the cat came back
The diminutive right winger Johnny (Black Cat) Gagnon played most of his hockey for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1930s, often on a line with Howie Morenz and Aurèle Joliat, but midway through the 1939-40 NHL season, Montreal sold his contract to the New York Americans. He and his new team were back at the Forum on Saturday, March 2, 1940. As seen here, there were gifts for him, pre-game, including this handsome cellarette (a liquor cabinet) presented by a deputation of fans from Gagnon’s hometown, Chicoutimi. That’s Le Canada journalist Paul Parizeau on the right, lending a hand, holding his hat.
Once the furniture had been cleared from the ice, New York surged to a 2-0 lead before Montreal tied the game, then went ahead in the second on a goal by Louis Trudel. It was left to Gagnon to come through as the spoiler and tie the game. Set up by Pat Egan and Tommy Anderson, he beat Montreal goaltender Mike Karakas with a slapshot, no less, as described by Montreal’s Gazette.
Ten minutes of overtime solved nothing and the game finished in a 3-3 tie. In fact, the overtime went on longer than it meant to, with the bell failing to chime to end the game, and referee Mickey Ion oblivious to the time. Finally, New York coach Red Dutton jumped on the ice to signal that it was all over.
The following night in New York, the teams met again. By the end of that night, it was almost over for the Canadiens, as the Americans prevailed 3-0 to push Montreal to the brink of mathematical elimination from the playoffs with five games to go in the regular season. Montreal would be the only team to fail to make the post-season grade that year, as they finished dead last in the seven-team NHL, nine points adrift of the Americans.
Johnny Gagnon died on a Wednesday of today’s date in 1984. He was 78.
(Image: Conrad Poirier, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)
a headline history of the 1955 richard riot: destruction et pillage (couldn’t happen in toronto)

March Madness: Montreal’s Sainte-Catherine Street bore the brunt of the rioting (and a flood of toe-rubbers) on the night of Thursday, March 17, 1955.
March went out with a roar in Montreal in 1955 after NHL President Clarence Campbell suspended Canadiens’ superstar Maurice Richard for the remainder of that NHL season and the playoffs after a melee in Boston in which he fought with Bruins’ defenceman Hal Laycoe and knocked down a linesman, Cliff Thompson. The rest, of course, was history, wherein the events of the week that followed are remembered as the Richard Riot. A review from those eventful days 68 years ago this week by way of headlines culled from newspapers of the day, from across North America and around the world:
Monday, March 14
Richard Goes Insane
Boston Daily Record
Richard Stick Duels Laycoe, Fights With Official
Boston Daily Globe
Rocket Goes Wild At Boston, Clouts Laycoe, Linesman
Gazette
Richard’s Boston Rampage May Hit Habs’ Playoff Hopes
Montreal Star
Tuesday, March 15
Boston Brawl Principals Meet Here Wednesday Morning
Gazette
‘Rocket’ Is Rushed To Hospital For Head X-Ray, Stomach Upset
Toronto Daily Star
Montréal-Matin
Punish The Rocket? Decision Tomorrow
Globe and Mail
Wednesday, March 16
Hockey Hearing To Start Today: Richard of Canadiens Will Leave Hospital to Attend Investigation of Fight
New York Times
Décision attendue aujourd’hui dans le cas de Maurice Richard
La Presse
‘Dead’ By Weekend Threat To Campbell
Ottawa Journal
Thursday, March 17
Richard Banni Par Campbell
Montréal-Matin
Campbell Bans Richard From Playoffs
Detroit Free Press
Ban Against Richard Severe Blow To Canadiens’ Hopes
Montreal Star
Suspension De Richard: Campbell Est Menacé De Mort
La Patrie
Richard May Retire From Hockey
Ottawa Journal
Rocket Not Likely To Retire
Ottawa Citizen
Richard Faces Bleakest Era Of His Colorful Career
Ottawa Journal
Réaction multiples en marge de la suspension de M. Richard
L’Action Catholique
Had Fans Are Bitter; Threats Of Violence
Globe and Mail
La punition jugée trop forte: Le maire Drapeau espère une revision du verdict
La Presse
Ired Fans Threaten Reprisal
Gazette
Forum Warns Spectators
Ottawa Journal
Trouble And Fame Have Gone Hand In Hand For Rocket
Ottawa Journal
Adams Says Rocket Got Light Deal
Montreal Star
School Sports Head Praises Campbell
Gazette
‘Pas d’appel,’ dit Selke; Campbell au Forum ce soir
La Presse
Friday, March 18
La foule s’attaque au président Campbell
La Patrie
Campbell Chassé Du Forum
Montréal-Matin
Émeute sans précédent
La Patrie
Pire Émeute Depuis La Conscription, À Montreal
Le Droit
U.S. Tear-Gas Bomb Sold Here In 1941
Montreal Star
74 arrestations, 46 vitrines brisées pendant l’émeute
La Patrie
Défi Et Provocation De Campbell
La Presse
Montreal Mayor Criticized In Riot
Ottawa Citizen
Destruction Et Pillage
La Presse
Couldn’t Happen Here
Ottawa Citizen
‘Couldn’t Happen In Toronto,’ Smythe
Ottawa Journal
A Disgrace To Canada
Toronto Daily Star
‘Never … Anything So Disgraceful’ Jack Adams Says
Ottawa Journal
‘It’s Unbelievable’ Says Bruins’ Boss
Ottawa Journal
Seven-Hour Rampage By Ice Hockey Fans
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
New York Papers Front Page Hockey Riot
Ottawa Journal
Jail 100 Hockey Fans
Boston Evening Globe
Bullets, Eggs Fly At Riot In Montreal
St. Petersburg Times
‘Our Population Is Enthusiastic,’ Montreal Official
Ottawa Journal
A Disgraceful Spectacle
Gazette
Innocent Storekeepers Pay Huge Toll In Vandals’ Wake
Montreal Star
Ottawa Russians Peeved As ‘Rocket’ Under Suspension
Toronto Daily Star
Councillor Seeks Warrant For Arrest Clarence Campbell
Ottawa Journal
Hooliganism In Montreal
Ottawa Journal
Good For President Campbell!
Ottawa Journal
New York Rangers Not Scared
Ottawa Journal
Campbell démissionnerait
Le Devoir

Collared: Press photo of an unidentified demonstrator apprehended on March 17, 1955 by Montreal police constables (from left) Charles Hynes and Jacques Belanger.
Saturday, March 19
This Isn’t Montreal
Gazette
Majority Of Fans Sickened By Riot
Ottawa Journal
Selke Blames Few Hooligans Not Real Fans
Toronto Dailey Star
Montreal Rioting ‘Premeditated’
Times (U.K.)
Montreal Cops Amazed No One Killed In Mad Violence After Game
Toronto Daily Star
Firm Says Bomb Not Sold To Public
Gazette
Council Lauds Police For ‘Preventing’ Riot
Gazette
Police To Prevent New Riots
Ottawa Journal
Richard Begs Fans Behave
Boston Daily Globe
Richard, Mayor Ask For Orderly Game
Gazette
Stores Rush Mop-Up; Loss Set At $50,000
Gazette
Rioters Allowed Bail On Various Charges
Gazette
Campbell Right In Suspending Rocket, Richard’s Cousin
Lethbridge Herald
Montreal Riot Latent Hostility To Law, Order
Gazette
Riot May Have Sobering Effect, Says Campbell
Globe and Mail
Campbell Announces He Won’t Attend Game Tonight
Gazette
Riots Could Happen Anytime, Anywhere Says Specialist
Lethbridge Herald
Police Ban Parades, Public Assemblies Near Forum
Gazette
Hockey Players ‘Spring Lambs’ Compared To Fans
Ottawa Journal
Tuesday, March 22
Boston Writers Travel By Pairs In Montreal
Boston Daily Globe
Friday, March 25
Campbell Says Forum Riot Could Have Prevented
Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, March 30
Campbell Finds Solace In Vilifying Mail, Wires
Globe and Mail
Campbell Squashes Proposal To have Rocket Play In Britain
Globe and Mail
Thursday, April 7
27 Men Fined $25 to $100 For Forum Demonstrations
Gazette
Friday, April 15
Wings Beat Habs 3-1, Retain Stanley Cup
Gazette
good-natured hoaxing + giddy clowning: a fête for a maple leaf king, st. patrick’s day, 1934

Sláinte: King Clancy donned a special sweater on March 17, 1934, for a St. Patrick’s Day bout with the New York Rangers. He changed back into his regular Leaf colours after the first period. Sold at auction in 2009, the greenery fetched a price of $44,628.85. (Image: Classic Auctions)
St. Patrick’s Day at Maple Leaf Gardens was a big do in 1934: Conn Smythe spared no extravagance in celebrating the day in raucous style, and Leafs’ star defenceman, King Clancy, along with it. There was a hockey game, too, as Toronto beat the visiting New York Rangers, but it was what took place before any pucks were played that makes an impression 89 years later, even if the Leafs and the NHL would rather not recall the circumstances in too much detail. For TVO Today, I wrote about the Irish-infused revelry that night, how Clancy ended up playing the game in blackface, and why Toronto barely batted an eye. You can read about it here.
let my rocket go
In the aftermath of Maurice Richard’s extraordinary suspension in March of 1955 and the riotous tumult that followed, the Montreal Gazette reported on one resourceful Canadiens fan who sought the intervention of Canada’s own Queen, Elizabeth II. She had, it’s true, met the Rocket in Montreal in October of 1951, and with her husband, Prince Philip, watched him play in a game at the Forum against the Rangers, wherein he almost fought New York’s Steve Kraftcheck. (Prince Philip apparently wished he had.) Did the Queen have jurisdiction in cases of NHL discipline, and if so, would King Charles III now consider absolving Jordan Binnington of the St. Louis Blues, do you think? Good questions. In 1955, there’s no indication that Her Majesty ever saw the petition seeking her pardon of the Rocket.
rocket richard riots, 1955: the view from boston
March 13 fell on a Sunday in 1955 and as the NHL season wound down, the first-place Montreal Canadiens paid a visit to Boston to play the Bruins. The third was when all hell broke loose. With six-and-a-half minutes remaining and Boston leading 4-1, the Bruins’ Warren Godfrey took a holding penalty. Montreal coach Dick Irvin pulled his goaltender, Jacques Plante, and Canadiens went to the attack. It was then that Bruins defenceman Hal Laycoe, 32, high-sticked Canadiens’ superstar Maurice Richard, 33. Tom Fitzgerald of the Boston Globe gave it a decidedly more passive spin in his description: “Laycoe’s uplifted stick caught Richard on the side of the head.”
In the fight that ensued, blood flowed as both players swung sticks and threw fists, and in the chaos of it all, Richard punched linesman Cliff Thompson. “Thompson tried to pop Maurice right back,” Fitzgerald wrote, “but landed short, and meanwhile Laycoe flung his red-drenched towel at [referee Frank] Udvari, earning his misconduct.”
The coverage next day in Boston also included the headline above in the Daily Record and the artist’s impression below, from the Boston American. NHL President Clarence Campbell wasted no time in suspending Richard for the remainder of the season and the playoffs, a sentence that would have consequences in Montreal four days later.
hab it your way

Man + Machine: Claude Provost’s record as a smothering checker and all-round redoubtable right winger for the Montreal Canadiens is hard to match: in 15 seasons, he helped the mighty Habs carry off nine Stanley Cup championships across a career that lasted from 1955 through 1970. In 1968, he was the first winner, too, of the Bill Masterton Trophy for hockey perseverance. Here he is at 40 in 1973, out for a rip three years after his retirement from the NHL, still repping the bleu, blanc, et rouge. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)
forum farewell
“Men, women, and children — judges, doctors, lawyers, industrialists, city and provincial government officials, business executives, milkmen, postmen, housewives, stenographers, schoolchildren, people of all callings 10,000 strong — thronged the Forum for the Canadien Comet’s funeral services,” reported the Montreal Gazette. It was on Thursday, March 11, 1937, that Montreal said farewell to the indelible Howie Morenz, who had died earlier that week at the age of 34. Morenz’s casket rested at centre ice, surrounded by floral tributes and dignitaries, including teammates and members of the Montreal Maroons and Toronto Maple Leafs. A throng estimated at 25,000 attended the cortège to the burial at Mount Royal Cemetery.
double boom

Boom + Boom: Bernie Geoffrion died of stomach cancer on a Saturday of this date in 2006. He was 75. That very night at Montreal’s Bell Centre, the Canadiens retired Geoffrion’s number 5 in a previously scheduled ceremony. On yet another Saturday, March 11, this one in 1961, Geoffrion scored his 47th and 48th goals of the season on Boston goaltender Bruce Gamble. Geoffrion would win the Art Ross Trophy that year as the NHL’s leading scorer, finishing the regular season with 50 goals and 95 points, five points clear of teammate Jean Béliveau. (Image: Tex Coulter)
the centreman who never was: the true (untrue) story + nhl career of rainy drinkwater

With Gotham’s Finest: René Boileau’s stint with the NHL’s New York Americans lasted seven regular-season games.
A version of the following post appeared online in January at TVOntario’s TVO Today.
René Boileau was fast on his skates, and a tricky stickhandler. In Montreal almost a century ago, a local newspaper deemed the 21-year-old centreman “one of the smartest of the younger amateurs in the district.” In 1926, he got the opportunity young hockey players dream of, and a chance that no Indigenous player had been offered before: a call and a contract to play in the NHL and in New York, no less.
For hockey, it’s a breakthrough story that might still be resonating today, proof positive that Canada’s beloved winter game has long been committed to ensuring that it truly is for everyone.
But Boileau didn’t break through — not because he didn’t last long or prosper in the NHL (though he didn’t), but because Boileau wasn’t, in fact, Indigenous. His was a case of appropriated identity; today, he might be termed a “pretendian.” For publicity purposes — to sell tickets — the now-defunct New York Americans made up the tale of Rainy Drinkwater.
In the winter of 1925, the NHL was preparing for its ninth season on ice. The previous year, the league had added its first U.S.-based team in the Boston Bruins. Now, it welcomed two more, the Pittsburgh Pirates and, in New York, the Americans. Like the Rangers, who arrived a year later, the Americans made their home at Madison Square Garden.
As they settled in, hopes ran high in Manhattan. The new team was backed by some powerful men, including Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter who’d built the Garden; Montreal businessman Tom Duggan; and New York bootlegger Bill Dwyer, who was at that point still a silent partner in the enterprise. Running the team day to day as manager and coach was Tommy Gorman, a wily old hockey hand from Ottawa who’d help steer the original Senators to three Stanley Cup championships in four years to start the 1920s.
In New York, Gorman pulled off nothing short of a coup before the first puck dropped, putting Dwyer’s dollars to good use by buying up a readymade winning team.
The Hamilton Tigers had topped the NHL standings through the 1924-25 season and were on track for a spring run at the Stanley Cup. But when the players went on strike to secure payment for post-season games, the NHL refused to yield, cancelling the franchise outright. That allowed Gorman to swoop in and buy the contracts of the entire Tiger team, including a pair of future Hall of Famers in Shorty Green and Billy Burch.
“Many experts believe the pennant will be landed by New York,” the local Daily News told its readers as the new season approached, framing hockey prospects in helpful baseball terms. That was also part of the team’s strategy for selling Canada’s game to uninitiated fans in New York; both Burch, who was named team captain, and another big-name signing, Joe Simpson, were billed as “the Babe Ruth of hockey.”
The PR push to sell hockey to New York also included hiring the superstar speedskater Norval Baptie to entertain fans between periods with displays of “fancy skating.” In late January, the Americans contrived to have Joe LaFlamme, renowned as the “Wolf Man,” drive his dogsled team (seven dogs and four wolves) from Gogama, Ontario, to perform intermission turns around the ice at Madison Square. (It’s not clear that he actually mushed all 1,300 kilometres from the Sudbury area to Manhattan.)
For all the firepower in New York’s line-up, though, the hockey didn’t go quite according to plan.
If the season that ensued wasn’t an outright trainwreck — the Americans finished ahead of the Montreal Canadiens in the final seven-team standings — an actual railway accident did figure as one of many challenges the Americans faced.
There was, for example, a kerfuffle over the thermometer at the rink. The management at Madison Square insisted on keeping the temperature at a balmy 21 C to make sure their patrons didn’t get chilly. Gorman wanted it lowered to 4 C and eventually took the matter to court, arguing that the heat was ruining the “accuracy, neatness, and dispatch” of the players, causing them to be “sluggish and to lose weight,” and slowing down games, thereby souring would-be fans on the sport they should be learning to love. Eventually, Garden management turned down the temperature.
That same season, Gorman saw fit to suspend a pair of players, one of them Joe Simpson, on a charge of “breaking training rules,” a euphemism often used in those years to shroud alcoholic indiscretions.
And then there were the injuries. “Modified murder” was The New Yorker’s 1926 description of NHL hockey. But, even for that violent era, the Americans’ casualty list was notable. In the pre-season, Mickey Roach went down with appendicitis. Once the hockey had started taking its toll, Crutchy Morrison hurt his knee, and Shorty Green wrenched a leg. In a game against the Montreal Canadiens in early December, Green and goaltender Jakie Forbes were both knocked unconscious. “Sturdy souls, these boys,” was a local paper’s appraisal. “A dash of water and a little persuasion and they were on their feet again.”
And then came the railway accident. Just before Christmas, the team was returning from a game in Pittsburgh when their night train derailed near Altoona, Pennsylvania. A student was killed, and five passengers were seriously injured. The hockey players were commended for their efforts in helping in the aftermath. Ken Randall came away with a dislocated shoulder, and three of his teammates were reported to have been badly cut and bruised. Randall and Green each missed a game recovering from their injuries.
Still, by mid-January, the Americans were vying with Pittsburgh for fourth place in the seven-team league. That’s not to say they were playing particularly well: they started 1926 by losing seven of their 11 games and winning just one.

Walking Wounded: New York Americans (from left) Ed Bouchard, Red Green, Billy Burch, and goaltender Jakie Forbes show off their plasters in January of 1926.
They were victims of a prejudicial schedule, said the New York Times, and they were worn and torn. “New York has been so closely pursued by hard luck in the way of injuries that the players are confident that they are in for a period of better luck soon. They will not believe that a jinx will pursue them all season.”
But that conviction didn’t slow the setbacks that led to René Boileau’s visit to the NHL.
Playing Boston early in the new year, Shorty Green’s younger brother, Red, got a skate in the face and Ken Randall, a stick. Shorty was carried off the ice unconscious that night in what was shaping up to be an alarmingly concussive month for him: four times in January, the elder Green was knocked out — “colder than the ice the boys skated on,” according to one reporter — in on-ice falls and collisions. Each time, Green got back up and, as another reporter noted, “gamely continued.”
In January, Gorman tried to change his team’s luck by bringing in a new coach. Alf Smith was a legendary hockey sage who’d played with and coached the Ottawa Silver Seven when they won four Stanley Cup championships from 1902 through 1906.
February brought on-ice reinforcement: the New York Times announced the Americans’ imminent “shake-up” and the signing of “Rainy Boileau Drinkwater, a Caughnawaga Indian.”
“He has never played professional hockey but he has been something of a sensation upon the lakes of St. Louis, where he has been playing amateur hockey this Winter,” the Times wrote.
Outlets across the U.S. picked up the news. Never before had the name “Rainy Drinkwater” appeared in print, but now it spread across the continent as writers whose experience did not include having seen Boileau skate in person described this “full-blooded Indian” as a “bronzed maple leaf” from “the St. Louis Lakes region of the Province of Quebec.”
He was touted as being as fast on his skates as Canadiens superstar Howie Morenz. “Sturdily built” (Montreal Gazette) and “an accurate and lightning-like shooter of the puck” (Ottawa Journal) Boileau/Drinkwater was, according to the Pittsburgh Daily Post, “regarded as the most promising amateur to come to the fore within the past 10 years.”
Flipping the facts fully on their heads, the Ottawa Journal took pains to explain that it was Rainy Drinkwater’s childhood friends who’d coined the name René Boileau. “The latter means ‘drink water.’ The former is pronounced — nearly — ‘rainy.’”
Back in Montreal, the Gazette initially reported the plain facts: Boileau had been turning out that winter for C.P. Verdun, an intermediate team, and for Columbus of the Quebec Senior League. In January, he’d joined the Bell Telephone team in the Montreal Railway-Telephone Hockey League, where he’d immediately made his presence felt, scoring four goals in a 6-4 win over Canadian Pacific at the Forum.
When, the following day, the Gazette picked up a wire report out of New York with the “Indian” angle, the Montreal paper published it with the editorial equivalent of a raised eyebrow: “It will be news to René Boileau to learn that he comes from the Caughnawaga Indian reservation.”
It’s worth noting that Boileau’s view of all this isn’t part of the historical record. As best we know, he had no part in the mythmaking, beyond going along with it for the extent of his stay in Manhattan. As he and the Gazette both well knew, he’d been born and raised in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, across the St. Lawrence from the Mohawk territory now known as Kahnawake. He was the son of non-Indigenous Catholic parents. His father was a construction foreman.
The legend expanded in later years. A 1966 column in the Montreal Gazette recounted that Rainy Drinkwater’s arrival in New York in early ’26 had included a parade, of sorts, down New York’s Broadway Avenue, with Boileau riding in an open car “outfitted in colourful Indian regalia, including an ornate headdress.”
On the ice, Boileau seems to have done what was asked of him — or at least given it his best, even as he fell short of rescuing the Americans and following Howie Morenz’s groove to stardom.
New York was trudging through an eight-game winless streak when Boileau first took the ice in February. His NHL career lasted just seven games after that, and in only one of those did the team eke out a win.
In his second game, against Pittsburgh, he put the puck in the net — only for the goal to be annulled for offside. In the end, he left next to no statistical mark on the NHL, registering not a single point and incurring no penalties. The Montreal Gazette reported that, in the Pittsburgh game, he “backchecked well” and “stickhandled his way into the hearts of the Gotham fans,” but in New York itself the initial fanfare faded fast, and his play garnered no further comment in the local press. Boileau did also take part in three exhibition games that New York played once their NHL season ended. (In the first of those, Morenz, making a guest appearance with the Americans, was a teammate.)
Boileau continued his career in the minor leagues, in New Haven and later in St. Louis. After a final year back in Montreal, he hung up his skates in 1934. In the late 1940s, the Rangers signed his 15-year-old son, Marc, a promising winger, to a minor-league contract. His long career included a year with the Detroit Red Wings. In the 1970s, Marc Boileau coached the Pittsburgh Penguins and, later, in the WHA, the Quebec Nordiques.
Gorman would subsequently insist that it had been his boss’s idea to invent an Indigenous identity for Boileau, not his. “So help me,” Gorman pleaded in 1952, “that was Tom Duggan’s baby.” Elsewhere, the scheme was attributed to an enthusiastic (unnamed) publicity man.
Whoever hatched it, this was a stunt that New York hadn’t quite finished with. The year after Boileau’s coming and going, the expansion Rangers joined the Americans as tenants at Madison Square Garden. They tried their own version of the Americans’ trick, inventing new heritages for two players on the team in hopes of stirring the interest of (and selling tickets to) ethnic communities in New York who’d yet to embrace hockey.
Thus the Montreal-born goaltender Lorne Chabot was transformed into Leopold Shabotsky, who was ostensibly pro hockey’s “first Jewish player,” and Ollie Reinikka, a centreman of Finnish descent from Shuswap, British Columbia, became Ollie Rocco, New York’s favourite Italian skater. Tex Rickard’s PR guru, Johnny Bruno, was behind those efforts, and it’s entirely possible that he conjured up the Rainy Drinkwater mirage, too.
The NHL, understandably enough, seems to prefer not to revisit these episodes today. When mentions of Drinkwater or Shabotsky or Rocco do surface, as sometimes happens in the hockey press, they’re mostly presented as harmless shenanigans.
It now seems likely that the league’s first Indigenous player was, in fact, Clarence “Taffy” Abel. Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and of Chippewa heritage, the 26-year-old defenceman was recruited to the New York Rangers roster in ’26 by Conn Smythe, who went on to launch the Maple Leafs. It’s only relatively recently that Abel has become part of the conversation about Indigenous NHLers. His background wasn’t widely known in his own day; it’s possible that he himself might have done his best to keep it quiet.
Smythe, who was briefly in charge of stocking the roster for the brand-new Rangers the year after René Boileau’s NHL cameo, also reportedly had his eye on Buddy Maracle, a talented 21-year-old Oneida Mohawk winger from southern Ontario who was playing for the Goodyear team in Toronto’s Mercantile League. We don’t know the details of why Maracle failed to make the NHL grade in 1926, only that it would be another six years before he got his fleeting chance to skate with the Rangers.
This past December, the federal government’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board commemorated the achievements of five hockey pioneers who broke racial barriers in the early decades of the National Hockey League. Paul Jacobs, Buddy Maracle, Larry Kwong, Fred Sasakamoose, and Willie O’Ree were pioneers who overcame the odds and prejudices that their own society had built up around the sport they loved and excelled at. At a ceremony in Toronto in early December, their achievements were enumerated and duly enshrined with the unveiling of a plaque that will find a permanent home in the Hockey Hall of the Fame, in Toronto.
That commemoration was sincere and heartfelt and overdue. It was not, however, a nuanced examination of the historical record concerning Indigenous players in the NHL. Jacobs, Maracle, and Sasakamoose all deserve their due, even as there’s some doubt that Jacobs, a Mohawk defenceman from Caughnawaga (Kahnawake), ever played an NHL game. But others from hockey’s early eras deserve recognition, too: Abel, for example, and Jim Jamieson, a Mohawk from Six Nations who played for the Rangers in the 1940s.
René Boileau’s story, mostly forgotten, and not exactly the proudest moment in NHL history, belongs out on its own, apart from the authentic achievements of hockey’s Indigenous pioneers. Still, it does reflect the attitudes that prevailed in the all too impermeably white hockey world as recently as the 1920s.
It also reveals an irony, too glaring to miss, the one that saw the management of an NHL team and the hockey press attending it spend more energy stirring up stereotypes and racist tropes in the effort to drum up fan interest than they could be bothered to channel into scouting or encouraging or providing opportunities for actual Indigenous players.

Afterlife: Post-NHL, René Boileau (third from the right) went on to play with the 1930 St. Louis Flyers of the AHA.
knit pick

Club 99: Maybe in 1984 you just went for it: collected up a Mr. Big chocolate-bar wrapper, got your mum to write you a cheque for $8.50, sent it all in with your info to an Edmonton address, waited for word to come back on whether or not you’d made the cut as a member of The Wayne Gretzky Fan Club Inc. Just kidding: Wayne, who was 23 that year, was taking all (paying) comers, obviously. The benefits, once you were in? Pride of membership, of course. Plus the boasting you’d be doing to friends and family. There was loot headed your way from Wayne, too: as advertised, that included an “official” certificate of membership; a folder containing two colour photos of the man himself; an “action poster;” Wayne’s “personal biography;” and four newsletters a year. What more, really, could you ask for?
unmistaken identity: an update
A quick update on a Puckstruck post from February, this one, which pointed out that the NHL page that tracks the numbers of Andy Brown’s brave career featured (for a long time) a photograph of Joe Daley, a Pittsburgh Penguin goaltender of yore, true enough, but one who was entirely not Andy Brown for the entirety of his career. But while up until this week the Brown page looked like this …
… it has now been renovated, the wrong righted, such that Andy Brown’s actual face does now feature on his own page:
Thought you should know.