Clunk.

A third blow was preceded by a big backswing, like Geena Davis wielding a baseball bat in A League of Their Own.

Clunk.

A fourth, glancing blow was also unsuccessful.

A fifth attempt failed.

She told laughing spectators that the bottle was sturdy.

She gave three little warm-up taps with the bottle, like a carpenter tired of missing the nail.

“OK, ready,” she said, delivering a solid blow to the bow.

Clunk.

The sixth attempt was unsuccessful. As was the seventh.

It was finally suggested the cork be popped and liquid poured onto H2Otter and H2Orca.

No one would have blamed her had she taken a swig instead of christening the vessel with the fizzy water

GOLLY, GEE: Raise your hockey stick in the air to celebrate the investiture of Howard William Meeker into the Order of Canada. The Parksville resident was honoured in a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa for his contributions to hockey as a coach and broadcaster. His gee-willackers enthusiasm for positional play on Hockey Night in Canada stands in contrast to Don Cherry’s buffoonery in support of goonery.