Marching towards Professionalism 1890-1908

New Westminster, 1890

1890–1908 …Marching towards Professionalism

The (original) British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association was formed at a meeting held in Vancouver at the Windsor Hotel between the Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster clubs on March 22, 1890. A schedule of six matches was drafted up and New Westminster swept their series to claim the first provincial championship (although some later historical records indicate Victoria as the champion of the inaugural season).

Vancouver would then win the next two titles (1891, 1892) followed by Victoria in 1893 (some records indicate New Westminster) – however over the following years, New Westminster would dominate the championship scene with titles in 1894, 1895, and 1897 through 1902 with Vancouver picking up the slack in the intervening years.

Vancouver Lacrosse Club, ca. 1896

The 1892 season was a great example of early organised field lacrosse. In an incredibly close campaign, each of Vancouver’s five victories for the title was won by 1-goal margins, yet due to their losses they still managed to let in more goals than they scored for the entire season. In those days, each goal scored was actually called winning a “game” and play ended after one team had accumulated four “games” to win the match or time ran out.

Victoria would have to wait until 1919 before winning a second senior amateur title for the Capital City but their closest attempt came during the 1894 season when they tied New Westminster in the league standings. As a result of the draw, a playoff game to determine the championship was played on October 20, 1894 at Brockton Oval in Vancouver. New Westminster showed up at the field an hour and a half late and this later caused the game being called due to darkness and Victoria holding a 3-2 lead with eleven minutes remaining. The referee refused to give the victory to Victoria and the club later withdrew from the BCALA on November 2, 1894 in protest of the referee’s indecision and the late arrival of their opponents.

Vancouver Lacrosse Club, 1899

Two campaigns around the turn of the century – in 1899 and 1900 – saw organised league play deteriorate from numerous cancellations of matches. For example, in August 1900, some scheduled league matches involving New Westminster were cancelled due to their subsequently organised tour of Eastern Canada in August 1900. There were also some matches against Victoria that New Westminster possibly refused to play – allegedly due to ‘rough play’ on Victoria’s part in meetings earlier in the season.

The senior ranks expanded in 1901 with the return of the Nanaimo Lacrosse Club after a two-year hiatus. The Coal City crew were able to secure a couple of surprise victories at the expense of the Vancouver club but generally remained the league’s whipping post for the duration of their senior tenure. By mid-point of the 1902 season, the club had withdrawn from the league and defaulted their five remaining matches. The Vancouver YMCA lacrosse club went back east in October 1901 to challenge for the Minto Cup, the senior championship of Canada which was inaugurated earlier that season.

Seattle Lacrosse Club, members of BCALA in 1905

The 1903 senior lacrosse season ended in dispute between New Westminster and Vancouver and the league championship was still vehemently undecided at the start of the 1904 campaign. The differences between the two clubs dragged on after the three-team schedule was released. New Westminster withdrew from the league on June 2, 1904 after refusal to play two replays to decide the 1903 champion. There was some talk of a second Vancouver team joining, but in the end Vancouver Lacrosse Club and Victoria continued on with an eight-game schedule, which Vancouver handily won after five victories.

Despite the conflicts off the field, one bright spot during the 1903 campaign was growing attendance. The June 30, 1903 match at Brocton Oval between Vancouver and New Westminster saw 7,000 in attendance, reported to have been the best crowd since 1896. Two months later on August 29, 1903, a rematch between those same two teams drew 11,000 onlookers out to Brockton Oval in was dubbed by one newspaper reporter as “the greatest lacrosse match in West Canada”.

1925 photograph of the Kilmarnock Cup.

In 1905, the BCALA league was reformed with four members: New Westminster, Vancouver, Victoria, and a newly-formed club from Seattle. The Emerald City’s club was later ejected from the league after they were unable to play their two final scheduled games – a move somewhat encouraged by Vancouver since it would improve their record against their league-leading rivals in the Royal City.

The following season saw Victoria withdraw from the senior league and Vancouver field a second club in the form of the Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs. Late in the season, in September 1906, lacrosse players and fans saw the donation of the Kilmarnock Cup as a trophy for the provincial senior championship. Through the efforts of Victoria Lacrosse Club, the $500 mug was donated on behalf of the scotch distillers John Walker & Sons and brought over from England. The Kilmarnock Cup would remain in competition until retired at the close of the 1960s.

New Westminster became the first Kilmarnock Cup champion in 1907, defeating Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs 5-4. Mount Pleasant had previously bested the Vancouver Lacrosse Club 11-4 in an intra-city playoff.

New Westminster Salmonbellies, 1908

Victoria rejoined the senior league for 1908. The original schedule was then revised in August to accommodate New Westminster’s challenge trip to Montréal that resulted in the successful capture of the Minto Cup for the West Coast.

On September 26, 1908 in the final New Westminster-Vancouver match of the season, escalating player tempers on the field saw a riot break out when a New Westminster fan pelted a Vancouver player with eggs – which resulted in George Paris, the Vancouver trainer, retaliating by pulling out his gun and firing a shot into the crowd. Thankfully, no one was killed, although the bullet went through the coat of one spectator. Both clubs felt they were victims in the ugly incident and Vancouver stated their refusal to “play any further games in New Westminster…”

(PHOTO SOURCES: NWMA IHP1505; Saturday Globe (January 30, 1897); CVA Sp P4.1; Seattle Times archives; NWMA IHP0663 )

The National Game finds its feet 1886-1890

The Daily Colonist, Victoria (March 19, 1889)

1886–1890 …The National Game finds its feet

In the years between the 1886 Beacon Hill match (discussed in a previous post) and the formation of the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association (BCALA) in 1890, lacrosse clubs would make haphazard arrangements for challenge matches – usually to be held on such popular, public holiday events as Empire Day or Dominion Day.

As in 1886, there was only one match reported played in 1887 – played between Victoria and Vancouver on Dominion Day with Victoria winning by two goals / “games” to none. Prior to this, the Victoria Lacrosse Club had met and re-organised itself on May 2, 1887 and subsequently played at least one scrimmage between club members. In the interior of the province, Kamloops had established a lacrosse club by June 1887 but details about it are unknown.

Vancouver Lacrosse Club was formally organised in 1888. The first practices were held on the sawdust at the Hastings Mill yard but it soon became apparent that more suitable playing grounds were required. Through the efforts of Al Larwill, AE Beck, and CG Johnson work began on clearing the Cambie Street grounds which became the first home for athletic clubs in the city.

New Westminster newspapers reported the formation of a lacrosse club in that city on May 12, 1888, but their local fans would have to wait another year before the first ever lacrosse game was played in the Royal City.

Alhambra Cup at the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame

The 1888 season saw multiple challenges being issued back and forth between the Victoria and Vancouver clubs. In August, Kamloops played host to a match between the Victoria Lacrosse Club and Vancouver Lacrosse Club during the Canadian Pacific Railroad picnic held there. Won 3-2 by Victoria, the match took around three hours duration to complete. At one point, high winds and a dust storm interrupted play and it took fifty minutes to complete play for the final “game”.

The following spring saw Vancouver Lacrosse Club put forth the Alhambra Cup for competition – originally to be won by the team winning the most matches played in Vancouver, although as the playing season progressed, the Vancouver club would sometimes announce beforehand that, regardless of location, the upcoming game would count towards Alhambra Cup competition.

On June 8, 1889, the visiting Vancouver team dispatched an inexperienced New Westminster side with a 3-1 result in the debut of lacrosse for the Royal City. From such inauspicious beginnings on that Saturday afternoon, no one in attendance could have known they had just witnessed the birth of what would become arguably one of the most legendary lacrosse clubs in all of competitive sports.

After some wrangling, Vancouver and New Westminster ended up making the trip in September to the Kamloops CPR picnic to play; in the meanwhile, Victoria stayed home uninvited and sulked, feeling snubbed by the two other teams.

Vancouver Lacrosse Club, ca.1889-90 with the Alhambra Cup

Concerns over betting at the final Alhambra Cup match in October 1889, which ended in a 2-2 draw, and disagreements between Vancouver and New Westminster over rules and player eligibility to play for what they deemed the ‘championship’, led some people to look at the example of Eastern Canada – for example, usage of a set code of rules like those used by the Manitoba Lacrosse Association. This encouraged them to look towards forming their own provincial association. A week before Christmas of 1889, during a dinner hosted by the president of the Vancouver Lacrosse Club for his players, discussion about the formation of a provincial association was brought up. The move towards formal, organised lacrosse would start to take shape in the spring of 1890.

(PHOTO SOURCES: The Daily Colonist online archive; author’s photograph; CVA VLP 63)

Alfred ‘Boney’ Suckling

Suckling as he appeared in the 1899 Vancouver team photo.

ALFRED ERNEST ‘BONEY’ SUCKLING
(April 23, 1863 – January 11, 1937)
Winnipeg Old Garry’s (1883)
Torontos (1887)
Toronto Ontarios (1887)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1886; 1887-1896)

Alfred Ernest ‘Boney’ Suckling was regarded as one of the best defensemen in the early, formative years of British Columbian lacrosse. Born in Aldershot, England, one of a family of ten, he moved with his family to Toronto, Ontario when he was a young boy. He came west with the Canadian Pacific Railroad and worked construction in the mountains for three years – he was present when the last spike was driven in the railroad at Craigellachie, British Columbia in 1885.

With him, he brought his love of lacrosse. Tough as nails and loved by fans, ‘Boney’ wore no padding nor gloves and was known to tape lead to the butt-end of his stick. But more importantly, he helped found the Vancouver Lacrosse Club, ca. 1886-1887, and during his lifetime he was often referred to as the ‘Father of Lacrosse in British Columbia’. In the 1889 edition of The Canadian Almanac & Directory, his accomplishments in “establishing healthy young clubs in Vancouver and Victoria” during the summer of 1888 were specifically noted in the lacrosse section of the sports and pastimes chapter.

In the final senior game of the 1895 season, against the Victoria Triangles at Caledonia Park, ‘Boney’ went on a headhunting expedition within ten minutes of the opening whistle. Suckling first targeted Ditchburn – putting the good-natured Victoria player’s head in bandages, dazing and dulling his spirits for the rest of the match. Suckling was finally sent off during the play for the third goal when he struck Frank Cullin on the side of his head with his stick, an action the Victoria Daily Colonist remarked “whenever he is playing a losing game gets nasty and plays roughly”. Cullin returned the blow and the two men then fell to the ground clinching each other in the scrap. After breaking up the melee, Referee JH Senkler removed both players from the remainder of the match.

Alfred ‘Boney’ Suckling when he was a player on the 1890 team.

Suckling occasionally played between the posts as Vancouver could never seem to settle on a consistent fixture in the goal crease. Some early seasons the keeper changed up with a different person from game to game while J Quann and Myers became the usual choices in the mid- to late-1890s. ‘Boney’ was listed as the goalkeeper in a photograph collage printed in the Saturday Globe newspaper in January 1897, accompanying a history of the lacrosse club to that date, although the previous season would end up being his final on the playing field.

‘Boney’ Suckling played for 11 seasons from the game’s debut on the Coast in 1886 until 1896 although he is not listed on the roster for the singular 1886 and 1887 matches played by the Vancouver Lacrosse Club – he may have been back in Toronto during that time. His final game ended in controversy, when the Victoria Capitals filed a protest – dismissed a couple weeks later on a bureaucratic technicality – due to his rough play in the September 4, 1896 match at Brockton Point.

Prior to his permanent relocation to Vancouver, he had played lacrosse with the Toronto Victorias junior team in 1883 and some senior teams there – most notably the Torontos and Toronto Ontarios senior squads in 1887. By the autumn of 1887, he was residing back on the west coast for good and fully immersed with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club and the local lacrosse scene. In 1883 he played for the Old Garry’s of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

After his retirement as a player, he later became a referee, team official, and the provincial association president. His involvement in lacrosse continued until a few years before his death at age 74.

On April 3, 1900 a banquet was held at the Vancouver Merchant’s Exchange in his honour just prior to his departure for new employment with Bremner Brothers, a tobacco and cigar manufacturing company in London, Ontario. Some 40 members of the lacrosse club attended to say goodbye to Vancouver’s ‘father of lacrosse’, who told his listeners during his speech that he always “took a deep interest in the game because he could not help it”. Sucking also advised his audience not to forget the junior game, because “they all had been juniors once”. George Farron, one of those in attendance, recited a poem, Bones, Good Old Bones in Suckling’s honour which brought the house down. Six month later, however, it was reported that Suckling had returned to British Columbia.

In 1901 he was asked to spearhead a memorial fund for the wife of William George Beers (1843-1900).

In February 1905, while on the way home from a five-week trip to Eastern Canada, Suckling stopped over in Seattle and met with members of the Seattle Lacrosse Club. In his capacity as president of the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association, they were interviewing him about the possibly of the Seattle team joining the BCALA senior league. Seattle would indeed join for the 1905 season but then were ejected from the league a few months later, when they were unable to play their two final scheduled games.

In April 1907 when Vancouver held a parade to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the city, Suckling, along with C.N. Davidson, David A. Smith, and some other pioneer members of the Vancouver Lacrosse Club, rode on one of the carriages. Witnessed by 40,000 people, all along the parade route the old veterans of the gutted stick received the loudest applause from the crowd.

He was one of the originators of the thoroughbred association at Minoru Park and was responsible for the building of what later became known as the Brighouse racetrack, now the site of Lansdowne Mall in Richmond.

Suckling’s grave is located at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia. He passed away at Essondale.

(PHOTO SOURCES: detail from CVA Sp P4.1; detail from CVA VLP63; Vancouver Daily News Advertiser (April 5, 1900); author’s photograph)

Forgotten beginnings 1882-1886

1882–1886 …Forgotten beginnings

The first formal, ‘organised’ lacrosse game played in British Columbia (between teams representing two different cities) occurred on Saturday, August 28, 1886. Played at Beacon Hill Park between the Vancouver and Victoria clubs, the visiting mainlanders won by the score of 3-1 – or three “games” to one, in the old-style nomenclature used at the time.

For historical trivia sake: the first ever “goal” (game) was scored by the Vancouver coverpoint player, J. McNamee at 22:00 minutes into the match. McNamee ended up scoring all three goals for his team while outside home D.W. Morrow scored the lone Victoria tally.

Quite possibly the earliest lacrosse match in British Columbia – Daily British Colonist, June 18, 1882

However, while this particular match has gone into the history books as the first lacrosse game played in the province, the game’s roots in British Columbia actually go back by four years to 1882.

On Thursday, February 16 of that year, an athletic club was organised in Victoria that included lacrosse as one of its sports. This was then followed by a highly-publicised match played at Beacon Hill Park on Saturday afternoon, June 17, 1882 although it was essentially a scrimmage game between two teams made up from the mostly-inexperienced players of the Victoria Athletic Club. For reasons unknown, the club was reported (or misreported) in the newspaper as the “Vancouver Athletic Club” – possibly in reference to Vancouver Island, on which Victoria is located – as “Vancouver”, the modern city located across the waters of the Strait of Georgia, was four years away from existing as a civic geographical reference in British Columbia.

Other historical fragments from these early years include newspaper records of a match played in Victoria a few weeks later involving an unidentified collegiate team – as well as a photograph in the British Columbia provincial archives dated from 1883, taken in Victoria, of an unidentified lacrosse team in that city.

On Monday evening May 3, 1886, the Victoria Lacrosse Club was organised. After holding a couple meetings and at least one practise, the club’s first game was played at Beacon Hill Park on May 29, 1886 although their opponents are not reported. This match was likely a scrimmage between club members.

John ‘Dot’ Crookall

John ‘Dot’ Crookall as a member of the Vancouver Athletic Club team, ca. 1911-1913.

JOHN FRANCIS ‘DOT’ CROOKALL
(February 6, 1889 – May 31, 1965)
Vancouver Athletic Club (1913)
Vancouver Athletics (1914)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1915)
Vancouver Greenshirts (1918)
Vancouver Terminals (1919-1923)

After Édouard ‘Newsy’ Lalonde, ‘Dot’ Crookall easily ranks in as the second-greatest player to suit up for Vancouver during the pro lacrosse era. He turned pro during the 1913 season when Vancouver Athletics challenged for the Minto Cup. He then played the following 8 seasons for the various Vancouver professional entries: the Athletics, Vancouver Lacrosse Club, the unfortunate ‘Greenshirts’, and finally, the Vancouver Terminals – appearing in 98 pro matches and scoring 140 goals and 8 assists before bowing out prior to the ill-fated 1924 season. He would get his hands on the Minto Cup in 1920 and was a member of the retracted 1918 championship team. Prior to becoming a professional player, Crookall played two seasons of senior lacrosse with Vancouver Athletic Club in 1911 and 1912 and won the Mann Cup during that time.

His position was inside home, which was previously occupied by teammate ‘Newsy’ Lalonde before ‘Dot’ joined the team – and with Newsy subsequently switching over to outside home, the pair made a formidable attack on the goal crease. In career scoring, John Crookall ranks fourth behind Lalonde in scoring – the two line-mates are tied with 148 points, but Newsy played 5 less games and scored 7 more goals – and the Spring Brothers of New Westminster.

A long-time resident of Bowen Island, located in Howe Sound west of West Vancouver, practically all knowledge of John Crookall’s personal life outside of lacrosse comes from Bowen Island historian Irene Howard and her book Bowen Island 1872-1972. As she wonderfully writes, with lacrosse details repeated above removed:

Crookall, in white cap, lining up at Athletic Park prior to a 1921 game.

John Francis “Dot” Crookall (1889-1965) was born in Toronto, the son of Martha Aspden Crookall and John Crookall, a well-known Vancouver building contractor. He went to Mount Pleasant School, then learned bricklaying and the other building trades from his father. He became a star lacrosse player with his first Mann Cup winning game in 1911. He had first come to Bowen on family camping trips with his mother and father. Then while he was in amateur lacrosse married Erna Ford of New Westminster and lived with her on Bowen Island where he worked for the Terminal Steamship Company. He built some cottages for Captain Cates’ Terminal Resort.

To get to his lacrosse game he used to paddle across the channel to Whytecliffe Park, beach the canoe and catch the Pacific Great Eastern gas jitney to North Vancouver.

He also played semi-pro baseball and was a well-known umpire. After he retired from lacrosse he worked as a bricklayer in Vancouver, but with the onset of a serious illness stopped work and went with his wife to live at Killarney Lake on Bowen Island. After he had recuperated, he and his wife remained on Bowen Island to manage the Tea Room for the Union for several summers, after which he worked as a carpenter for the company until his retirement in 1955.

Always an enthusiastic fisherman, he now fished the year-round, every possible day, even Christmas, and seldom came home without a catch. In a good year it would total nearly 1000. He was not very fond of fish; he gave most of it away. For two years he held a commercial license but sold only to the Union. He was a familiar and much love figure on Bowen Island, where he ran the bingo games, coached the softball team, fed the ducks in the lagoon and kept track of the hatching dates of the ducklings. In his last illness he refused to leave the island and died in the Orchard cottage where he and his wife had lived for so many years.

John ‘Dot’ Crookall was one of the inaugural, charter inductees to the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965 and he is one of just three field lacrosse players from the era also in the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame; inducted two years later.

(PHOTO SOURCES: CLHOF X994.144; CVA 99-905 excerpt)

Special thanks to Bowen Island Museum & Archives for providing the excerpt from Irene Howard’s book Bowen Island 1872-1972.

Con Jones

Con Jones, 1913

CON JONES
(August 13, 1869 – June 3, 1929)

For such a major figure in the early Vancouver sports scene, the details are few and far between on Con Jones. Nothing is known of his early life except that he was born on August 13, 1869 and originally hailed from the Woollahra suburb of Sydney in New South Wales. Some accounts say Jones had been a bookie in his native Australia – others say that he later became a bookie here.

What is known for certain is that he arrived in Vancouver in November 1903 and in the years that followed, he opened up a tobacconist’s, the Brunswick pool hall, some bowling alleys, and a café.

Jones marketed his tobacco under the brand name of “Don’t Argue”, which had one of the most unique business logos ever: a guy in a bowler hat confidently muffling another man in the face. The store motto was “Don’t Argue, Con Jones Sells Fresh Tobacco” and it may have featured the first neon sign in Vancouver – sporting his famous “Don’t Argue” logo. There is strong evidence hinting that Jones surreptitiously “borrowed” the slogan and imagery which was also used by Hutton’s Hams & Bacons in his native Australia.

Within two years of his arrival he became one of Vancouver’s leading sports promoters. Jones started out with billiards; one of his first promotions was offering up a trophy for the BC Amateur Championship in May 1904 – but his first loves would be soccer and lacrosse, and he would spend big bucks to promote them both.

Around 4,000 spectators showed up to witness Vancouver’s debut at Hastings Park on May 31, 1913. Across the road from this site, Con Jones would later build the stadium that would bear his name.

His association with amateur lacrosse begun around 1907 with the National Sports Club. Con Jones then became a key influence in the formation of the British Columbia Lacrosse Association professional league in 1909 (no relation whatsoever to the modern BCLA provincial organisation). He took over as president of the Vancouver Lacrosse Club on March 22, 1909 – and with Jones now in charge, professionalism in Vancouver lacrosse had arrived and with it the money to acquire the necessary talent to win. He lured such stars as Édouard ‘Newsy’ Lalonde, Angus ‘Bones’ Allen, and William ‘Spike’ Hennessy from Eastern teams to sign with Vancouver in 1909.  Lalonde would become one of his favourite targets over the years, such as offering him $3,500 to $5,000 to return in 1911 for a single season, an astronomical sum for its day. (The actual amount Newsy earnt varies depending on sources).

Jones loved sports so much he built his own stadium on a two-block site that was located on Renfrew Street across from the PNE grounds. His lacrosse team vacated Recreation Park downtown and moved to his new athletic grounds in 1913. Jones would later construct a grandstand, which soon acquired the name ‘Con Jones Park’. Today the site is called Callister Park – although his wooden stadium is long gone, having been demolished in 1971. As well as benefiting the professional game, he continued to help build the amateur game at a local level by donating sticks and equipment to youngsters in the public schools.

After running into a scheduling dispute with New Westminster in July 1913, the Salmonbellies walked off the field in protest. Jones pulled the plug on his Vancouver team, refunding $5,000 in ticket revenue to disappointed fans as the sport skidded into the doldrums.

“Don’t Argue! Con Jones Sells Fresh Tobacco”

He would return to lacrosse in 1915, after the Vancouver Athletics had floundered the year before as a replacement for his old club. However, Jones himself would soon fall into financial difficulties. With the Vancouver club mired in debt to the amount of $2,300 just two months into the season, Jones showed his accounting books to the Vancouver players and stated he would not be paying them for the rest of the season. The three Easterners that he had imported for the 1915 season packed up and left for home the following week.

The Great War would then make the 1916 and 1917 lacrosse seasons two of its many casualties as play was suspended due to the war effort.

By the time pro lacrosse was revived in 1918, it had lost its primacy in the hearts of Vancouver’s sports fans. Jones’ own interest in the pro game would sour again after the 1918 season when his Vancouver team won the Mainland Lacrosse Association and claimed the Minto Cup. However, the New Westminster Salmonbellies then claimed the following year – conveniently after they had lost the cup series – that they had never fielded a team and rejected Vancouver’s claims for the Minto Cup.

While the early 1920s would see the game regain some traction amongst fans, it never flourished at the same dizzying level as it did under Jones’ heyday during the decade prior. In the meantime, out of disgust with the recent situation with New Westminster, Jones refocused his attention to supporting the amateur game.

Con Jones on the field prior to a PCLA match between his Vancouver Lacrosse Club and the Victoria Capitals sometime in May-June 1921.

In late September and October of 1920, Jones met with his former star-player Billy Fitzgerald to lay out some plans for fielding a team to play against a Vancouver team involving Jones. Although never progressing beyond talk, conflicting and muddled news reports hinted that Fitzgerald would either organise and manage an unidentified eastern team to play a twelve-game schedule versus Vancouver or he would organise a Seattle lacrosse team to play in an ‘international league’ involving Vancouver and Montréal. Whether the failure of this international league bankrolled by Con Jones later lent weight to the creation of his Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association venture the following year involving Vancouver and Victoria (of which Billy Fitzgerald was a member) is unknown.

When he returned to the professional game in 1921, what seemed like a repeated occurrence over the years, constant disputes with the Salmonbellies, struck yet again. New Westminster refused to play against a Jones team, so this time Jones simply walked with his players and formed his own new league, the Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association, with Victoria as the token opposition. But his new venture was short-lived and floundered after just 5 games. Despite importing easterners to stock the teams, Victoria was hopelessly outclassed and the PCLA experiment quickly proved futile.

“The Man behind the gun” in 1922 for Vancouver Lacrosse Club. This would be his only Mann Cup title.

The following year saw Con Jones return to the senior amateur ranks as “the man behind the gun” for Vancouver Lacrosse Club in the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association’s senior league. Vancouver won the BCALA league on July 31, 1922 and were awarded the Mann Cup a week later. This would be Jones’s first and only Mann Cup championship however it would also be brief.

Just over a month later, Vancouver Lacrosse Club and New Westminster (champions of the Pacific Coast Amateur Lacrosse Association) met in a three-game, total goals series in the first half of September 1922 with both the Mann Cup and provincial champion Kilmarnock Cup on the line. After Vancouver were up 7-6 in goals after two games, they then defaulted their third game after a brawl broke out and the team refused to return to the field. The score was 1-1, so New Westminster lined up and they then went through the formal motions of scoring two unopposed goals into the empty net to take the series and the silverware back by 9 goals to 8.

If you look on the Mann Cup plaques today, there is no reference to Vancouver Lacrosse Club as one of the two champions in 1922, an honour which they rightly held under the challenge cup rules of the day. In those days, the cups were often engraved by the teams but Vancouver likely did not have enough time to put their name on it in the month they possessed the cup. When the Canadian Lacrosse Association took permanent possession in 1926, their list of champions was obviously based on whatever was engraved on the cup so the 1922 Vancouver Lacrosse Club championship was lost and soon forgotten. Much like his 1918 Minto Cup title which was taken away from him thanks to off-field actions, his lone Mann Cup title would be written out from history until rediscovered, buried away in the newspapers, some 80-years later.

Jones found himself returning to the British Columbia Lacrosse Association in 1924 after coming to an agreement with New Westminster over organisation for the upcoming season. (It is unknown whether Jones was involved with the professional club during the course of the previous season – and if so, to what extent.)

Con Jones with his talent-laden Vancouver Lacrosse Club in 1913

Sadly, just as Con Jones had a hand in building the professional game in Vancouver, he would also have a hand in its demise in that city – and ultimately in Canada, as the last professional bastion of the sport was on the Pacific Coast.

In June 1924, four games into the season, Jones suddenly and without warning threw in the towel.

Like a “bolt from the blue”, as one newspaper commented, Jones was forced to quit the game on his doctor’s orders. When local baseball legend Bob Brown then offered to step in and take Jones’s place leading the Vancouver club, the rescue attempt was quickly quashed when Jones flatly refused to allow his park to be used free of charge to help keep the national game alive.

As the Vancouver Province stated: “And that’s that. Con Jones is through.” – and so died the last remnants of the pro lacrosse game in Canada.

Jones was watching a soccer game at Con Jones Park when he suffered a stroke. Five days later, he suffered another attack and passed away at nine o’clock in the morning of June 3, 1929 at the age of 59. He was survived by his wife, four sons, and a daughter. His mausoleum is located at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia.

In 1965, in recognition of his status as a builder of the game, Con Jones was named one of the charter inductees in the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

(PHOTOS CVA99-35; CVA 99-1018.17; CLHOF X994.155; CVA371-576)

Harold ‘Haddie’ Stoddart

Harold ‘Haddie’ Stoddart

HAROLD REGINALD ‘HADDIE’ STODDART
(January 13, 1900 – May 13, 1974)
New Westminster Salmonbellies (1920-1924)

Harold ‘Haddie’ Stoddart was born on the thirteenth day of 1900. He started playing lacrosse at age 10 as a junior and later played high school lacrosse when he was a teenager during the years of the Great War. When he was 18, Haddie started playing senior lacrosse with New Westminster and then turned pro two seasons later in 1920 with the Salmonbellies.

For his first two pro seasons, Stoddart played in what would appear to modern observers as a defensive midfielder role. But then in 1922 he switched to centreman and became one of the best midfielders for the Salmonbellies – finishing fourth in team scoring in every season from 1921 through 1924.

‘Haddie’ Stoddart was an all-round athlete but once he turned pro, he was forced to give up the rest of his amateur sporting pursuits. As well as being a star lacrosse player, he excelled at baseball and also played football and basketball. When he was 16, young enough to fall below the amateur jurisdiction requirements against pro players, he was pitching for the local semi-pro baseball club. He also gave two versions of hockey – ice and floor – a go.

During his five seasons as a pro player, Stoddart appeared in 70 matches and scored 38 goals and 45 points – ranking him 12th in career scoring for pro players on the Coast. As well, he picked up 35 penalties for 221 minutes. Statistically, his best campaign was in 1921 when he scored 14 goals in 18 games.

After the pro game collapsed and died suddenly in 1924, due to strict amateur restrictions, players like Harold Stoddart were forced out of the game, unable to play for senior amateur lacrosse teams because of them being forever tainted as ‘professionals’.

Finally in 1933, after eight seasons of watching from the sidelines, the restriction against the former pros was lifted. By this time, most of the old pro players had become too long in the tooth to play in the fast, new-fangled box lacrosse game – but at age 33, Stoddart was still young enough to have some gas left in the tank.

He signed with the New Westminster Salmonbellies of the Inter-City Lacrosse League in 1933, scoring 10 goals for them during the regular season and playoffs. The following season, ‘Haddie’ signed with the cross-town rival New Westminster Adanacs and he scored 32 goals and 18 assists in 19 games. 1935 would be his last season, scoring 20 goals and 45 points for the Adanacs.

In 1923 Stoddart married Inez Adele Collishaw, one of the sisters of the famous Canadian World War One pilot, Colonel (later Air Vice Marshal) Raymond Collishaw.

Harold Stoddart was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame as a Field Player in 1967.

(PHOTO CLHOF X994.82)