A Great Game (15 page)

Even more ominously, the highest bodies in Canadian sports were on the verge of endorsing professionalism outright. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, long the country's most powerful such organization, had announced it would hire pro players for its (otherwise amateur) teams, including hockey's legendary Montreal Wheelers. It seemed only
a matter of time before the country's national governing body, the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union, would follow suit.

The truth is that, for some years now, the gap between the principles and realities of amateur sport in Canada had been widening. The CAAU had been attempting to paper this over with an uneasy compromise: it would not go after professionalism in team games as long as the practice remained unofficial. This was also the approach taken by the trustees of the Stanley Cup. After all, when Lord Stanley had first announced his intentions of contributing a “challenge cup” in March 1892, it was stated that the trophy would go to “the champion hockey team in the Dominion.” Nothing was said of the winners being “amateurs.” Of course, no one then imagined the possibility of “professional” ice hockey. Outside of a handful of elite players, the sport was largely a pastime being enjoyed by, among many others, the governor general's own children.

To Robertson and his acolytes at the OHA, the CAAU's notion of compromise was simply an abandonment of principle. As the country's most powerful advocate of pure amateurism, the association could not tolerate such thinking, and, early in 1906, Robertson's group had taken the extraordinary step of officially dropping out of Stanley Cup competition. The OHA, from this point on, would have nothing to do with the increasingly famous and coveted mug. Robertson was also using the association to increasingly rally opinion in Toronto sports circles against the actions of the Montreal-based CAAU.

The amateur athletic leaders of Montreal and Toronto were now headed for an inevitable collision. True, they were all rapidly coming to the view that the hypocrisy of amateur athletics was no longer acceptable. It was an open secret that many of the best players were being paid under the table. However, they had two diametrically opposed ways of resolving the situation.

In Montreal, Canada's leading commercial and sports city, the opinion was that amateurism had to accommodate the inescapable professional pressures in team sports. In Toronto, the country's rival power centre, the position was that pure amateurism had to be enforced.

The 1906 annual meeting of the CAAU was set for October 27 in Montreal. Topping the agenda would be a proposal to amend the definition of amateurism to allow amateurs and professionals to mix in team
sports. As the big date approached, opposing bands of sports leaders in Quebec and Ontario escalated the conflict. Each threatened to secede from the CAAU if its position was not upheld.

The Montreal men were confident of victory. This Anglophone elite had long been the source of the nation's top sports executives, and as such, they were convinced of the wisdom of their conclusions. To them, it was clear that professionalism at the senior level of popular team games like hockey was inevitable. After all, baseball and lacrosse—then still the country's most popular summer sport—had already turned pro. But there were soon signs that they had overreached.

Despite the powerful MAAA's backing for commingling, there was strong resistance—even in Quebec. The CAAU's outgoing president, Captain P. Gorman, was known to strongly favour stricter amateurism and was, in fact, far closer to Robertson's thinking than to that of his fellow Montrealers. Gorman had come to believe that the leniency shown lacrosse was a mistake. The organizers of lacrosse's main rival, rugby football, were also resisting the idea of professionalism at the senior level.

The showdown turned into a rout. To the shock of the Montreal
establishment, and to the delight of John Ross Robertson's followers, mixing pros with amateurs was defeated by a majority of 39 to 13. Some delegates went further, openly suggesting that the MAAA should be thrown out of the Union altogether. And a Toronto purist, the aptly named William Stark, the city's deputy chief of police, was voted the new president of the CAAU.

But the victors were not content to stop there. Stark, egged on by another Ontario hard-liner, Frank Grierson of Ottawa's Civil Service Amateur Athletic Association, was soon announcing a special investigation of eastern team sports. It was claimed that, in an environment of rampant professionalism, eastern hockey players were making as much as $1,350 per season. Grierson began to publicly name dozens of suspects. These included some of the country's most prominent athletes, whom he labelled as “scum.”
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Under Stark's leadership, the CAAU investigation would be handled by a new National Registration Committee. Akin to the OHA's Robertson-led subcommittee known as the “Three White Czars,” this body would conduct ongoing accreditation of and investigations into amateur athletics countrywide. An OHA man, James G. Merrick of the Argonauts, was Toronto's point person on the new committee. It seemed, for the moment, that the Robertson forces had taken not only the day, but the country itself.

However, if the Union's new leadership thought the Montreal gentlemen would simply sit back and allow themselves to be tried, condemned and executed by the registration committee, they were badly mistaken. On February 1, 1907, after considerable groundwork by the 2,000-strong MAAA, the Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada was announced.
The AAFC would be the “realistic” alternative to the new fundamentalism of the CAAU.

With Canada now possessing two “national” athletic organizations, the first shots had been fired in what would quickly come to be known as the “Athletic War.” Both the CAAU and AAFC claimed to be the true governing sports body of the country. To prove their respective claims, each began blacklisting the other's athletes, clubs, meets and associations. Across all sports—and across all of Canada—sides were being taken.

The country's national winter game would be a prime battleground.

It at first appeared that the pragmatists had the upper hand in hockey. The Montreal-centric leagues—the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association and the residual Federal Amateur Hockey League—had aligned themselves with the AAFC. The decision of the ECAHA to withdraw from the CAAU, taken on November 10, 1906, was particularly important.

By making the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers officially open to professional players for the 1906–07 season,
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the ECAHA effectively forced the hand of everyone in the hockey world. The Manitoba Hockey League split, with most of the teams going openly professional while the venerable Winnipeg Victorias and others left in protest. The Maritime Provinces Amateur Athletic Association forbade New Glasgow to pursue its Stanley Cup challenge against the Montreal Wanderers in December. It did anyway and was expelled, setting Atlantic hockey on a professional course.

The amateur purists, so triumphant at the October 27 meeting, were instantly and unequivocally on the retreat, especially in the hockey world. Even as far away as New York, it was observed that “there is a general
rebellion in Canada against the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union.”
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The big exception was Ontario, where professionalism existed only on the northern and eastern fringes—the former embodied by the International, Manitoba and Temiskaming leagues, the latter by the ECAHA and FAHL. In Canada's biggest province stood the one force resolutely resisting the trend: the Toronto-headquartered, Robertson-led Ontario Hockey Association.

Indeed, the OHA had come foursquare behind the newly Simon-pure CAAU. At the annual meeting in November, the
Globe
's Francis Nelson moved for formal affiliation with the Union. Like Robertson, he had not sought re-election at the annual meeting in 1905, but he was nevertheless aiming to become a permanent fixture on the executive. Membership in the CAAU would be his vehicle. Shortly thereafter, Nelson was named the OHA's representative on the Union's national board.

As the country's self-described bastion of amateurism, the OHA once again set out to keep hockey in Canada's largest province unsullied. It tightened its residency rule further, changing the deadline to August 1, and put curbs on its clubs playing exhibition games. As Nelson's
Globe
observed, professionalism in hockey was on the rise, and “in view of the strenuous fight that must be waged for amateur hockey, the O.H.A. must at once look to its fences and tighten up for the trouble.”
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