Ontario

frontrunner

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The scroll commemorating Art Ross’ induction in 1949 into the Hockey Hall of Fame got it about right, deeming him a “super hockey star, brilliant executive, and inventive genius.” Born in Naughton, Ontario, on a Tuesday of today’s date in 1885, Ross was a pre-eminent defender on his own skates before he took up as an NHL referee and then as coach of the long-lost Hamilton Tigers. He was the original coach and manager of the Boston Bruins, of course, and in his time in charge there oversaw three Stanley Cup championships to add to the pair he’d won as a player.

That’s Ross in the black hat here, in February of 1937, coaching his Bruins from the bench at Chicago Stadium. Milt Schmidt is beside him, and Woody Dumart one along from him, with Dit Clapper (#5) in the background. Leaving the frame (#10) is winger Fred Cook. The Bruins beat the Black Hawks on this night, 2-1, getting goals from Clapper and Charlie Sands. Paul Thompson scored for Chicago.

 

(Image: ©Richard Merrill, Boston Public Library)

cougartown

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Out In The Open: Reg Noble was born on a Tuesday of this same date in Collingwood, Ontario; 1896 was the year. He won a Stanley Cup championship with Toronto in the NHL’s very first season, 1917-18, and he went on to captain and coach the team — and win another Cup — after they shifted into the Toronto St. Patricks. Noble won a third championship in 1926 with the Montreal Maroons. He went on to play for all three incarnations of Detroit’s NHL team, Falcons, Cougars (as in the photo here, from 1927-28), and Red Wings, before wrapping up his major-league career with another turn as a Maroon in 1932-33. Reg Noble was inducted into the Hockey Hall of fame in 1962.

 

the port perry woodpecker

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Chin Up: Born in Port Perry, Ontario, on a Saturday of today’s date in 1900, John Ross Roach led the Toronto St. Patricks to a Stanley Cup championship in his rookie season, 1921-22. He played seven seasons in Toronto in all, captaining the team along the way, and lasting long enough to see the St. Pats transform into Maple Leafs in 1927. Roach played for the New York Rangers after that, and then went to Detroit in 1932, as the Falcons were turning into the Red Wings. He stayed on in Detroit after finishing his NHL career in 1935, going to work as a car salesman for Ford.

diesel power

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Benchview: Born in Capreol, Ontario, on a Wednesday of this same date in 1933, Doug Mohns started out a defenceman, winning a pair of Memorial Cups with the Barrie Flyers in 1951 and ’53. In the NHL, the man they called Diesel played a decade with Boston, which is where coach Phil Watson converted him to a winger. With Chicago, he made his name as a member of the Black Hawks’ high-yield Scooter Line, lining up alongside Ken Wharram and Stan Mikita and scoring 20 goals or more in four consecutive seasons. He later played for the Minnesota North Stars, Atlanta Flames, and Washington Capitals before setting skates and sticks aside. The Stanley Cup eluded him: all in all, Mohns played 1,484 NHL games without winning a championship. (Artist: Tex Coulter)

stick exchange

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Gladhanders: Bruins’ centre Cooney Weiland makes merry with goaltender Tiny Thompson (and a sheaf of sticks) in Boston Garden circa the mid-1930s. (Image: Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Born in Egmondville, in Ontario’s southwest Huron County, on a Saturday of this date in 1904, Cooney Weiland grew up in nearby Seaforth. He started his 11-year NHL career in Boston and finished it as a Bruin, too, winning bookend Stanley Cups in 1929 and 1939 with Art Ross’ team. He also saw ice-time for the (original) Ottawa Senators and Detroit’s Red Wings. He was Boston’s ninth captain. Appointed in 1937, he served two seasons in the role, between the tenures of Red Beattie and Dit Clapper. As a coach, Weiland had charge of the Bruins for two seasons, steering them to another Cup in 1941. Weiland went on coach the AHL Hershey Bears and then, enduringly, from 1950 through to 1971, Harvard University’s men’s team.

hold the swiss

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A birthday today for the legendary Howie Morenz, born in Mitchell, Ontario, in southwestern Ontario, on a Sunday of this date in 1902. His heritage was Teutonic, but (as Morenz narrated in a feature for Esquire in 1935) “when I broke into the league with Les Canadiens in 1923, the World War was recent enough in memory to cause the club officials to worry about my acceptance by the team’s adherents, inasmuch as I am of German descent. So they promptly labeled me The Swiss Flash. Thereafter, when questioned about my racial ancestry, I said that I came from Switzerland, where I had developed agility by leaping from Alp to Alp.” The image here featured in La Presse in 1927.

bishop horden

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A new number today, 751, to add to the older one, 215, while we wait for next one, as the dreadful toll of Canada’s residential schools, buried for too long, rises, and rises.

The undated photograph above was taken at Bishop Horden Hall Indian Residential School, which was run by the Anglican Church at Moose Factory, Ontario, on the Moose River, at the southern end of James Bay. It operated for 70 years, starting in 1906. In 1964, it was converted from a school to a hostel. It closed in 1976.  

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has a detailed history of the school online, here, including harrowing (and surely incomplete) records of cruelty and sickness. An entry registering the 1940 deaths from tuberculosis of two male students notes that the Indian Agent reported that one boy’s family was “not notified of sickness or death of child as there was no way to send word.” 

The NCTR has a memorial page — it’s here — for Bishop Horden. It lists the names of 25 children known to have died as a result of their time at the school. 

ready eyes ready

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Born on a Tuesday of this very date in 1915, Wilbert Hiller was a son of Berlin, Ontario, modern-day Kitchener, where his childhood friends included Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart, and Bobby Bauer. Dutch was the nickname Hiller mostly went by in his NHL years, which started in New York with the Rangers in 1937. As a speedy left winger — he was renowned as one of the league’s swiftest skaters — Hiller helped the Rangers win a Stanley Cup championship in 1940. He played for Detroit and Boston before landing in Montreal. He had his best season, in the goals-gathering sense, with the Canadiens, in 1944-45, when he collected 20. He won another Stanley Cup with Montreal in 1946. Hiller sometimes wore his glasses to play, and in 1942, he was the second NHLer to use contact lenses, after Montreal defenceman Tony Graboski. He migrated to California after he retired, where he coached a bit, and worked as a salesman for a pharmaceutical company. His gaze turned again to pucks in 1967, when the Los Angeles Kings joined the NHL, and Hiller worked for the team as a goal judge. Dutch Hiller died at the age of 90 in 2005. (Image: Conrad Poirier, Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec)

réal deal

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Born in Timmins, Ontario, on a Monday of this date in 1932, left winger Réal Chevrefils was briefly a Detroit Red Wing but he spent most of his eight-year NHL career with the Boston Bruins. Goalgetting, his best year was 1956-57, when he scored 31 for the Bruins. Leo Labine was a sometime linemate of his: he called Chevrefils “a finesse hockey player who had the strength and the ability and didn’t give up on the puck.” Here he is in on Black Hawk goaltender Al Rollins at Chicago’s Stadium, on a Friday night, February 27, in 1953, when Rollins shut out the visitors by a score of 3-0. Chevrefils struggled with alcoholism during his career and afterwards. He died in 1981 at the age of 48.

slip kid

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It was in Smiths Falls, Ontario, that Don McKenney was born on this date in 1934 — a Monday, then — which means that the former centreman is 87 today. He made his entrance to the NHL with the Boston Bruins in the 1954-55 season as a 20-year-old, finishing second that year in the voting for the Calder Trophy behind Eddie Litzenberger, who’d split his season between Montreal and the Chicago Black Hawks. McKenney scored 20 or more goals for the Bruins in six consecutive seasons, and that was the source of his nickname, Slip, which the Boston Globe clarified in 1960 referenced his ability to slide pucks past goaltenders. For goals and good graces, he won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1960. McKenney served as the team’s captain for two seasons in the early 1960s. He was the 16th captain in club history, for the record — not, as the Bruins’ faultily maintain, the tenth. His 13 NHL seasons also included stints with the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, and St. Louis Blues. 

penetanguishene’s pig iron

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For The Defence: Bert Corbeau was born on a Friday of this date in 1894 in Penetanguishene, Ontario. I don’t have good information on the origins of his nickname, Old Pig Iron, other than to propose that it related to the remorselessness of the defending he did on behalf of the Montreal Canadiens, Hamilton Tigers, and Toronto St. Patricks in the early days of the NHL. He won a Stanley Cup with Montreal when they played in the NHA in 1916. I wish I had more to say about the Canadiens’ uniform he’s wearing here. My guess is that it’s a practice-version rather than an official game-worn get-up.