Out of the Mists of Memory

Montreal's Hockey History, 1875-1910

How, when and where — perhaps we will not ask why — did people start playing an ice game with sticks and a ball? When was that ball changed to a puck and what was that puck? How did the rest of the game evolve?

There are a number of theories and mysteries and at least three contenders for the title of hockey’s first home, but one certain fact will concern us: a recognizable form of the game was played in Montreal in 1875 by university students and members of English, Scottish and Irish sporting clubs. French-speaking Quebecers had not yet taken up the new game.

Leaving aside the disputed evidence of distant and relative precedents in Europe or Greenland, the earliest account of an ice game dates back to a Dorchester team meeting the Uptown Club in Montreal on the last Saturday in February, 1837. The two teams met in a hurling game transferred from lawns to the surface that winter had wrought. Other records of games like Scottish shinny as played by military personnel in Halifax in 1851, in Ottawa in 1852 and in Kingston in 1855 all involved 100 or more soldiers playing around with a ball on a frozen river or lake. No rules were in force and there was no referee. It is not even certain how many players (if any) used skates. To illustrate just how shrouded and vexed is the mystery of hockey’s definitive start, a committee formed by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in 1941 found that the first game of hockey was played in Kingston in 1855. The Kingston Hockey Hall of Fame, however, does not recognize that game but rather one played in the city in March, 1885 using Montreal rules, ignoring the well-documented Montreal game of 1875.

To begin at the beginning, perhaps the first question is: just what do we mean when we call a game hockey? For the duration, let us say it is a game played on ice, wearing skates, using sticks and a ball or puck, with a set of written rules (which shinny and hurling did not yet have), a referee and a goaltender (which neither game had either). With these basic elements, hockey can be — and has to be — played the same way anywhere in the world, as it is now. So where does it all start?

The Montreal Gazette on March 3, 1875 reported: “A game of Hockey will be played at the Victoria Skating Rink this evening between two nines chosen from among the members. Good fun may be expected, as some of the players are reputed to be exceedingly expert at the game. Some fears have been expressed on the part of intended spectators that accidents were likely to occur through the ball flying about in too lively a manner, to the imminent danger of lookers on, but we understand that the game will be played with a flat circular piece of wood, thus preventing all danger of its leaving the surface of the ice.”

From the evidence of this small notice, we might infer that by then a group had been playing the game for some time. But it was at this precise point that they truly began to make modifications that would come to define a new sport.

As the game was to be played inside in front of spectators for the first time, a block of wood would replace a lacrosse ball to prevent possible damage — in the absence of boards, perhaps as much to windows as to people. Also, the game introduced goals like lacrosse (two sticks in the ice, eight feet apart and six feet tall). With no nets, the referee and the umpires (goal judges) had to decide if a goal had been scored. One new idea departs from the old British games of shinny, hurling or bandy (an early English form of field hockey). This was the ruling of no forward passing, which was adopted from rugby, a game most on these teams also played. Finally, a player was charged with protecting the goal, as in lacrosse. At this juncture, there were nine players on the ice on each team.

The Montreal Gazette reported on March 4 that “At the Rink last night a very large audience gathered to witness a novel contest on the ice. ... Hockey is played usually with a ball, but last night, in order that no accident should happen, a flat block of wood was used, so that it should slide along the ice without rising, and thus going among the spectators to their discomfort. The game is like lacrosse in one sense — the block having to go through flags placed about 8 feet apart in the same manner as the rubber ball — but in the main the old country game of shinty gives the best idea of hockey. The players last night were eighteen in number — nine on each side — and were as follows: Mssrs Torrance (captain), Meagher, Potter, Goff, Barnston, Gardner, Griffin, Jarvis and Whiting. Creighton (captain), Campbell, Campbell, Esdail, Joseph, Henshaw, Chapman, Powell and Clouston. The match was an interesting and well-contested affair, the efforts of the players exciting much merriment as they wheeled and dodged each other, and notwithstanding the brilliant play of Captain Torrance’s team, Captain Creighton’s men carried the day, winning two games to the single of the Torrance nine. The game was concluded about half-past nine, and the spectators then adjourned well satisfied with the evening’s entertainment.”

Among these early players, we must make special note to remember the name of James George Aylwin Creighton. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he came to Montreal in 1872 to work on the railroad after studying engineering at Dalhousie University. Five years later, he took up law at McGill and also worked as a writer for the Gazette. Later still, we find him in Ottawa, where he was working as a civil servant in 1882. All these progressions are central to the history of hockey. According to another of the players listed above, Henry Joseph, Creighton brought the basic structure of the game with him from Halifax, but transformed it in Montreal when he introduced the novelties already noted, and, as we will see shortly, probably wrote the first published rules. In Ottawa, he formed a team of public servants (the Rideau Rebels) which included two of Lord Stanley’s sons in its lineup.

Although there is considerable argument as to whether he transferred the game played in Halifax to Montreal, or if the games played in the two cities were quite different, there is general agreement that Creighton can lay claim to paternity in the birth of modern hockey. But if we are starting to think that the case is quite clear, we still must consider the situation of three McGill students who say they wrote the first rules of hockey.

In 1908, Richard F. Smith told the Montreal Star that he and two friends had come up with the rules of hockey in September, 1878. But as he also mentioned the victory of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association at the Montreal Carnival of 1884 when it in fact occurred in 1885, perhaps the mists of his memory should not be fully relied upon. Further, in testimony separate from Smith and each other, W. L. Murray and W. R. Robertson both dated the rules of hockey to November, 1879. Robertson’s brief (a letter in the Hockey Hall of Fame) is undated. Murray was sharing his recollections in 1936, when he was about 80 years old, and added that he played shinny on the St. Lawrence River in his youth. Perhaps we should exercise caution with his memory as well, since he refers to French Canadians playing shinny when in fact they did not take up hockey until after the 1890s. As for the rules, Murray said they tried them, starting with reducing a team from 15 down to seven and replacing the ball with a puck, all in one day. These modifications not only took time to evolve but were responses to particular — often in fact quite peculiar — circumstances, as we have seen and shall see again later.

The rules shown below were published in the Gazette on February 27, 1877, along with a summary of a game in which Creighton and his friends had played. (None of the three rival rules claimants had taken part.):

As Creighton was then a Gazette writer, it could be a safe assumption that he authored these rules. This may be a moot point though, as it seems the rules were forgotten quickly or at least not widely known. In the first book ever written on hockey (Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game, 1899) author Arthur Farrell, a Montreal Shamrocks player who was a member of Stanley Cup championship teams of 1899 and 1900, states that no rules were known prior to 1880. However, new rules added in 1886 and 1887 were all based on the version reprinted above.

With the game as we know it beginning to evolve, the next major phase of development came at the Montreal Winter Carnival, which was in essence the first hockey tournament. An initiative of English snowshoe clubs to promote Montreal throughout North America, the carnival lasted from 1883 to 1889. Hockey played a role in its first three years and became more popular in the process. In effect, the game had graduated to tournaments and a league of its own.

Only three teams were in competition at the first Winter Carnival in 1883, two from Montreal (the Victorias and McGill) and one from Quebec City. They played on a “rink” scraped on the St. Lawrence River. Another critical change to the game came about at this tournament because Quebec came with only seven players, and the Montreal teams had to drop two from their nine-man rosters. McGill won the round robin and was presented with a trophy which is now in the hands of the McCord Museum in Montreal, where one still can read the names of the winning players and the referee.

The next year, 1884, Quebec City declined to return after a Montreal team failed to show for a game in Quebec. Nevertheless, there were five teams that year, four from Montreal (the Wanderers, McGill, the Victorias and the Crystals) and one from Ottawa. The Ottawa club was not the Rideau Rebels — who would not be formed until 1888 — but they did win the tournament, defeating McGill 3-0 in the finals. Seven-man teams were used at the carnival this year at the request of its organizers and became de facto the rule. There were problems maintaining a playable rink when heavy rains fell but all the games that could be played took place on an outdoor surface at McGill, with one exhibition game at the Victoria Rink.

Finally, in 1885, six teams were in competition, the defending champs from Ottawa and five clubs from Montreal (the Victorias, McGill, the Crystals, the Montreal Football Club and the Montreal Hockey Club, which was a part of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association and indeed better known as the Montreal AAA, or the MAAA). It took nine periods for the Montreal Hockey Club to win its semifinal game against McGill, then another overtime to take the finals from Ottawa. This time the carnival tournament was played indoors, at the Crystal Rink.

It was with this set of games over three years at the Montreal Winter Carnival that hockey began to come into its own. The fact that McGill students came from outside Montreal and took their new skills and fervor back home was also a contributing factor to the game’s growth in other regions of Canada (mainly Quebec and Ontario), Kingston being one notable instance, where the first league of sorts — a local affair involving four teams — was formed in 1885.

With hockey becoming more popular, teams from three cities tried a new kind of tournament for 1886 which would last the whole winter instead of just the week of the carnival in late January or early February. Six teams entered, in two divisions. The Montreal division included the MAAA, the Victorias, McGill and the Crystals. Ottawa and Quebec formed the other division. In the Montreal division, the competition would be a round robin, while the other played a home-and-home series. The two winners would meet in a Dominion championship. In this first “season,” the title game was played at the Crystal Rink between the Crystals and Quebec. In what may be seen to foreshadow the ongoing laments about violent play, the visitors forfeited the title when they quit the game. In the face of the home team’s aggression, some Quebec players were unable to finish. The moment the team left the ice, the referee awarded the championship trophy to the Crystals.

This first season now behind them, the four Montreal teams and Ottawa took the next major step in 1887 when they formed a league, to be called the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada. (Quebec joined the following year.) All the teams would play more, and on a regular basis, but at this stage all the games were championship games in a challenge series. The champion defended its title at every game, while the league champion was the one who won the last game of the season. The anomalies of this structure saw the MAAA win the league championship in 1891 after winning only one game — the last one — while Ottawa had won all the games in the season except for that one. For 1892, a regular schedule was put forward and the team winning the most games was declared that season’s champion.

This first inter-region league in Canada had been followed by other examples like the Ontario Hockey Association in 1890-91, but there was still one central factor to come into play before hockey became widely — and wildly — popular.

Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston, Earl of Derby and Governor-General of Canada until he returned to England in 1892 was a sportsman and hockey fan whose sons were players with the Rideau Rebels. He also had a daughter who was one of the game’s first women players. Lord Stanley attended many Ottawa hockey games during his tenure in Canada and in 1893 donated a trophy that was to be called the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. It instead became known by his own family name and has become virtually synonymous with hockey itself. First awarded to the MAAA as the 1893 AHAC champions, it thereafter became a challenge cup, meaning that any league champion could compete for it, on terms that were later laid down by Lord Stanley and his trustees in Ottawa, Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip Dansken Ross, the latter of whom was Montreal-born and played hockey there.

The Stanley Cup regulations of 1903 outline the rules that Stanley imposed in a document known as the “Deed of Gift” which states that: the then Governor-General, the Earl of Derby, before his departure from Canada in 1893 donated a challenge cup to be held from year to year by the championship Hockey Club of the Dominion. He appointed Sheriff Sweetland and Mr. P .D. Ross, of Ottawa, to act as trustees of the Cup, and requested them to suggest conditions to govern the competition. Meanwhile, his excellency directed that in 1893 the cup should be presented to the M.A.A.A. Hockey team of Montreal, champions of the A.H.A. of Canada, to be held by them until the close of the ensuing year. His excellency laid down the following preliminary conditions:

Lord Stanley, in view of the fact of several hockey associations existing in Canada, also asked the trustees to arrange means of making the cup open to all, and thus representative of the hockey championship as completely as possible, rather than of any one association.

The Trustees’ Regulations, which have been used since 1893, are:

With this set of rules and its object in place, hockey began to spread quickly across Canada into the United States and eventually to Europe and elsewhere. Up to 1914, when the Stanley Cup became exclusive to two leagues (the National Hockey Association and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association), many teams challenged for the trophy while league followed on league, often changing names more than anything else. During this time period the AHAC gave way to the Canadian Amateur Hockey League (1899-1905), the Eastern Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (1906-09), the Eastern Canada Hockey Association (1909), and the Canadian Hockey Association (1910). But in 20 years of Stanley Cup competition only two teams outside the AHAC and its many successors had been successful in winning the Cup: the Winnipeg Victorias (1896, 1901) and the Kenora Thistles (1907).

We have yet to address the question of French-Canadian involvement in early Montreal-area hockey. Though French-English rivalry has become one of the central myths surrounding the game’s origins, the truth of the matter is that French Canadians were not active participants before 1895, fully 20 years after we have established the start date of the Montreal game. The first French-Canadian teams weren’t formed until some years after this date and their acceptance in local leagues wasn’t immediate and required the support of the Irish.

Though there had been the occasional player like Charles Lamothe, captain of the Victorias in 1883, French Canadians generally started in hockey because of the setup of classical colleges in Montreal, where French and Irish Catholics studied together but in their own languages. Two colleges, Ste-Marie and Mont St-Louis, both bilingual, formed the core of an Irish hockey club, the Shamrocks. Though the Irish taught the French to play hockey in the college yard’s rink, up to 1896 the Ste-Marie team was exclusively Irish, with players like Harry Trihey, Arthur Farrell and Jack Brennan (who would star later for the Shamrocks). Mont St-Louis had some French students on its team in 1895, including Louis Belcourt (who would join the Shamrocks in 1897, but was notably absent from the lineup when the team won the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900). In 1896, the college teams from Ste-Marie and Mont St-Louis merged to form the independent Orioles, though members still played for their respective colleges, thus producing an odd but workable combination of competing at one level and playing together at another.

In 1898, the Irish built their own college (Loyola) and parted physical company with their French friends. The ties between the two would remain strong, however, and play a critical role in the French gaining entry to Montreal’s game. Not only did the first French players in the senior league play for the Shamrocks (Belcourt and Ernest Pagnuelo in 1897, Theophile Viau and Louis Hurtubise in 1902), but perhaps even more indicative of the Irish support — and how crucial it was — is the fact that the Shamrocks always voted in favor of having a French-Canadian team join the senior hockey ranks while other teams did not accept the French until 1905.

At about the same time that French-Canadian students first started to play the game, a new sporting club introduced a hockey team meant to be solely for francophone players, though a number of the players were actually Irish. This is where the difficult history of acceptance for French hockey teams begins. In 1894, a group of French-Canadian businessmen formed the Association Athletique d’Amateurs Nationale, known simply as le National. In the 1894-95 season, le National had two hockey teams (with all players from Mont St-Louis College) that played exhibition games. One of the teams beat the Junior Victorias, but mostly these teams suffered defeats. In 1898, a snowshoe club called le Montagnard built an ice rink and launched three new hockey teams which were placed in one of three leagues, depending on the calibre of the players. Most of these players were students at Ste-Marie College, effectively dividing the available francophone players by both college (Ste-Marie and Mont St-Louis) and club (le National and le Montagnard).

On their way to a Stanley Cup victory in 1899, the Shamrocks played an exhibition game against le Montagnard. To make it more even, they traded one player, Stephen Kent, for one Montagnard player, Hector Dalbec, who replaced Jack Brennan at forward. It hardly is surprising that the Shamrocks still won this game. In another sense, however, both teams ended up as losers: the game had been organized largely to encourage the acceptance of the francophone team in the ranks of Montreal senior hockey, but it did not succeed.

In 1900, with Montreal’s French-Canadian hockey-playing college students advancing to university, a new school team emerged. The Université Laval à Montreal played its Quebec City counterpart, where a former Ste-Marie College student instigated the challenge. Meanwhile, le National and le Montagnards continued their long, painful march toward the higher levels of hockey. Both were finally accepted into the intermediates in 1901 after a game between le Montagnard and the intermediate MAAA the year before. The two French teams helped to form a division along with McGill and the Pointe St-Charles team. Le Montagnard won the division while le National finished last and resigned from the league. In the semifinals, le Montagnard finished the series even with the MAAA but lost in terms of total goals by just one goal. It had been a good year, but not good enough to advance to the seniors. After another season, le Montagnard also resigned from the intermediate league when they saw there would no chance for advancement. (The Ottawa Aberdeens had won in 1902 but were not accepted as champions by the current rules.)

In 1904, the two French-Canadian teams merged for one season. le National was accepted into a new league, the Federal Amateur Hockey League (formed mainly under the leadership of the Montreal Wanderers), and the merger agreement called for le National to organize a team while le Montagnard provided its rink, free of charge, for games and practices. When this version of le National finished second in the Federal league standings, the mainstream senior league (then the Canadian Amateur Hockey League) at long last took notice and asked the team to join, which had been the main goal. But, perhaps ironically, the agreement between the two French clubs was now over. As le National joined the CAHL, le Montagnard was asked to form a team for the Federal league. Worse for le National, it lost its two main players from the 1904 season when Didier Pitre and Jack Laviolette left Montreal to turn professional in the United States. Both would later return and become prototype superstars for Montreal, but for now le National lasted only three games into the CAHL season (they lacked fans and kept losing) and then played only exhibition games. Meanwhile, le Montagnard stayed in the FAHL for two years. When the two clubs met again, in an exhibition game in 1906, le National won easily, 6-0, in a contest that was distinguished mainly by bloodshed.

The 1906-07 season would be the best yet for French hockey. With le National virtually defunct, le Montagnard acquired most of the best francophone players and lost only two games during the season. Their championship, and the chance to play for the Stanley Cup against the Montreal Wanderers, came into question, however, when the agenda at two of the Federal league meetings were dominated by protests to take away two Montagnard wins. With only two games remaining in the season, the team withdrew from the league. For the next two seasons, no French teams played organized senior hockey, but the Laval team was finally accepted in the University League in 1908 after a few games against McGill in 1906 and 1907.

As Canadian senior hockey was becoming professional, a number of francophone players began coming back from the United States. Jack Laviolette and Didier Pitre would join the Montreal Shamrocks for the 1907-08 season and also played together in a major event the following year: an exhibition game of the best francophone players against the current Stanley Cup holders, the Montreal Wanderers. The game was scheduled at the Jubilee Rink in east end Montreal for March 10, 1909. That morning the French lineup was still not known, but that evening the roster was made up of Laviolette and Pitre, Edouard “Newsy” Lalonde, Emile Coutu, Joseph Dostaler, Robitaille and Alphonse Jette. All were well-known in Montreal except for Robitaille, who played for Pittsburgh in the International (Pro) Hockey League. To the surprise of a good many present, the francophone players emerged on the ice in the jerseys of le National.

The Wanderers won the game 9-8 but the exhibition game helped le National in its bid to return to league play in 1909-10. The sport’s top league had just become the Canadian Hockey Association, but the situation in this league was anything but straightforward. At the meeting that saw le National reinstated, the Wanderers themselves were thrown out because their new owner wanted to play all his games at the Jubilee Rink (which he also owned), while the other CHA teams insisted on staying in the west end at the Westmount Arena. A team from Renfrew wanted to join the CHA this year but was also denied. Hence the Wanderers and Renfrew got together in a room next to the CHA meeting at Montreal’s Windsor Hotel and formed a new league, the National Hockey Association. It is here that French Canada’s truly unique hockey history begins to take the shape we still recognize today.

Renfrew was represented by the wealthy and strong-willed J. Ambrose O’Brien, whose family also owned a league in northern Ontario. O’Brien would deliver Cobalt and Haileybury as well as Renfrew to the NHA, but to bring out some crowds to the Jubilee Rink, the Wanderers proposed a new French team, to be called les Canadiens, and suggested Laviolette organize it. He would have the use of O’Brien’s plentiful funds to build his new team, and as O’Brien and the Wanderers went to battle with CHA club owners over contracts, thus did the competition begin between le National and les Canadiens for the best French players. By December of 1909, both teams were claiming that they had signed many of the same ones. In fact, though, only one player had signed with both teams — and he had done so all in one day.

When Jack Laviolette telegraphed his good friend and erstwhile teammate Didier Pitre at his home in Sault Ste. Marie, he told him to join him in Ottawa to sign with the team he was putting together. Hearing of this, some le National administrators took a train to North Bay, Ontario, where they met Pitre first. Arriving in Ottawa later, Pitre said that he had signed already but Laviolette told him to sign his Canadiens contract anyway. les Canadiens were to play their first game at home on January 5, 1910. le National got an injunction against Pitre stating he was not to play or face prison. By the time the dispute went to court in February of that year, le National was no longer a team. The war between the NHA and the CHA had ended with an amalgamation on January 15, 1910.

Before the NHA-CHA coalition, there had been two professional hockey leagues with 10 teams in total — five of them in Montreal. After the merger, there was only the seven-team National Hockey Association. Three of its teams — the Wanderers, Shamrocks and Canadiens — were in Montreal. le National was offered the Canadiens franchise if they would satisfy three conditions: play their home games at the Jubilee Rink; pay the salaries of all players on the Canadiens; and pay all debts incurred by the Canadiens. The Nationals were unwilling to take on the extra expense these conditions entailed and closed up shop, leaving the Canadiens as the only French-Canadian professional hockey team. The expanded Canadiens roster now included players from le National, but the squad had little success on the ice, winning only two of 12 games. The team might have fared better had Newsy Lalonde, the league’s top scorer, not been loaned to Renfrew in an unsuccessful attempt to help that club win the championship. Because Ambrose O’Brien owned the Canadiens, Renfrew and two other NHA clubs, such personnel moves were not unheard of.

Since assuming ownership of the Canadiens, O’Brien had maintained that he wanted the club turned over to a French entrepreneur as soon as it was practical. However, in the summer of 1910, le Club Athlétique Canadien took O’Brien to court over the use of the name. In an out-of-court settlement, the club acquired the team and would own it until 1921 when the team was sold following the death of club manager George Kennedy. (Kennedy was born Georges Kendall, and while that name often appears in association with the hockey team, he went by Kennedy in English-speaking circles.)

The Montreal Canadiens won their first Stanley Cup in 1916, and while this was the initial victory for the French-Canadian team, it was not the first triumph for French-Canadian players. When the Winnipeg Victorias defeated the Montreal Shamrocks in 1901, Antoine “Tony” Gingras, born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, had become the first French Canadian to play for a Stanley Cup champion. Henri Menard had been the second when he was in goal for the Montreal Wanderers in 1906.

While hockey itself evolved from its start in Montreal and the city had a major role in all aspects of the game up to and after the formation of the NHL in 1917, the history of hockey in the city has become, for all intents and purposes, the history of the Montreal Canadiens as we known them today — the most successful club in the life of the sport and long past any need for the luck of the Irish.