A Great Game (47 page)

One report said, “During the early part of this week he seemed to be on the mend, but his condition became worse yesterday.”
⁷
He died
at home on May 31, surrounded by his family. Flags were lowered throughout the Queen City for his funeral, though he had directed that it should be “strictly private, absolutely plain, simple and inexpensive.”
⁸
The mayor and several aldermen came anyway. Tributes poured in from across the province and beyond.

Incredibly, Robertson's iron grip over the Ontario Hockey Association did not loosen with his death. His carefully groomed cadre of activists would provide the OHA with successors for many years to come. Before taking any decision, these men would first carefully reflect upon what John Ross might be thinking in his grave, as if he were still sitting there among them.

Meanwhile, as the amateur leaders retreated into splendid isolation like the emperors of the Forbidden City, professionalism continued to progress. Pro hockey's business structures were consolidating, becoming ever more disciplined and marketing themselves ever more effectively. The professional level was becoming the sport's highest, and was gradually being acknowledged as such. The developmental stages of hockey began to quietly fall under the influence of the commercial side of the game.

By the time that fortress of professional hockey, Maple Leaf Gardens, opened its doors in 1931, the OHA was in desperate retreat. The Great Depression was putting the final nails in the coffin of the once-omnipotent amateur order. The decade's economic ravages, along with the popularity of the pros and the exodus of players, were threatening to bankrupt the old association. In a deathbed conversion, its leaders proclaimed Simon-pure amateurism to be a historic anachronism. In fact, in 1936 the OHA led the CAHA into a financial arrangement that effectively made amateur hockey the farm system of the NHL.

One of the advocates of the OHA's eventual abandonment of John Ross Robertson's creed turned out to be none other than Billy Hewitt himself. “The Long Survivor”
⁹
of its various internal battles, Hewitt served as secretary of the Ontario Association until 1961—an incredible fifty-eight years. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in 1914, and he served as that organization's secretary-treasurer and later as registrar and treasurer, also until 1961.

Hewitt's involvement in Canadian sports during the first half of the twentieth century was nothing short of astonishing. Beyond his incredible career in hockey management at all levels, he played key executive roles in football and horse racing, not to mention sports journalism. In 1925, he joined his son Foster in the world's first broadcast of a horse race. Foster Hewitt would soon establish himself as Toronto's voice of professional hockey. In 1931, Billy himself entered the commercial game when he left the
Star
sports editor's job to become manager of attractions at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Like so many sports journalists of the era, W. A. Hewitt's career was racked by what we would now see as real or apparent conflicts of interest. At the same time, the diversity of experience that marked his life in the world of sports helped make him a visionary. “I can foresee an era,” he wrote in his 1958 autobiography, “when promoters can obtain most of their revenue from selling the television rights to corporations who will channel the scenes only to paying viewers . . . I would predict that during the coming four decades, sports crowds will lessen, but sports viewers will become legion.”
¹⁰

In 1947, W. A. Hewitt was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, later to be joined by his favourite broadcasters, son Foster and grandson Bill.
¹¹

Of course, by the time the age of television arrived, the era of the Athletic War had been long forgotten. In truth, beyond the annual and diminishing competition for the Allan Cup, nothing of it remained. The triumph of the amateur ideologues had been an illusion. The “War” had been a battle—and a Pyrrhic one at that. John Ross Robertson's disciples had followed a path that would prove to be one of history's great dead ends.

This was already clear when the CAHA hoisted the flag of unconditional surrender to professionalism in 1936. After that, the ironies became even richer as the CAHA withdrew from the AAUC. It then became the leading opponent of hard-line amateurism at the international level.

Canada was in constant conflict with the IIHF until the latter body began to relax its restrictions against professionals in the 1970s. Gradually, even the Olympic movement—by then an unholy alliance of European elitists and Soviet communists, who were really marketing nationalism more than amateurism—came to terms with the inevitabilities of paid sport. In 1998, the National Hockey League's top professionals finally played for their countries in the Nagano Winter Games.

Interestingly, the Athletic War and its aftermath had a parallel in Canadian political life. This was, as noted, the free-trade election of 1911, in which the acolytes of Robertson's Toryism had decisively defeated free trade with the United States. The next seven decades would similarly feature the steady erosion and final reversal of that watershed moment.
¹²

In this context, the lasting significance of the Athletic War was something else—the victory of Ontario's leading city over Quebec's. It foretold the national shift of power in things generally. After Confederation, Montreal's English establishment went from being the leaders of Canada's largest centre to an isolated elite within a largely French-speaking hinterland. By contrast, Toronto became the biggest city of the Dominion's biggest province.
¹³

Alas, on the ice, Montreal's dominance has not been broken. This, more than anything, is the real legacy of this tale. Generations of fans have witnessed more than a century of professional hockey, of which the most legendary and enduring rivalry is between Toronto and Montreal. How incomprehensible, then, it would be to the average fan of the Leafs or the Habs to discover that these seemingly eternal adversaries are descended from a common ancestor.

Certainly, nobody mentioned this when the Montreal Canadiens proudly celebrated the centennial of their 1909 birth a few years ago.
Long glossed over is the fact that the original
les Canadiens
franchise became dormant in 1910 and was then sold by the O'Briens in 1911. Nevertheless it is, in strict legal terms, a fact.

More awkward yet is that, while a new Canadiens team was established in 1910 (from the Haileybury franchise), the original entity went to, of all places, Toronto. In other words, the Canadiens were created by the Renfrew family, awarded first to Montreal and then sold to Toronto. It is easy to see why the Habs stick to a simple story—that they are the original Canadiens even if, strictly speaking, they really are not.

The more interesting question is why the Leafs pretend not to have the origins they really do.

Some of this relates to the mythology created by Conn Smythe himself. When Smythe purchased the NHL's failing Toronto St. Patricks in 1927, he claimed to have given them a new birth, inspired by a patriotic vision. The Maple Leafs, he declared, were conceived from the insignia on the shoulder of his First World War uniform. The fact that the city already had a successful, long-running professional sports franchise by that name—the Toronto Maple Leaf baseball club—was apparently pure coincidence.

Smythe did, however, truly remake professional hockey in Toronto. Also, to be fair, the Maple Leafs have always recognized their legal link to the St. Patricks and the Arenas before them. What they have never acknowledged is their relationship to the club that bought the original Canadiens and won the city's first Stanley Cup: the Toronto Blue Shirts.

This denial of history is imbedded in the legal manoeuvring that led to the end of the Blue Shirts and the old National Hockey Association.
Since the Arenas and the National Hockey League effectively confiscated the Toronto club from E. J. Livingstone, it has long been official dogma to emphasize the legal break of 1917. Yet, in reality, the NHL's “new” Toronto team used the same players, wore the same jersey and was commonly called by the same names (the “Torontos” and, initially, the “Blue Shirts”) as its NHA predecessor.

That the Blue Shirts have been thus orphaned by history is understandable. The Livingstone saga led to almost a decade of court battles that helped undermine the pre-Smythe franchise. That is to say, it is understandable, but it is sad nonetheless.

In truth, Toronto's first Stanley Cup club has been largely forgotten. It remains to this day the only one of the city's pro hockey champions not to have its banner hung in the Air Canada Centre.