A Great Game (13 page)

“Riddy,” as the fans knew him, would quickly become the Queen City's most popular athlete. He had come up through the Westerns, an OHA junior team associated with Toronto's Parkdale Canoe Club. Indeed, Ridpath was such an accomplished canoeist that he would give mass exhibitions of canoe and paddling stunts—from headstands using the portaging thwart to “jumping” the canoe fast through the water by riding the gunwales. So in demand was the “aquatic wonder”
⁸
that Bruce would perform throughout North America and Europe in the off-season. Though small, Riddy was exceptionally fit, fast and surprisingly ready to mix it up. The fans loved him.

The Marlboros had another stellar season. They breezed through all the way to a first-game victory in the Ontario final against Smiths Falls at the Mutual Street Rink. They had scored eight goals on a future goaltending legend, Percy LeSueur, while allowing only three.

Then trouble hit.

On the return trip to the eastern Ontario town, the game turned very rough. Due to injuries, the teams were down to five a side at the half, with the champs losing 6–4. The smaller Marlboros, claiming that all but two players were unable to continue, refused to take the ice for the second half.

Standard practice at this point would have been to declare the game a forfeit. Instead, referee Rose called the match off and referred the matter to the OHA executive. Smiths Falls went crazy. A red-faced Hewitt was sent packing by the local club without any gate receipts.

Newspaper accounts of what transpired vary wildly. In Smiths Falls (and a few other places), they brushed it off as a hard-hitting game with some accidental injuries. The Toronto papers (and their network of allies) labelled it a bloodbath.

The game likely was quite dirty, but there was a story behind it. Referee Rose had called twelve penalties against Smiths Falls, versus just two against Toronto. The home team was clearly seeking revenge for rough play by the Marlboros at Mutual. There, a “hard body check”
⁹
by Rolly Young, severe enough to warrant a major penalty, had put one of the Smiths Falls players out of the game.

The OHA executive—once it got its money out of Smiths Falls—decided on a rather unusual resolution to the whole mess. First, it declared both games null and void. Then it ordered a sudden-death final to be played March 7 on neutral ground in Peterborough.

Hundreds came in by train from both places to see the showdown, paying as much as five dollars a ticket. A near riot ensued when the travelling Marlie fans initially could not get into the building. In the end, Toronto beat Smiths Falls by a convincing 9–3 score, Bruce Ridpath leading
the Marlboros with four tallies. Knowing that any spark could set off fireworks, Referee Fraser had called literally everything from the outset.

The officiating in the final game was certainly strict, but was it fair? The Marlboros, not known to be much in the tough going, were bound to benefit. Smiths Falls claimed that Hewitt, there representing the OHA, was actually giving instructions to the referee from the sidelines. To some, it all just confirmed the long-alleged Hogtown bias of the OHA.

This version of events, combined with the legendary Taylor saga and the earlier Belleville rulings, paints a not-so-pretty picture of the OHA secretary and his apparent conflicts of interest. If it is to be believed, Hewitt's machinations consistently catered to the Marlboros' Stanley Cup aspirations. And there was much bitterness. Although Toronto proclaimed itself satisfied the best team had won, Smiths Falls, disgusted with the wrong they believed had been inflicted on them, was finished with the OHA. It quit the association and joined the Federal Amateur Hockey League for the next season, completing the OHA's loss of senior hockey jurisdiction east of Kingston.

In truth, it did not really matter whether Hewitt was trying to engineer another Stanley Cup run for the Marlboros. The delay in deciding the OHA championship had effectively scuttled any immediate shot they might have had at the mug. The Dukes did manage to get in a couple of well-attended exhibitions at Mutual against Rat Portage on that team's way home from Ottawa. They also played a postseason series against Winnipeg's Rowing Club in the Manitoba capital. While competitive against both the Thistles and the Rowers, this was as close to the national playoffs as they would get in 1905.

It was apparent that the odds of the OHA winning the Stanley Cup would be even longer in 1905–06. The war between the CAHL and FAHL was largely resolved. Under pressure from the owners of the Montreal Arena, the best clubs of the two leagues combined. The new, stronger organization would be known as the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association. The ECAHA included both the Ottawas and the Wanderers, two teams that met in an epic Cup showdown at the end of the season.

Competition to the west was also stronger. By “the west,” one now meant not just Manitoba, but the professional parts of the United States
as well. The International Hockey League had had its hiccups, yet it was still going strong. IHL scouts were scouring Canada for recruits, and the sincerely “amateur” OHA was easy pickings. At the end of the previous season, the league had sent its Michigan pros to play some exhibitions in Winnipeg. The missionary work of hockey was beginning to flow both ways.

As usual, the OHA began its campaign with delegates heading to Toronto in late 1905 for the annual powwow. They did so with the knowledge that John Ross Robertson would not be seeking re-election after an unprecedented six years as president. In his final address, his advocacy of strict amateur principles reached new extremes.

Professionalism might be rampant outside Ontario, said Robertson, but fidelity to amateurism in hockey was not merely about loyalty to the OHA; it was a question of patriotism itself:

We have a great game, a great country and a great empire—if you gentlemen are as great as the possibilities of the O.H.A., if we Canadians are as great as the possibilities of Canada, and if we Britons are as great as the glory of our Empire—the flag of amateurism in your hands will be as safe from harm as the Union Jack was in the hands of your fathers and mine!
¹⁰

Robertson said he was departing with “a regret that is deep and sincere.”
¹¹
Yet if anyone thought he was actually leaving, they were terribly wrong. He was simply preparing to run the OHA without the bother of seeking election.

Shortly after the annual meeting, the OHA executive created a powerful new “subcommittee.” Soon to be famously dubbed the “Three White Czars,” it would consist of Robertson, Hewitt and a third, rotating member. According to Hewitt, the men rather enjoyed their nickname. “Occasionally we exiled members to hockey's Siberia,” he later wrote, “but generally we weren't too severe.”
¹²
To the subcommittee were delegated virtually all routine matters, including questions of player eligibility.

In short, through his control of this small group, Robertson was still effectively in command of the OHA. And Robertson was preparing the ground for his most controversial decision yet: to take Ontario out of
Stanley Cup competition. At the annual meeting, he had talked about the possibility of an OHA challenge, but not if the Cup defenders were “ineligible according to our rules.”
¹³
Since the other Canadian senior leagues were clearly not eligible for amateur play in the eyes of the OHA, the die had been cast.

In reality, the trustees of the Stanley Cup had long since given up fighting professionalism. If the Cup was to be contested by the very best players, they had concluded, such resistance was hopeless. P. D. Ross, one of the Stanley Cup trustees as well as the editor of the
Ottawa Journal
, was increasingly outspoken on the matter:

To tell the plain truth, I feel rather bewildered about the conditions in our athletic sports. I can't help feeling sympathy for the men at the heads of our various senior lacrosse, football and hockey leagues.
They all would prefer simon pure amateur sport. And none of them know how to get it. Neither do I.
¹⁴

The matter came to a head in late January. Ross had written the country's three major leagues—the Eastern Canada, Manitoba and Ontario associations—to propose that they set up a permanent committee to govern the national playoffs. The reply of the OHA executive, under the pen of Hewitt, was not subtle:

The feeling was that the O.H.A. senior championship was sufficient honor [
sic
] for any one club, and that it would not be wise to mix with the other leagues named, where veiled professionalism is winked at.
¹⁵

Outside the OHA elite, this edict was undoubtedly very divisive. While the usual voices—including Ross's
Telegram
, Nelson's
Globe
and Hewitt's
Star
—chanted approval, the
News
vocalized the outrage of many Toronto fans. It declared bluntly that Ontario wanted its champion “up against the real thing.” Its further contention that “the O.H.A. seems disposed to mind everybody else's business rather than its own”
¹⁶
reflected a widespread belief that financial incentives were as prevalent in Ontario as anywhere else.

The OHA was not only aware of such suspicion; it was determined to address it—with a vengeance. Soon, in a pre-emptive crackdown, dozens of players were being hauled before the subcommittee and ordered to make amateur declarations. New president D. L. Darroch, evidently under the sway of Robertson, declared that the association was prepared to lose as many teams as necessary to retain its principles.

The OHA's hunt for transgressors led to more ugly public scraps. In 1905–06, the circus revolved around Bobby Rowe, the youthful star of a serious senior-level contender that was emerging in Barrie. Rowe had been excused after admitting to a couple of games with the Houghton Portage Lakers in 1902–03, when he was still a teenager. However, a letter from “one of the most prominent men in the copper country . . . over this gentleman's signature,”
¹⁷
which enclosed a picture of Rowe on the team, persuaded the OHA to change its mind. So, on the eve of a playoff game between Barrie and the Toronto Argonauts, the association decided to suspend Rowe after all. Feelings ran so high that Darroch was pelted
with eggs when he attempted to walk down a Barrie street.

It got worse. Harry Jamieson, the OHA's executive member from Barrie, took the association to court. At trial division he won a clear victory. Chief Justice William Glenholme Falconbridge slammed the OHA for proceedings that he declared unwarranted and void, transacted without reasonable notice and lacking any valid legal evidence.

If the czars were embarrassed, they did not show it. Nelson's
Globe
dismissed the judge's injunction by simply declaring, “in the meantime the season is over.”
¹⁸
Robertson's
Telegram
wrote that “the Rowe case is in the courts but it is quite settled in the O.H.A. councils.”
¹⁹
The association would later get the decision overturned on appeal, but for an organization based on the maxim of gentlemanly fair play, the whole episode did not look terribly “principled.”