Highflight Hockey: An attacker gets away a backhand in the open air in Switzerland circa 1933. Good goal, I say.
mountain do
Switzerland
hold the swiss
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.
olympics, 1928: toronto gold
Gold Standard: The University of Toronto Varsity Grads wore Canada’s maple leaf at the 1928 Olympics, along with Canada’s handsome sweaters. (Image: University of Toronto Archives, 2001-77-142MS)
olympics, 1928: swiss dismissed
En Route To A Rout: Canada’s 1928 Olympic strolled to a gold medal in St. Moritz with three straight wins, the last of which was a 13-0 lesson to the host team from Switzerland. Here, Swiss goaltender Adolf Martignoni makes a stop (possibly) on Canada’s (I think) beret-free Dave Trottier.
olympics, 1928: kanada ist das mutterland
Canada’s hockey team waltzed through the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz in Switzerland, which is to say barrelled, a.k.a. smoked all comers. They scourged Sweden 11-0 before disdaining Great Britain by 14-0 and sacking the host team 13-0. Depicted here is a scene from that last one-side game, in several different incarnations. Above is a collectible card issued, post-Olympics, by Erdal, a German shoe-polish company. With Canada is rendered as Canap under the maple leaf on his sweater, the player charging in with the beret on his head is (as best I can tell) Canadian forward Dave Trottier, a scorer of five goals against the Swiss, who went on to an 11-year NHL career, mostly with Montreal’s Maroons. Tending (i.e. stranded far from) the net is Swiss goaltender is Adolf Martignoni. “Canada is the motherland of this game,” the caption on the back reads, in part. “Her team put on wonderful performances.”
That’s the same scene below on the card from the German cigarette company Salem, though this time the Swiss stands and their crowd have been excised and replaced by forest. Last, showing the original photograph, is another tobacco-backed card, this one from the Sociedade Industrial dos Tabacos de Angola. Venturing guesses on the other Canadians, I’d say that the tall trailer might be Hugh Plaxton (he scored five goals in the game) and (farther back) maybe Grant Gordon. Canada had three moustached members in ’28, two of whom played against the Swiss, which means that it could be Dr. Lou Hudson, too, though it looks more like Gordon.
upcountry
The first time St. Moritz in Switzerland hosted a Winter Olympics was in 1928, a year after this portrait of the rink on St. Moritzersee was taken. The 1940 edition of the Games was supposed to go to Sapporo, Japan, but in 1938, the IOC re-focussed on a return to St. Moritz. That didn’t last: just a year later, the new (new) plan had the Olympics going back to the site of the ’36 Games, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. Germany’s invasion of Poland later on that year put a stop to that, and in November of ’39, the ’40 Games were cancelled outright. Next up was supposed to be Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in 1944, but with the world still warring, the IOC scrubbed that plan in ’41. St. Moritz did see its second Games, the first of the post-war, around this time of year in 1948. Hockeywise, that was the year the RCAF Flyers skated out in their effort to restore the natural way of things by winning back the hockey gold that Canada had somehow misplaced in Garmisch in 1936.
old world order
The snow, if you hadn’t heard, is piling up in Davos in Switzerland this week atop the World Economic Forum, where, as The New York Times has it this morning, “financial titans mingle with heads of state in an annual saturnalia of capitalism.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a keynote speaker yesterday; the President of the United States blows in on Thursday. Amid the heavy weather and the ongoing crisis of the liberal order, can we cast back to this same week in 1932 for a look in on Hockey Club Davos? We can. That’s them here, then, against unknown opposition. The World Economic Forum got going in 1971; HC Davos dates back to 1918. Today, the team has 31 Swiss National League championships to its name, along with 15 Spengler Cups. The annual invitational Spengler is, of course, a Davos institution, going back to 1923. These days it’s played next door to the old Eisstadion Davos pictured here, under magnificent cover at the Vaillant Arena. HC Davos has been at home therein since 1979. This season, they’re standing in fifth place in the 12-team Swiss table, 19 points back of the defending champions from SC Bern. Davos plays next on Saturday, when they’re away to Lausanne HC. The outdoor rink is still there where it was in downtown Davos, with all the snow and the global elites, though minus (too bad) the wooden stand shown above.
olympicsbound, 1928, with dr. joe and stuffy guarding canada’s nets
Today’s the day that Canada names its men’s team for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games. This is, of course, the first time since 1994 that Canada won’t be sending a squad of front-rank NHLers. GM Sean Burke, who was once one of those, also backstopped Canada’s silver-medal performance at the 1992 Albertville Games. What to expect in the team he’s unveiling today? “We have speed, we have skill, but our team is going to based around being a harder team to play against,” he told The Toronto Star’s Kevin McGran earlier this week. “More role players. We want our team to be quick. I think we can do that.”
With Olympics and goaltenders on the docket, seems like a good day to stop in with Dr. Joe Sullivan, pictured here amid Swiss mountains in 1928. That year, when the University of Toronto’s Varsity Graduates bore the maple leaf at the second Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Sullivan was the main man guarding the goal, with Norbert (a.k.a. Stuffy) Mueller backing him up. The Canadians rode a bye directly to medal round, which meant they ended up playing just three games. Spoiler alert: they won the gold. This wasn’t, let us say, a taxing tournament for the Canadians: on three successive days, they smoked Sweden 11-0; battered Great Britain 14-0; and stampeded Switzerland 13-0. Sullivan was on duty first and last, with Mueller stuffing in for the British game.
Sullivan, 27 at the time of this triumphant shutout streak, is an interesting case. He’d graduated from the U of T’s Faculty of Medicine in 1926. Post-Olympics, there was mention that he’d be turning pro, joining the NHL’s Montreal Maroons, but while his Grad teammate Dave Trottier did just that, Dr. Sullivan signed up instead for a career in ears, noses, and throats: he opened his private Toronto otolaryngology practice in 1930. He served in the RCAF during Second World War and, in 1957, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (who was one of his patients) appointed him to the Senate. He died in 1988 at the age of 86.
In 1928, along with turning pucks aside, Dr. Joe sent back dispatches from Europe to Toronto’s Globe. Describing a pre-Olympic exhibition intra-squad scrimmage the Grads played in Antwerp, Belgium, he wrote of the hearty welcome the locals offered the Canadians as they hit the ice at the Palais de Glace:
The appearance of Mueller and myself caused an outburst of laughter and some applause for I suppose the formidable array of pads and body protection would seem strange to the people of Antwerp. Some people applauded our garb, evidently to counteract the effect of the laughter from the less thoughtful.
air show, 1948: goldbound, via slushy ice and snowballs
“When the decisions went against the Swiss in the vital game with Canada, a chorus of shrill whistles echoed through the Alps and a barrage of snowballs came down from the hillside.”
• Jack Sullivan reporting for Canadian Press, February 9, 1948
It wasn’t easy, but they did it: on this day 69 years ago, the RCAF Flyers won gold in St. Moritz at the games of the V Winter Olympics. That’s them above, flanked by the silvery Czechs and bronze-winning Swiss. Capping off a tournament that didn’t lack for drama — it was very nearly downgraded to an exhibition event — the Canadians beat the host Swiss on the final day in what seems to have been a decidedly bad-tempered contest.
The Canadian view: the plucky Canadians overcame terrible ice and biased refereeing to win 3-0. “We played eight men — the Swiss players and the referees — and still beat ’em,” Corporal George McFaul, RCAF trainer, crowed after the game.
Here’s Jack Sullivan again:
The ice conditions and the refereeing were so bad that at times the game threatened to develop into a farce. The officials, Eric De Marcwicz of Britain and Van Reyshoot of Belgium, were pointedly in favour of Switzerland, some of the latter’s decisions being almost unbelievable.
[Wally] Halder tried to check a Swiss player at one point but fell flat. The Swiss player also went down. Halder was thumbed off for five minutes by Van Reyshoot — “for tripping and interference.”
Later, Heinrich Boller, Swiss defenceman, cross-checked Thomas (Red) Hibbard, who fell heavily to the ice. Both players were sent to the penalty box. Near the end of the game during a scramble in front of the Canadian goal Boller punched [goaltender Murray] Dowey in the face but was given only a two-minte penalty.
During the second and third periods, the partisan Swiss crowd, taking exception to some of the referee’s decisions, hurled snowballs at the Flyers.
(Image: Library and Archives Canada, R15559-22-2-E)
air show, 1948
It was on this day in 1948 that the RCAF Flyers wrapped up the hockey gold medal for Canada at the V Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Twelve years and a world war had passed since Canada’s awkward loss at the previous hibernal Olympics in 1936 and, this time, the Canadians made no mistake.
Well, next to none.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as straightforward as Canadians hoped it would be.
Having overcome the Swedes (3-1) and Britons (3-0), the airmen shellacked the Poles (15-0), lacquered the Italians (21-1), and enamelled the Americans (12-3). On February 6, the varnishing stopped: Canada could only muster a 0-0 tie against Czechoslovakia. “Real playoff hockey,” said Mike Buckna, the Czech’s Canadian coach. Canada was able, subsequently, to glaze both the Austrians (12-0) and Swiss (3-0) and thereby outrun the Czechs on goal average. The hosts from Switzerland secured the bronze.
Congratulations poured in from Canada. By the following day, the team had received more than 200 cables from home, including greetings (above) from Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. There were salutations as well from the Chiefs of Army and Naval Staff and from RCAF Headquarters. Colin Gibson, Minister of National Defence For Air, sent his cheers to the team for lived up to the RCAF motto, Per Ardua Ad Astra (Through adversity to the stars).
Hockey’s Hall of Fame — the original one, in Kingston, Ontario — sent a telegram, and so did (very sporting) members of 1936 British Olympic team, who wired, “Congratulations to the new champions from the Ex-.”
The cable that the players liked best came from the father of Pete Leichnitz, a 21-year-old spare forward on the Canadian team. “Congratulations,” Mr. Leichnitz wrote from Ottawa, “and what if it did cost me 10 bucks? Paw.”
The coach of the Flyers was RCAF Sergeant Frank Boucher, son of George (Buck) Boucher and nephew of his namesake uncle, the legendary New York Rangers centreman, coach, and (later) GM. The Flyers would not be able to reply individually to all the telegrams, Frank the younger said, but he asked the newspapermen to convey to Canada the team’s “warmest thanks.”
(Image: Library and Archives Canada, R15559-17-9-E)
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