Tim Falconer - Klondikers: Dawson Citys Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey

The Canadian Pacific Railways Continental train was nearly three hours late when it pulled up to the station in Winnipeg. Given what the hockey players had been through since leaving the Klondike, this barely counted as a complication. After all, inconvenient forces had started conspiring against them even before they headed out of Dawson City. First, one of the teams stars decided to stay behind with his injured wife. Then the captain and most accomplished player realized he had to stay a little longer for work. Hed try to catch up with others as soon as he could. The teams luck did not improve once the journey began.

Setting out to capture the Stanley Cup, and the fame that went with it, the players figured it would be a straightforward eighteen-day trip. Straightforward by Yukon standards, anyway. Three left on foot on December 18, 1904; four others followed on bikes the next day, though they all eventually abandoned their wheels. After 330 miles, the team arrived in Whitehorse two days after Christmas, only to watch a blizzard shut down the narrow-gauge trains on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway. When they finally reached Skagway, Alaska, theyd missed their steamer to Vancouver by two hours and had to wait days to board a Seattle-bound ship for a voyage that left the players severely seasick.

They believed the hardship was worth it. Since 1893, the reward for being Canadas best amateur team was the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, a silver bowl donated by Lord Stanley of Preston, the governor general at the time. Known from the beginning as the Stanley Cup, it quickly became the most prestigious trophy in the land. While the trustees wouldnt allow just any team to contend for the honour, they did approve a challenge from Dawson Citys all-stars. To win the Cup, the Yukoners would have to defeat the formidable Ottawa Hockey Cluba team known in lore as the Silver Sevenand the sports original superstar, One-Eyed Frank McGee. Few hockey people considered the Klondikers a serious threat. The team was from a small subarctic town and no squad from west of Brandon had yet challenged for the Cup, let alone won it. When accepting the challenge, Ottawa insisted the Dawson team not play any exhibition matches en route. Rather than an attempt to ensure their opponents would arrive unprepared, this was to avoid any losses to weaker teams that might discourage ticket sales for the Cup series.

The original plan, as set out by Joe Boyle, the brash businessman managing the tour, was for a layover in Winnipeg to do some training. But the team was so far behind schedule, that was no longer an option. With just a two-hour stop before continuing on to Ottawa, the players didnt have enough time to do much more than stretch their legs and assure reporters their challenge was no joke. Despite the teams lack of star power, the cross-country trek charmed Canadians. Though the codified version of the sport was only three decades old, passion for hockey had swept the nation since Lord Stanley had donated the Cup and was only intensifying. But there was more to the enthusiasm for the underdogs from the Yukon than a love of the game. The Klondike Gold Rush was over, but people continued to romanticize the North. And the long journey from that faraway land to the nations capital fit into that mystique. All along the route, fans had cheered the Yukon team. And it was no different in the home of the champions, where the Citizen reported, The matches are creating the greatest interest of any Stanley Cup contests yet played in Ottawa.

At a quarter to five on January 11, 1905, three and a half weeks after leaving Dawson City, the hockey players stepped off the train and onto the platform at Ottawas Central Station, where a large and appreciative crowd gave them a right hearty reception. Bob Shillington, the manager of the Cup-holding team, and other club executives led the players away to the Russell House. A throng overflowed the hotels rotunda in hopes of catching a glimpse of the exotic visitors. But the cordial welcome didnt mean the hosts were about to grant Dawsons request for a one-week postponement before starting the best-of-three series. Meanwhile, the challengers denied a newspaper report that theyd default the series opener and focus on the second and third matches rather than play unprepared. The first game would go ahead as scheduled, with Earl Grey, the new governor general, facing the puck at 8:30 p.m. on Friday the 13th. After nearly a month on the road, the exhausted and far-from-game-shape Klondikers would take on the reigning Stanley Cup champions before a sellout crowd of 2,500 fans at Deys Rink in just over forty-eight hours.