A Great Game (38 page)

The National Hockey Association, now clearly dominant in the pro hockey world, decided to act unilaterally. It launched a number of reforms, including a highly disputed salary cap. No club could have a payroll exceeding $5,000—less than half what most had spent the year before. In short order, the pro association had an employee rebellion on its hands.

The workers, led by stars Art Ross and Bruce Stuart, threatened their own, long-rumoured scheme: the formation of a players' union. As this “insurgency” spread it became more elaborate. Most of the leading NHA performers signed on to an attempt to establish an alternative, player-run
league
. Failure to secure an arena in Montreal ultimately scuttled the project, but deep divisions between management and players—and among the players themselves—persisted throughout the year.

While some clubs doubtlessly cheated, the salary cap did have an impact. Payrolls came down considerably, though to levels still historically quite high. At the same time, the NHA's infighting helped breathe some life back into rival pro leagues.

As alternatives for the players, the Saskatchewan and New Ontario circuits trudged along. An Interprovincial group sprang up in the Maritimes. And the struggling OPHL also seemed briefly to revive, establishing a new division east of Toronto.

The ongoing financial challenges of the NHA kept it from drifting to the Queen City, at least for the time being. Yet it would have been a logical development. In that other big national sport, lacrosse, the precedent had already been established. After emerging as the biggest pro circuit in the country, the Montreal-based National Lacrosse Union had secured good markets—both home and away—by expanding into Toronto in 1906.

However, the Queen City in 1910–11 remained its own, isolated hockey realm, under the restored order of Simon-pure amateurism. The city had seven senior teams in the Ontario Hockey Association that season, including the defending Allan Cup champions. Local matches were well attended and rivalries were keen. And the OHA view of the world remained the position of virtually all Toronto media.

The amateur advocates did sometimes still worry that pro hockey could have a future in Toronto. They knew that the exploits of departed OHA stars—Bruce Ridpath, Cyclone Taylor, Dubbie Kerr, Marty Walsh and the like—were followed closely by the city's hockey fans. A quiet elation swept the town as Ridpath and company helped the Senators regain the Stanley Cup from the Wanderers in 1910–11. The
News
even admitted ruefully that “although the N.H.A. has nothing to do with Toronto, local fans are immensely interested in the doings down East.”
¹⁵

The OHA's propaganda, of course, had effectively killed any possibility of a return to Toronto by its immediate competitor, the Ontario Professional Hockey League. The OPHL's 1910–11 expansion into eastern Ontario proved to be an unqualified failure. By the end of the campaign, it was apparent that even its established western clubs might soon give up the ghost.

In reality, ever since the departure of its flagship Toronto club, the OPHL's remaining towns had struggled in their compact circuit of southwestern Ontario. Writers from the provincial capital had constantly and mercilessly ridiculed this so-called “Trolley League.”
¹⁶
Locked out of the big-city market, the Ontario Pro league became even less competitive in the hunt for the best pro players. Its champions, likewise, became even less convincing as contenders for the Stanley Cup.

The OPHL's image was not helped by the antics of Buck Irving. It has been said of Irving that “the league's father he may have been; but
if it had been actual paternity involved, the Children's Aid would have declared him an unfit parent.”
¹⁷
Buck hopscotched from Guelph to Galt to Waterloo to Belleville and finally to Brantford. His bravado efforts to establish a viable pro hockey club became increasingly less credible and less welcome.

Thus, the attention of the Toronto hockey community remained focused where the OHA papers told them it should be: on the OHA. Each spring after the demise of the Professionals, crowds of up to 3,000 would pile into the creaking old Mutual Street Rink for the association's biggest games. In 1911, it would crown a new senior champion, which in turn promised to bring the Queen City the Allan Cup.

This winner of the John Ross Robertson trophy would, sadly, serve only to remind Torontonians that the restored amateur order had neither forgotten nor learned from any of its earlier absurdities.

The team was the Toronto Eatonias. It was the creation of the Eaton's Athletic Association, a group of employees of the city's famous department store, also one of its largest employers. The Eaton's club repeated as OHA senior champions the following season, 1911–12, playing for, but failing to capture, Sir Montagu's mug.

There would be no third Ontario championship for the Eatonias, however. Prior to the 1912–13 season, the titleholders were expelled by the OHA. The reason? No, they had not been found guilty of professionalism; they had not really even been accused of playing for pay. Nonetheless, because they were linked to a commercial entity—the department store—they were deemed to be
potentially
professional.

Whereas decisions like this might have once caused a firestorm, they did no more. The OHA's annual meetings had become highly scripted, lightly attended affairs where the association's permitted business would still be authored by the Three White Czars—John Ross Robertson, perennial secretary W. A. Hewitt, AAUC representative Francis Nelson—and a handful of their followers. Virtually all the offices went routinely uncontested. Besides, the executive rarely met, leaving most important business to Robertson's “subcommittee.”

Instead, delegates would be treated to Robertsonesque orations from the OHA president of the day. These spoke of the glory of Canada's national winter sport, comparing it with—you guessed it—the grandeur of the OHA itself. Welland newspaperman and former Olympian Louis Blake Duff gave one of the most eloquent in his 1910 address:

Today, after these score of years, we find the domain of the OHA reaching to the uttermost West of Old Ontario, east to within hailing distance of Montreal, north to the edge of civilization and south to the edge of winter—a domain that would make a dozen European principalities.

The game has taken a tremendous hold upon the interests of the Canadian people, and it is not strange, for it typifies wonderfully the sturdy pluck, the courage, the stamina, the resolution, the dash and go, that is lifting this country up to the heights of splendid
achievement . . . The hockey stick struck a responsive chord in the breast of young Canada, and in the breast of Canada that is not so young.

John Ross Robertson was saving his own speeches—and his enormous energies—for the biggest issues of the day. As 1911 progressed, this was clearly the proposal of the Laurier government for “reciprocity”—i.e., free trade—with the United States. It was not hard to predict what the
Telegram
would think of the idea of letting the protective walls of the Canadian Dominion come down against the ravenous encroachment of the American Republic. Robertson's right-hand man,
Tely
editor John “Black Jack” Robinson, declared that free trade was “the enemy of Toronto” and that the streets of the city would be soon covered over in grass if a deal with the United States went ahead.
¹⁸

Robertson had spent part of the summer in Great Britain, but had returned in early September to launch his own campaign against free trade. Speaking in Montreal, the proprietor of the
Telegram
told his audience that “the people of the great province of Ontario have not changed their party allegiance. They are simply voting almost as one man against the reciprocity agreement the government has concluded with the United States.”

His province, Robertson claimed, was aroused as it had not been since the people rose up and threw out the corrupt provincial government of Premier G. W. Ross in 1905 following allegations of vote buying in the previous election. Ontario, he predicted, would vote in overwhelming majority for the opposition in the federal election that would be held the following week.
¹⁹

“Ontario is Awake,” proclaimed the
Gazette
headline over the Montreal newspaper's account of Robertson's speech. And the old man was right—the Laurier government and reciprocity were indeed trounced at the polls. Still, as Robertson celebrated another great victory, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his earlier one was beginning to slip away.

Back in Toronto in the late spring, J. J. Palmer had sold most of his share in the Caledonian properties to a larger consortium. This land, which was substantially larger than the area occupied by the Mutual Street Rink, had been intended for the famous “new rink.” His manager,
Alexander Miln, had long promised such. In fact, in the fall of 1910, Miln had returned from New York with plans for precisely such a modern, steel structure. Building materials had even appeared at the site.

Maybe Robertson thought the whole thing of no consequence. After all, Miln's opposition to any professional tenant in a Mutual Street building was well known. However, Miln was away in England at the time of the sale. The new principals—who hailed from both Toronto and Montreal—promptly removed him and put a new man in his place.

The new manager also had connections to both Toronto and Montreal. He was a Toronto businessman and a former star player in Montreal hockey. He was W. J. Bellingham, the first man to have attempted to form a Toronto professional hockey club back in the fall of 1903.

And this time, the powerful interests behind Bellingham were determined that pro hockey would come to Toronto to stay.

A New and Stronger Toronto Hockey Club Emerges

Toronto could do with pro hockey of the best brand, though it rather turns up its nose at the kind that loses championships to Galt, Berlin and other rural constituencies.
¹

—
Toronto Telegram

In his occupational heart, John Ross Robertson always remained a journalist. As such, he sometimes mixed the two motives that animate his vocation. Believing events to be important, he wanted to shape them as much as report them. And, regardless of his own worldview, he wished to demonstrate objectivity and insight into what was transpiring. The quote above, from the
Telegram
, may be both. No doubt it was motivated by the ongoing desire of Robertson and his amateur colleagues to denigrate the Ontario Professional Hockey League. In the process, however, it betrayed an understanding that Torontonians' hockey aspirations were not exactly in line with the ideals of Robertson's Ontario Hockey Association.