EDWARD VERNON GREEN
(August 20, 1885 – April 28, 1944)
Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs Intermediates (1903)
Seattle Lacrosse Club (1905)
Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs (1906-1907)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1908)
North Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1911)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1922)
played in California (1925)
Vancouver Waterfront Workers (1929)
Vernon Green was a tough, feisty player whose claim to fame – or infamy – was being the spark that set off the notorious ‘rotten eggs and gunshot’ riot which played out at Queens Park on Saturday, September 26, 1908.
Green would earn a reputation for being a somewhat decent player who was prone to fisticuffs and rough play, however after the gunshot riot he seemed to never land anywhere for any substantial length of time. He was often injury prone in his early years and much of his playing career seems to be spent making occasional, fringe appearances here and there over the subsequent 20 years.
Apart from a cigarette card produced with his image in 1910, some two years after he last played for Vancouver Lacrosse Club, photographs of Vernon Green and his involvement in lacrosse are very rare – just his appearances in team photographs and photo-collages from 1905, 1906, and 1922.
Vernon Green was born in 1885 with both Vancouver and Port Simpson, British Columbia referenced as his birthplace. His full given name has been cited as Edward Vernon Green and as Ebenezer Vernon Edward Green – but he was known by all as Vernon Green. His father was the Reverend Alfred Eli Green, a pioneer Methodist missionary in British Columbia and pastor of the Fairview Methodist Church while his mother was Elizabeth Jane Gilbert.
At the tender age of 17, with the Boer War raging half a world away, he enlisted with the Canadian Mounted Rifles in April 1902. He never saw any action as the war had ended by May 31, 1902, many weeks before he arrived in Durban where his unit was stationed. He returned home from South Africa in August 1902.
Vernon Green’s early playing days saw him associated with the Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs intermediate and senior teams between 1903 and 1907, although he made his senior debut with the Seattle Lacrosse Club in 1905 when the Emerald City joined the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association, playing third defense and centre for Seattle. He was the captain (coach) for the Fairview Shamrocks junior lacrosse school team in 1904
In a December 1906, in a human-interest article which may now seem strange but was quite typical for its day, the Vancouver Province reported how Vernon Green and his older brother Walter shot two “panthers” (as cougars or mountain lions were sometimes called back then) on Vancouver Island. The front-page article described how the brothers hunted and shot the two eight-foot long beasts, “the largest ever shot in the neighborhood” and resulted in a bounty collected by the brothers from the government agent in Nanaimo.
Green was the centreman for Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs in 1906 and 1907 although most of the 1907 campaign saw him sidelined from a broken ankle (or knee cap) from May 1907 until late August. His season was quickly cut short again, when, in a match played at Brockton Oval on August 24, 1907 between Vancouver Lacrosse Club and the Maple Leafs, Vernon Green was involved in a “regrettable” and “shameful” fight with Referee Bob Cheyne.
The incident resulted in Cheyne, a former, well-known goaltender for the Salmonbellies, feeling obliged to resign as an official after his momentary loss of temper (he is alleged to have called Green “a vile” or “foul name”) despite blatant provocation by Green, who had punched the referee and as a result was potentially facing suspension for the rest of the season and all of the next.
Surprisingly enough, in August 1908, there were rumours that Green was going to sign with the New Westminster Salmonbellies however he ended up signing with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club.
In no time at all Vernon Green would find himself once again embroiled in conflict and controversy.
On September 26, 1908, in a game played before 10,000 fans at Queens Park, Vernon Green went off the rails as Vancouver suffered from an early 8-0 rout by New Westminster. During the course of the meaningless match (the Salmonbellies had secured the championship title earlier, and Vancouver showed up having to borrow a goaltender), Green went after Gordon ‘Grumpy’ Spring, gashing the young rookie’s head. After serving penalty time, Green followed up by a hard hit laying out Irving ‘Punk’ Wintemute, before zeroing his sights on New Westminster’s captain, Tom Gifford. Two of the toughest men in the game engaged in a sticking-swinging bout from which Gifford suffered severe cuts to his face and a broken nose, but not before he managed to butt-end the tempestuous Green.
By this point, Tom Gifford’s brother Jimmy had seen enough of the mayhem and he made a mad dash for Green, as the crowd then flooded out on to the field and what was once a lacrosse game now erupted into a full-blown riot.
As Vernon Green bolted for the Vancouver dressing room seeking refuge, rotten eggs began to be pelted at the Vancouver trainer, a well-known ‘coloured’ boxer by the name of George Paris, who retaliated by pulling out his pistol and firing off a shot that almost injured (or lightly grazed) the backside of a city worker caught up in the fracas.
Eventually, the riot was brought to an end when Tom Gifford walked into the Vancouver dressing room and shook hands with Vernon Green; some witnesses say that the Salmonbellie apologised to the Greenshirt.
While much of the fall-out from the ugly incident ended up focused on George Paris, the New Westminster police nevertheless issued a court summons against Vernon Green to answer charges of assault against Gordon Spring. After repeated and delayed attempts by the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association to hold an inquiry into the matter and levy punishment on the worst perpetrators involved, which obviously included Vernon Green, the matter was dropped and buried under the growing concern over professionalism in the sport, which soon dominated off-field discussion.
There is no evidence or mention in the press whether Vernon Green faced suspension in the aftermath of the riot, but he did not return to the lacrosse field in 1909 as he went north with his brother Walter, where they spent the summer months from May through September on their ranch in the Kispiox Valley near Hazelton.
In March 1910, Vernon Green took his pugilism into the boxing ring to compete in the annual championships held for the Pacific Northwest, but lost the main event bout versus his better trained opponent, heavyweight Frank Westerman of Seattle, who knocked out the outclassed and lacrosse player in two rounds. The Vancouver Province remarked wryly afterwards how in the future Green should confine his fighting proclivities to the lacrosse field.
The following month he tried out and played in test matches with Vancouver Lacrosse Club but failed to make the team. Later that season, Green was then involved in the formation of the Vancouver Shamrocks lacrosse club in June 1910. He played third home for the Shamrocks in an exhibition match versus the Vancouver Athletic Club, bagging a goal in the third quarter – however the Shamrocks then disappeared into history.
He tried out again for Vancouver Lacrosse Club in 1911 and was initially listed as a reserve player – but he appeared in no games with the professional club. He was then associated with the North Vancouver Lacrosse Club outfit that unsuccessfully applied for admission to the professional ranks that same year. Vernon Green suited up in the third defense position for North Vancouver in their two pre-season test matches that were played versus Vancouver Lacrosse Club and New Westminster Salmonbellies, with lopsided results in favour of the established teams.
These were the closest instances of him seeing professional ball – and although he was branded a professional by the amateur authorities, Vernon Green never saw any actual competitive pro lacrosse action.
In 1911 he appears to have taken up competitive bowling along with some of his Vancouver lacrosse mates, Archie Adamson, Frank Ronan, and George Matheson, forming a team at the Shamrock bowling alley.
The following year saw him turning out for New Westminster senior practises in but he does not appear to have made the team. It was around this time in March 1912 when he was applying for reinstatement as an amateur, but he must have been unsuccessful as he was trying yet again to apply for reinstatement many years later in 1921.
This time reinstatement (or ‘whitewashing’, as it was sometimes called) must have been granted as Vernon Green signed with the amateur Vancouver Lacrosse Club team in 1922 to compete for the Mann Cup. After defeating the Victoria Capitals in BCALA league play, Vancouver were briefly Mann Cup champions for around one month until they met and subsequently lost to the PCALA champions, New Westminster Salmonbellies in a three-game series for both the Mann Cup and provincial Kilmarnock cup titles. This is the only instance of two Mann Cup champions occurring in the same year.
Green did not play any lacrosse in 1923 nor 1924 but 1925 found him playing in a series of games in California.
Along with ex-pro player John Howard, he co-coached the Vancouver Waterfront Workers lacrosse team in the 1929 BCALA Kilmarnock Cup series and suited up for at least one game. He also appeared in some old-timer games that season, including the benefit game on June 17, 1929 for ailing former Salmonbellies player Irving ‘Punk’ Wintemute – but 1929 appears to have been Green’s last involvement in the sport.
Vernon Green served during the First World War in France and Belgium. Corporal Green convalesced in May 1917 at Woodcate Park in Epsom, England. A photograph of him and some of his military comrades appeared in the Vancouver Province holding a copy of the newspaper, which had been sent from home. He then later volunteered as part of the Canadian contingent fighting against the Bolsheviks during the civil war in Russia.
Shortly after the war, he returned to Vancouver and assisted with the dismantling of the Mount Pleasant Brewery, which was then sold to interests in Japan. He was in that country at the time of the 1923 earthquake.
Vernon Green was later employed as a plumber, and at the time of his passing he worked for Boeing Aircraft of Canada at their Sea Island Plant No.3 maintenance facility. His last residence was located at 525 West 20th Avenue.
He passed away on April 28, 1944. Green was survived by his second wife Lila Enda, three daughters, Rita, Gloria, Patricia, and son Wendell – as well as two sons from his first marriage, Calvin and Vernon. His first wife was Viola Chadwick (later Viola Wilson), whom he married on Christmas Eve 1909 but later divorced. He was given a military funeral ceremony on May 2, 1944 at Mount Pleasant funeral chapel. Reverend E.F. Church officiated the service as Corporal Vernon Green was interred in soldiers’ section of Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver.
(PHOTO SOURCES: Imperial Tobacco Card 1910; Seattle Times; CLHOF collection; CLHOF X994.155 excerpt; Vancouver Province June 5, 1917)
Old School Lacrosse 