sr edler
gold is not reality
- Mar 20, 2010
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In the early 1900s and through the 1910s, it seemed pretty much every large or notable city in Canada had its own city hockey league, and the southern Albertan city of Calgary would be no different. Between 1906 and 1911 the city also saw its largest population growth in its history, expanding from around 12,000 to 44,000 inhabitants in only five years, thus laying a solid groundwork for a booming hockey market.
One of the early hockey stars in Calgary was a puck chaser named Charlie Rouleau. Aylmer, Quebec native Rouleau – where he had seen the light of day on May 5, 1884 – was the son of Charles Borromée Rouleau, a well known politician, lawyer and judge in the North-West Territories. Rouleau, who had spent some of his youth in Ottawa, just across the river from his hometown of Aylmer, first made himself a hockey name in Alberta with the Calgary Victorias around the turn of the century.
Calgary Victorias circa 1901–02 with Charlie Rouleau seated second from the right
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
While Charlie Rouleau was a prominent sharpshooter from the centre forward position, leading the Calgary City Hockey League in goals both in 1908–09 and 1909–10 with the Calgary Lacrosse-Hockey Club, he wasn’t the only player on the prairies with a knack for finding the back of the net. Fellow forward Eddie King, a year younger than Rouleau and a teammate of his on the Lacrosse-Hockey seven, also had a reputation as a strong goal-getter.
Calgary native Eddie King, who was the son of the second mayor of the city George Clift King, was in fact known to pack one of the hardest shots in Western Canada. Such a hard shot it was, allegedly, that chicken wire had to be draped around the ends of the Sherman Roller Rink, the local multi-purpose arena, to keep pucks from flying into the crowd. But replacing said chicken wire became a recurring job for rink manager Lloyd Turner, as King kept rifling the rubber through the netting time and again. And when stronger fencing was eventually erected, King instead tested his shot power against the boards, at times splitting or even shattering the material. King’s puck skills were even said to have terrorised owner and arena operator Bill Sherman’s own drum, and its sheepskins, set up in the arena to provide music for the skaters.[1][2]
Such a tale it became, Eddie King’s shot dynamics, that it was told in The Calgary Albertan newspaper in 1950 and then recycled yet again by the same paper in 1975, a whole 25 years later.
From July 10, 1950 and May 12, 1975 issues of The Calgary Albertan
Even renowned Hockey Hall of Fame net guardian Percy LeSueur, of the Ottawa Hockey Club, complimented on Eddie King’s shot, and called it one of the ”most wicked” he had ever witnessed, when King trained with the club and had a short 5 game stint with Ottawa during the 1911–12 NHA season.[3] But on the stacked Ottawa club there wasn’t much room left for King on the forward line, and he left the NHA without having scored a single goal.
While the Calgary Lacrosse-Hockey Club won back to back city league championships in 1908 and 1909, in 1910 the club had to capitulate its city crown to the Calgary Tigers. The Tigers had acquired Toronto native forward Art Lowes for the season from the Toronto St. Michael’s OHA club, and Lowes 17 goals in 9 games helped propel the team to the top of the standing. The Tigers also had Eddie King on the roster at the start of the season, although he jumped back to his old Lacrosse-Hockey team halfway through the campaign.
Calgary Lacrosse-Hockey Club in 1907–08
Players from left to right: Eddie King, Bill Laing, Alphonse Guay, Percy Powell, G. P. Shaw, Dan McLeod and Charlie Rouleau
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
On defence the Calgary Tigers had also brought in a sturdy presence in Mr. John Liddell ”Doc” Gibson, to help out matters. Gibson, of course, was the same man who had been a central figure in the forming of the first fully professional hockey league roughly half a decade earlier, as a member of the Portage Lakes Hockey Club in Houghton, Michigan: the International Hockey League (1904–1907). Gibson had been out of hockey for a couple of years, but still brought a fine article of hockey to the table in Calgary.
Other notable hockey players in Calgary in the early to mid 1910s included Dan McLeod (of lacrosse fame), Bert Sparrow, Walter Green, Joe Graham, Louis ”Buck” Grant, Fred Steele, cousins Alex and Frank ”Bull” McHugh, and renowned defenceman Herb Gardiner, the last named player on the left wing position with the Calgary Monarchs in 1914–15.
For the 1911–12 season, the Calgary Athletic Club, playing in the Southern Alberta Senior Hockey League, boosted their roster by bringing in two sturdy young players from Kingston, Ontario, in defenceman William ”Big Bill” McCammon and forward Allan ”Scotty” Davidson. The Calgary team actually used Davidson as a defenceman as well, for the majority of the season, although he would later become more famous as a right winger and captain with the Stanley Cup winning Toronto Blueshirts in 1913–14.
The Calgary Athletic Club went so far as to challenge for the Allan Cup in 1912, but were soundly walloped by the Winnipeg Victorias on March 6 and 8 by a total score of 19 goals to 6 (11-0, 8-6).
Around noon on Thursday February 25, 1915, the hockey world in Calgary took a significant blow to the chin when the Sherman Roller Rink quickly became engulfed in a large fire, which came to totally destroy the whole structure and also swallowed valuable hockey equipment in the process. Rink manager Lloyd Turner and his wife, who lived in apartments in the newer concrete portion of the arena, narrowly escaped the disaster with their lives intact, as did a girls hockey team who had practiced at the rink when it caught fire.[4]
Crowd watching the Sherman Rink go up in flames on February 25, 1915
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
The arena, built in 1904 and prior to being purchased by Bill Sherman known as the Calgary Auditorium Rink, had stood on the corner of 17th Avenue and Centre Street and had become somewhat of a mecca not only for ice and roller hockey but also for a broad array of entertainment and political gatherings in the city. Ohio native Sherman, with a background in both circus and vaudeville and described as a flamboyant showman of the P.T. Barnum calibre, had successfully helped out turning Calgary into a viable sports town through his aggressive rink ventures.[5]
In the scramble to find a new venue to play at, the outdoor Crystal Rink had to be temporarily utilised by the hockey teams in the city.
Sports writer and former athlete and manager Tony McKinley – on January 19, 1937, in his Calgary Albertan sports column ”In Sports Domain” – claimed, in metaphorical language, that the hockey circuit in Calgary had been so hectic around the 1914–15 season that the Sherman Rink had caught fire as a result:
While Herb Gardiner returned from the war, and continued on a highly successful Hockey Hall of Fame career that eventually steered him to the NHL, not everyone else did. One notable local player lost to the war was defenceman Fred Steele, who had played with the Calgary Victorias between 1913–1916.
Another life well known to the Calgary hockey audience, lost to the war in Europe, was former Calgary Athletic Club player Allan ”Scotty” Davidson, who died in Belgium on June 16, 1915, at the mere age of 24. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950.
Herb Gardiner spent most of his HHOF career in Calgary,
here pictured with the 1919–20 Calgary Wanderers of the Big-4 League
The hockey scene in Calgary eventually recuperated itself towards the end of the decade, both from the loss of the Sherman Roller Rink and the loss of lives in the Great War, partly due to the Big-4 League, a joint exercise between Calgary and its northern cousin Edmonton, which ran for two seasons from 1919–1921. The league attracted a fair amount of high profile players and the various Calgary teams saw all of Mickey MacKay, Red Dutton, Herb Gardiner, Harry Oliver and Barney Stanley dress up for ice duty.
In 1924, the Calgary Tigers, now a member of the Western Canada Hockey League, would even play for the Stanley Cup, led by a solid group of Calgary veterans (Dutton, Gardiner, Oliver) and an equally solid group of PCHA alumni (Bernie Morris, Cully Wilson, Eddie Oatman) and piloted by the old rink manager Lloyd Turner. But the Montreal Canadiens became too high of a mountain to climb for the Tigers, with the series ending 9-1 (6-0, 3-1) in favour of the NHL club.
Sources:
[1] The Calgary Albertan, July 10, 1950
[2] The Calgary Albertan, May 12, 1975
[3] The Calgary Herald, January 9, 1912
[4] The Calgary Herald, February 25, 1915
[5] The Calgary Herald, December 26, 1981
[6] The Calgary Albertan, January 19, 1937
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
One of the early hockey stars in Calgary was a puck chaser named Charlie Rouleau. Aylmer, Quebec native Rouleau – where he had seen the light of day on May 5, 1884 – was the son of Charles Borromée Rouleau, a well known politician, lawyer and judge in the North-West Territories. Rouleau, who had spent some of his youth in Ottawa, just across the river from his hometown of Aylmer, first made himself a hockey name in Alberta with the Calgary Victorias around the turn of the century.
Calgary Victorias circa 1901–02 with Charlie Rouleau seated second from the right
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
Calgary native Eddie King, who was the son of the second mayor of the city George Clift King, was in fact known to pack one of the hardest shots in Western Canada. Such a hard shot it was, allegedly, that chicken wire had to be draped around the ends of the Sherman Roller Rink, the local multi-purpose arena, to keep pucks from flying into the crowd. But replacing said chicken wire became a recurring job for rink manager Lloyd Turner, as King kept rifling the rubber through the netting time and again. And when stronger fencing was eventually erected, King instead tested his shot power against the boards, at times splitting or even shattering the material. King’s puck skills were even said to have terrorised owner and arena operator Bill Sherman’s own drum, and its sheepskins, set up in the arena to provide music for the skaters.[1][2]
Such a tale it became, Eddie King’s shot dynamics, that it was told in The Calgary Albertan newspaper in 1950 and then recycled yet again by the same paper in 1975, a whole 25 years later.
From July 10, 1950 and May 12, 1975 issues of The Calgary Albertan
While the Calgary Lacrosse-Hockey Club won back to back city league championships in 1908 and 1909, in 1910 the club had to capitulate its city crown to the Calgary Tigers. The Tigers had acquired Toronto native forward Art Lowes for the season from the Toronto St. Michael’s OHA club, and Lowes 17 goals in 9 games helped propel the team to the top of the standing. The Tigers also had Eddie King on the roster at the start of the season, although he jumped back to his old Lacrosse-Hockey team halfway through the campaign.
Calgary Lacrosse-Hockey Club in 1907–08
Players from left to right: Eddie King, Bill Laing, Alphonse Guay, Percy Powell, G. P. Shaw, Dan McLeod and Charlie Rouleau
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
Other notable hockey players in Calgary in the early to mid 1910s included Dan McLeod (of lacrosse fame), Bert Sparrow, Walter Green, Joe Graham, Louis ”Buck” Grant, Fred Steele, cousins Alex and Frank ”Bull” McHugh, and renowned defenceman Herb Gardiner, the last named player on the left wing position with the Calgary Monarchs in 1914–15.
For the 1911–12 season, the Calgary Athletic Club, playing in the Southern Alberta Senior Hockey League, boosted their roster by bringing in two sturdy young players from Kingston, Ontario, in defenceman William ”Big Bill” McCammon and forward Allan ”Scotty” Davidson. The Calgary team actually used Davidson as a defenceman as well, for the majority of the season, although he would later become more famous as a right winger and captain with the Stanley Cup winning Toronto Blueshirts in 1913–14.
The Calgary Athletic Club went so far as to challenge for the Allan Cup in 1912, but were soundly walloped by the Winnipeg Victorias on March 6 and 8 by a total score of 19 goals to 6 (11-0, 8-6).
Around noon on Thursday February 25, 1915, the hockey world in Calgary took a significant blow to the chin when the Sherman Roller Rink quickly became engulfed in a large fire, which came to totally destroy the whole structure and also swallowed valuable hockey equipment in the process. Rink manager Lloyd Turner and his wife, who lived in apartments in the newer concrete portion of the arena, narrowly escaped the disaster with their lives intact, as did a girls hockey team who had practiced at the rink when it caught fire.[4]
Crowd watching the Sherman Rink go up in flames on February 25, 1915
(University of Calgary Digital Collections)
In the scramble to find a new venue to play at, the outdoor Crystal Rink had to be temporarily utilised by the hockey teams in the city.
Sports writer and former athlete and manager Tony McKinley – on January 19, 1937, in his Calgary Albertan sports column ”In Sports Domain” – claimed, in metaphorical language, that the hockey circuit in Calgary had been so hectic around the 1914–15 season that the Sherman Rink had caught fire as a result:
”Things were so hot that the old Sherman Rink burned down in the spring and Herb Gardiner and several more of the boys went to the Great War.”[6]
While Herb Gardiner returned from the war, and continued on a highly successful Hockey Hall of Fame career that eventually steered him to the NHL, not everyone else did. One notable local player lost to the war was defenceman Fred Steele, who had played with the Calgary Victorias between 1913–1916.
Another life well known to the Calgary hockey audience, lost to the war in Europe, was former Calgary Athletic Club player Allan ”Scotty” Davidson, who died in Belgium on June 16, 1915, at the mere age of 24. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950.
Herb Gardiner spent most of his HHOF career in Calgary,
here pictured with the 1919–20 Calgary Wanderers of the Big-4 League
In 1924, the Calgary Tigers, now a member of the Western Canada Hockey League, would even play for the Stanley Cup, led by a solid group of Calgary veterans (Dutton, Gardiner, Oliver) and an equally solid group of PCHA alumni (Bernie Morris, Cully Wilson, Eddie Oatman) and piloted by the old rink manager Lloyd Turner. But the Montreal Canadiens became too high of a mountain to climb for the Tigers, with the series ending 9-1 (6-0, 3-1) in favour of the NHL club.
Sources:
[1] The Calgary Albertan, July 10, 1950
[2] The Calgary Albertan, May 12, 1975
[3] The Calgary Herald, January 9, 1912
[4] The Calgary Herald, February 25, 1915
[5] The Calgary Herald, December 26, 1981
[6] The Calgary Albertan, January 19, 1937
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
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