It was agreed! After travelling to Montreal in January of 1883 to witness the game, notable Ottawa sportsmen Jack Kerr and Halder Kirby would start a hockey club in Ottawa. And they did. On March 6 of that year, both of Ottawa’s dailies, the Citizen and the Free Press, reported that the recently-organized Ottawa Hockey Club had held its first practice the previous night at Fred Fooks’s skating rink, recently renamed the Royal. For what was left of the season, the club practiced on Friday evenings by playing matches among themselves. But the members anticipated “some good fun with their rivals next year.”
The club was made up almost equally of recent arrivals from Montreal and of Ottawa’s own. The newcomers were fresh McGill graduates lured to the capital in 1882 by the Dominion government: Richard McConnell, Philip Foster, Albert Peter Low, Thomas D. Green and Henry Ami McConnell, Ami and Low joined the Geological Survey of Canada.
The experience that Low and Green brought from McGill to Ottawa’s original team must have been welcomed by the local boys who knew only the helter-skelter game they had grown up with in the capital. Though they were not wanting in competitive spirit, they were young and inexperienced. Tom Gallagher and George Young were 18, Ernest Taylor, 19, Jack Kerr and Halder Kirby, 20, and Nelson Porter, 21. Frank Jenkins was the oldest at 24, and it was he who would soon assume the role of team leader. Thus was formed the nucleus of the original Ottawa Hockey Club, a group that assembled to play the game among themselves just for the fun of it, but one that also aspired through a representative team to challenge outside clubs.
Ottawa’s first hockey team, the Ottawa Hockey Club, 1884. Back row, from left: T.D. Green, T.L. Gallagher, N.D. Porter. Middle row: Dr. H.S. Kirby, J. Kerr, F.M.S. Jenkins, Bottom row: G. Young, A.P. Low, E.L. Taylor. THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
By mid-December of 1883 the ice bed in the Royal Rink was smooth and hard. The team was practicing and its executive committee were in touch with the organizers of the Montreal Winter Carnival. It was confirmed. There would be a hockey tournament at this, the second annual event and Ottawa’s application had been accepted. Ottawa would play against four different Montreal hockey teams. The intensity of practices at the Royal signaled the club members’ sense of anticipation as they vied with one another for selection to the team that would venture to the metropolis.
In early January 1884, a full month before the great spectacle, Ottawa papers were carrying reports on preparations. The ice palace was under construction. The toboggan slide was in order. Hotel reservations were coming in from New York, Boston, Chicago and New Orleans. Then came the release and blanket distribution of the carnival program. It announced the range of events, including a “Grand Hockey Tournament on out-door Skating Rink.” By the end of January, excitement was at fever pitch.
In Ottawa, anxiously waiting to leave later in the week, Jenkins, Kirby, Kerr and their teammates would read “by telegraph to the Citizen” staccato-like, present-tense descriptions of the opening ceremonies. “The weather is fine. The city is gaily decorated with flags, etc. Immense numbers of visitors are here chiefly from the United States”.
McGill College authorities had given permission to the Carnival’s Outdoor Sports Committee to put down a skating rink on their grounds situated on Sherbrooke Street in the city’s centre. The result was a surface measuring 250 by 140 feet. On the street side of the rink, organizers piled up a huge mound of snow around and on top of two furnished waiting rooms and a refreshment stand they had constructed.
It was at this rink, in front of a cheering crowd and no doubt curious throng, that the Ottawas faced off against the McGill Club for the first time as a rep team in 1884. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA C81683
The schedule called for the Ottawas to play their first game on Thursday morning against McGill. On the first day, the Victorias were declared winners over McGill when the college men quit in protest over a disallowed goal. Crystals defeated Wanderers the next day. On the third day, McGill won by default over Crystals as did Victorias over Wanderers. Disputes, defaults and scheduling confusion were not at all uncommon in hockey’s early days and there would be more trouble before this tournament ended.
On a brisk morning under a blue sky, the Ottawas, for the first time as a representative team, took to the hard, clear ice of the College grounds. Wearing red and black striped jerseys and caps and dark knickerbockers (breeches gathered in at the knee), they felt a surge of pride in their team identity. Low was in goal, Kerr at point, Jenkins at centre, Kirby, Gallagher, Young and Green at the forward positions. Taylor, Porter and McMartin watched from the sidelines. Opposite were the more experienced McGill men in red and white striped jerseys, stockings and caps, matched against white flannel knickerbockers. The grounds were crowded and most gathered round the rink’s perimeter to watch the contest.
Immediately on the start of play, Jenkins rushed the McGill goal only to be thwarted by Budden and Brown. Retrieving the puck, McGill sent it sailing down the length of the ice where Green trapped it and lofted it back to centre. A scrimmage ensued with Green in the middle of it. Sent flying into a snowbank, Green wrenched his back and, though continuing to play, did so with noticeable difficulty. Substitution of players was then not a part of the game. The teams appeared evenly matched-and-the first half hour ended with neither scoring.
Play resumed with both sides making dangerous forays. Ottawa’s Low saved a goal by knocking a swift shot behind him and out of play. When the puck was brought back and faced, McGill’ s Ogilvie gained control and put it through at the ten-minute mark. As was the custom whenever a goal was scored, the teams changed ends and resumed play. Shortly, Low’s skate came away from his boot and skittered down the ice, stopping the action. After retrieving it, positioning his boot into the sole clamp and heel grip and securing the fit with the locking lever, Low was ready and play began again. Gallagher, Green and Kirby made long runs for the Ottawas in valiant attempts to tie the score, but the play of Hutchinson in the McGill goal was too much for them and the match ended with a McGill victory, one to nothing. Low’s play between the Ottawa flags was said to be excellent.
For the Ottawas, it was an exhilarating experience. They had now worn their colours, played together as a team, and had acquitted themselves well against seasoned opponents. They had done so in the Mecca of the game and under public scrutiny. Even better days were surely ahead.
The first of those was the next day. Against the Victorias, the Ottawas knew they would be in for a tough time. In the tournament’s first game the Vics defeated the club that had just beaten them. Steadily falling snow delayed the start of the game until late morning but the enthusiasm of the spectators was in no way diminished. The first half ended with no further scoring. By this time several inches of snow covered the ice. As the Ottawas anxiously waited for the second half to begin, officials, with the help of a gang of small boys they had conscripted, swept the surface. But the Ottawa men held on and there was no more scoring. They had won a hockey game.
On what was to have been the last day of the tournament, Saturday, February 9, Ottawa defeated McGill three to nothing while Victorias prevailed over Crystals. If Victorias had lost that game their total wins would have been two, the same as Ottawa. But Ottawa, because they had already beaten Victorias, would have been declared tournament champions. The Victorias’ win gave them more than any other team but organizers decided a playoff would be required because of Ottawa’s earlier win over the Victorias.
The showdown was set for Monday morning at the McGill rink under ideal conditions. The Victorias dominated from the beginning, determined to keep the cup in the metropolis. Shot after shot rained in on Low, but he was equal to the task. After two thirty-minute halves, neither team had scored. The Ottawas had it in their heads that only a win for the Vics would give them the championship. With regulation time complete, the Ottawas figured they were entitled to the honours. Organizers thought otherwise and declared a third thirty minutes would have to be played. After fourteen minutes, Myers sent a “splendidly directed shot” through for the Victorias. That was enough as the home team held on for the win. The teams heartily cheered one another, but Ottawa’s display of sportsmanship masked an underlying bitterness.
The next day the Ottawa Citizen reported that the “team returned home last evening and to say they are disgusted with the way with which things were treated in that place would be drawing it mild.” But the facts spoke for themselves. The Victorias had won four games, the Ottawas two.
| Final Standings Montreal Winter Carnival Hockey Tournament 1884 | ||
| Team | Wins | Losses |
| Victorias | 4 | 1 |
| McGill | 3 | 2 |
| Ottawa | 2 | 2 |
| Crystals | 1 | 2 |
| Wanderers | 0 | 3 |
Source: Kitchen, Paul. Win, Tie, Or Wrangle: The Inside Story of the Old Ottawa Senators, 1883-1935. Manotick: Penumbra Press, 2008.