Fred ‘Mickey’ Ion

‘Mickey’ Ion, 1912

FREDERICK JAMES ‘MICKEY’ ION
(February 25, 1886 – October 26, 1964)
Toronto Tecumsehs (1909-1910)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1911-1913; 1915)
New Westminster Salmonbellies (1914)
Vancouver Terminals (1919)

Fred Ion, better known in sporting circles as ‘Mickey’ Ion, was born in Paris, Ontario and grew up playing lacrosse in Brantford.

He made his debut as a teenager with the Wellingtons in the local city league in 1904. He played the following year with a local ‘Shamrocks’ team, then spent a couple seasons with the Brantford senior team. While his playing whereabouts are unknown in 1908, he turned pro and signed with the Toronto Tecumsehs in 1909 and was described as a hard man for midfielders to get away from.

Ion gained national notoriety for his “brutal and unprovoked attack” on George Kalls during an all-Toronto meeting on August 2, 1909. Described by one reporter as a “bloody battle” and a “butcher’s barbeque”, Ion had already served 5 penalties (total of 15 minutes) on the sidelines as both he, and the match, devolved into a foul mood. He then incurred the ire of Referee Joe Lally when he re-entered the game before serving all his time, and was sent off again with another 10 minutes added to his name.

Kalls made a shot on goal which, probably accidental in nature and not deliberate, deflected off Ion’s head – but Kalls nevertheless laughed at the unfortunate defender as he rubbed his sore head. Now fully riled up, Ion wanted pay-back – and while Kalls was down tying his shoe, Ion rushed at him and kicked him square in the jaw.

Judge of Play McIntyre, with assistance from some players, ushered Ion off the field, all the while deliberately and slowly giving ‘Mickey’ a piece of his mind – that it was “the dirtiest thing I ever saw on a lacrosse field”. Unrepentant, Ion sulked back at the referee: “Now you go on, you’ve said enough!” For his own safety, Ion was escorted to the clubhouse to keep him away from spectators calling for his arrest, while the dazed Kalls required assistance from his teammates to get off the field.

In total, Ion clocked up 35 minutes in penalties (plus unrecorded ejection time) in a game that saw an incredible three-hours and thirty-five minutes of infractions dealt out between both teams. The situation on the sidelines became so bad that the penalty timekeeper got fed up and disgusted arguing with team officials, that he simply quit while the game still raged on.

Ion was charged with aggravated assault and appeared in court after Toronto manager Charles Querrie posted $200 bail. He was found guilty by a jury the following month and sentenced to ten days in jail on November 1, 1909. Expecting a fine, a surprised ‘Mickey’ Ion simply smiled it off as he was taken away.

Despite the controversy and a ban for the remainder of the season, he returned to the Toronto Tecumsehs the following season when Manager Querrie spoke for his good conduct.

‘Mickey’ Ion, 1913

Harry Griffiths met with Ion at his Brantford home in March 1911 in a pitch to go west and sign with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club. After initially turning down the offer, “the difficult man to handle” changed his mind the following month and signed with Vancouver.

He would have further run-ins with the police after fighting Pat Feeney in a 1912 game versus New Westminster, and he led the BCLA league in penalties and minutes in 1912, the only player to record more than 100 minutes (136) sent off.

When the Vancouver Lacrosse Club folded, Ion then signed with New Westminster Salmonbellies when they faced the Vancouver Athletic Club in the 1914 season. He returned to Vancouver the following year when Con Jones reformed his Vancouver Lacrosse Club.

A defensive-end midfielder he scored just 2 goals during his 52 games played on the Pacific Coast – both occurring during the month of July 1911. As time progressed, his positioning slowly shifted more and more towards the rear and he began to slot in some times on the defense. During the course of his six seasons of play in British Columbia, he accrued 41 penalties and 305 penalties minutes – which rank him 8th overall and 6th overall respectively for career numbers.

‘Mickey’ Ion’s referee career in professional ice hockey is well-documented elsewhere and will only be briefly detailed here: He began refereeing in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the 1912-13 season after league mogul Frank Patrick selected him to referee in his league because he felt Ion looked the part of someone who could manage games. When the PCHA folded in 1926, Ion moved east to work in the National Hockey League. His last, active on-ice game was in Montréal in 1937 when he refereed the Howie Morenz memorial game held at the Forum. He then become referee-in-chief for the NHL until his retirement.

In 1942, ‘Mickey’ Ion retired to Seattle, Washington where his wife had grown up. Suffering from diabetes in his later years, he contracted phlebitis in 1957 and doctors amputated his left leg. Three years later, he lost his other leg to the same condition and ended up in a wheelchair confined to the Redmond Nursing Home in suburban Seattle.

One of the most-highly rated referees in hockey, ‘Mickey’ Ion was inducted into the National Hockey League’s hockey hall of fame in 1961 for his accomplishments and performance as a referee. He was deeply humbled by the act and said it was the happiest day of his life. Incredibly enough, he never played any hockey – as lacrosse and baseball were where his personal athletic talents lay.

Frederick Ion passed away three years later; his wife Minni Nordhoff had predeceased him by five years. He was survived by two brothers Thomas and Austin and a sister Emma (Gillen) as ‘Mickey’s passing was reported in the sports pages all across Canada and even into the United States.

(PHOTO SOURCES: CVA 99-43 excerpt; CVA 99-35 excerpt)

Paddy McDonough

McDonough appearing in a 1920 newspaper.

PATRICK ‘PADDY’ McDONOUGH
(1883/84 – April 3, 1958)
Vancouver Greenshirts (1918)
Vancouver Terminals (1919-1920; 1923-1924)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1921)

Long-forgotten and obscure today, with a couple of blurry newspaper images to his name, Patrick ‘Paddy’ McDonough was a well-regarded journeyman player for Vancouver teams in the immediate years after the First World War and into the early 1920s.

An easterner hailing from the shores of Lake Simcoe in Ontario – with both Orillia and Beaverton mentioned as his hometown – nothing concrete is known of his early years nor where he learnt the game.

McDonough excelled both in ice hockey and lacrosse and in his early years as an athlete he moved about considerably between teams and cities, in both sports, from year to year, until ultimately finding his way out west to Vancouver and calling it home. He seems to have acquired the nickname ‘Paddy’ in Vancouver, while everywhere else tended to call him ‘Pat’.

Pat McDonough was referred to as “the famous lacrosse player” in an article printed in the Toronto Star in 1908. This is a rather surprising and astonishing statement considering the earliest mention of his name in a game report occurred only the year before. He had turned senior in 1904 and had played previously with such small-town teams as Port Hope, Fort William, and Beaverton – the latter location where he seems to have made his ‘famous’ name – but none of these were hardly any sort of world-beaters or powerhouses.

An early practitioner of the money game, McDonough was gaining enough attention around this time to try selling his services. He was slated to sign with the Toronto Tecumsehs of the professional National Lacrosse Union in 1907, but then got lured away the following month by an intermediate team from Peterborough playing two-tiers down in the Canadian Lacrosse Association league (no relation to the modern national governing body).

Toronto was rumoured to be offering him $300 for the entire season – which was expected to work out being $20 per game – while Peterborough upped the ante by offering him $25 per game. He went with the better deal on the table – but it ended up being a poor decision that backfired on him, as he ended up playing less games and Peterborough was always in danger of folding that season, and may have actually done so.

He then signed the following season with the Tecumsehs’ rivals in the National Lacrosse Union, the Toronto Lacrosse Club (the ‘Torontos’) in May 1908, but then much like he did with the Tecumsehs the year before, he soon jumped ship to play for the Chicago Shamrocks in a handful of games.

It is unknown whether any sort of employment had taken him stateside, nor the quality or type of league in which Chicago played, but by the following year he was acting as player-manager for the Shamrocks and had recruited over a dozen Canadians to fill their ranks. Two years later he was reported to be coaching the lacrosse team at Hobart College in upstate New York.

Around this time, he was also playing ice hockey in the winter months. He started out with teams in the Thunder Bay area, such as Fort William Wanderers in 1908 and a Port Arthur team around 1910; there may have also been some confusion which sport he was playing there, as lacrosse was experiencing a sudden boom in that area at this same time.

By 1911 he had moved on to Saskatoon and signed with a hockey team there. When the Great War came along, he was now in Nelson, British Columbia with three seasons of hockey there under his belt. It was likely during this time spent in the West Kootenay that he first came into contact with the Patrick brothers, Lester and Frank, whom would later employ him as an emergency referee and scout for their Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

His arrival in Vancouver, like much of his playing career, was just as murky. He was reported in June 1917 to be suiting up with the Vancouver squad in the patriotic lacrosse series games played for the war effort relief, however his involvement was limited to that of one of the timekeepers.

He then appeared for the ‘Greenshirts’ in the opening and closing matches of the 1918 Mainland Lacrosse Association campaign, picking up a couple of goals in his second appearance.

‘Paddy’ McDonough signed on with the Vancouver Terminals fulltime in 1919, and he could be found top of the midfield line at first home, or on the attack at inside home and occasionally outside home. As the season wore on, however, he started about half the matches as a substitute.

‘Paddy’ McDonough, June 1920

He paired by with ‘Dot’ Crookall on the attack in 1920 and became noted as one of the sharpshooters on the Terminals. This would be by far his most outstanding season, scoring 19 goals in 17 matches and finishing second in scoring for Vancouver, as well as winning much praise in the press in the process.

Returning to his team-jumping ways, he quit the Terminals in 1921 and signed with Con Jones’s upstart Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association. When the league folded in the second week of June, he found himself on the sidelines.

He was signed to referee PCHA pro hockey games in an emergency capacity for the 1921-22 season. After working one game, he was then sent off by the league on a scouting mission across the prairies in early 1922.

After sitting out the 1922 lacrosse season, he returned to the Vancouver Terminals the following year, but the two-year break from the game seems to have impacted and diminished his ability as he was often relegated to substitute duty.

When goaltender Jake Davis suddenly quit the team at the end of August 1923 to move to California for work, the Terminals were left scrambling to find a new backstop. Veteran keeper and future hall-of-famer Dave Gibbons had been out practising with the team, but he refused the role, claiming his eyesight was no longer good enough. Regarded as somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades, ‘Paddy’ McDonough stepped up and filled the hole in the crease.

His lone appearance in goal took place on September 3, 1923 in a close 9-7 loss to the New Westminster Salmonbellies. Despite previous club confidence with McDonough going into the match, he was replaced in the crease five days later by newcomer Andrew Jack.

McDonough’s lacrosse career ended the following year with the demise of the professional game in June 1924. Looking back at his lacrosse career in Vancouver, he scored a total of 36 goals and 2 assists in 48 games – good enough to place him 14th overall for career goals in the league and 5th in Vancouver team scoring. Statistically he is the best Vancouver pro field player from that era not in the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

In 1942, lacrosse beater writer Andy Paull was asked who he thought “was the roughest player that had ever played”, and he replied with McDonough’s name. With ‘Paddy’ in his later years sometimes providing occasional ‘opinion quotes’ to fill space in the papers, it is difficult to tell if Paull was actually serious or just being humourous and witty with a knowing audience, as McDonough’s 7 penalties and 31 minutes made him practically a saint in the old rough and tumble field game.

In the mid-1930s McDonough returned to his ice hockey roots and scouted for NHL teams, notably for Frank Patrick when he was coach of the Boston Bruins for two seasons. Otherwise nothing is known about his employment nor any personal details, apart from living in the Lonsdale area of North Vancouver from 1941 onwards and operating a pool room there until a year before his passing. He seems to have remained a bachelor, as when Patrick McDonough passed away in 1958, his obituary mentioned he was only survived by a sister.

(PHOTO SOURCES: Vancouver Province unknown date; Vancouver Province June 3, 1920)

Cliff Cao

Cliff Cao, 1905

CLIFFORD (CLIFF) CHRISTIE CAO
(ca. 1880 – May 21, 1941)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1902-1905)
Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs (1906; 1908-1909)

Although his playing career was a brief span of just seven or eight years, Cliff Cao was one of the more notable and talented players to suit up for the Vancouver-based teams during the first decade of the 20th Century.

Born in Liverpool, England, Clifford Cao was of mixed Italian and Scottish background. His father Angelo Cao was born in 1842 in Venice, Italy and passed away in 1888, while his mother Ada (Christie) Cao was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1846 and passed away in 1924. Young Cliff moved to Canada around the age of 9 or 10 with his mother and family in 1889.

His slight build did not seem to be a detriment although a newspaper article in August 1902 noted that his speed was not fast enough to be an effective midfield player. The following season saw him moving up to the attack line, slotted in at the inside home position, a move which clearly improved his performance. His 1904 and 1905 campaigns were described in the press as playing a ‘star game’.

During the fall of 1905 he was suspended by the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association for being part of a Vancouver line-up that played against professionals, but he was reinstated in May 1906.

He had already retired from the game the previous month and it was during this down time in 1906 when Cliff Cao’s serious interest in yachting began – and once removed from lacrosse, sailing become his life passion which continued into the 1930s.

After his sailing commitments in the Bellingham regatta had come and gone, he was back out practising and playing three months later, when he signed with Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs in mid-July 1906.

When Cao made a return late in the 1906 season, the press noted that his “oldtime speed” and stick-handing ability was badly needed by the Maple Leafs, although confusingly noting that his speed was hampered by his size, compensated by his expert stickhandling and accurate shooting. While it does seem the newspapers were inconsistent and contradictory about the nature and deficiency of his running game, what was always consistently positive was his personal ability and skill with the lacrosse stick.

Cliff Cao (seated) with his mother Ada and two brothers Rico and Chris, ca. 1905-1910.

When 1907 came along, there was talk of him once again leaving lacrosse after becoming injured. Cao was listed on some suggested or potential rosters put into print that year for the Vancouver team, but it is unknown whether he actually suited up for any games due to a chronic absence of game reports and box scores during those years, which include his name. The nature of his injury is unknown, but he did recover to re-sign with Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs in July 1908.

During a meeting held in March 1909 looking into the contentious issue in of professionalism lacrosse, Cliff Cao spoke out how every amateur player was out looking for the money, but in the past there was unfairness between those who got paid and those who played for the love of the game and this created favouritism leading to demoralisation within some teams.

He signed once again with Mount Pleasant in the senior amateur league, so in the short term we can perhaps surmise where Cao may have stood in regards to the pro vs. amateur debate – however any dislike he may have had for the money game disappeared by the time he was invited out by Con Jones to try out for the Vancouver Lacrosse Club in May 1910. He gave it his all during pre-season practises and test matches, but Cliff Cao retired for good after his comeback attempt failed, at age 30 and already feeling the pace of the game to be a struggle.

He did suit up for an old-timers game played at Brockton Point on Empire Day (May 25) 1929 but otherwise his involvement in lacrosse would be relegated to name appearances in “20 years ago in sports today” recollection articles published by the newspapers.

Cliff Cao became a prominent member of Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, with local fame won as the skipper of Spirit I and Swipe. Looking back over his life, his experience and achievements on the water impressively eclipsed his experience on the grass field.

He won races organised by the RVYC in July 1919, beating the second-place finisher by three hours. His boat, Spirit I, was considered to be one of the two best sailing crafts in the RVYC. When the Cao Brothers sold Sprit I in August 1924, the trusty racing yacht had won 46 trophies for the Cao family.

Cliff Cao never married – however both his brother Rico and his wife were also expert coxswains, with Mrs. Rico Cao winning the Julian Cup for women’s sailboat racing in 1912. His employment is reported as a tinsmith. At the time of his passing, Cliff Cao resided at 216 East 27th Avenue in Vancouver. He was survived by his two brothers Chris and Rico Cao, as well as three sisters.

(PHOTO SOURCES: CLHOF X994.204 excerpt; courtesy of Brian Vivian family collection)

Special thanks to Brian Vivian (Cao’s grand-nephew) for providing biographical information and photograph.

Vernon Green

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.

Vernon Green playing for Seattle in 1905.

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.

Vernon Green as a member of Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs in 1906.

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.

Vernon Green as a Mann Cup champion in 1922.

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.

Cpl. Vernon Green (backrow left) appearing with his war comrades in the Vancouver Province in 1917.

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)

Eustace Gillanders

Eustace Gillanders, May 1922.

EUSTACE DAWSON GILLANDERS
(August 4, 1893 – February 14, 1966)
Vancouver Athletic Club (1913-1915; 1919)
Vancouver Coughlan Shipyards AAA (1918)
Vancouver Terminals (1919-1920; 1921-1923)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1921)

Eustace Gillanders was part of the core, defensive line on the Vancouver Terminals consisting of Bay Carter, Everett McLaren, Harry ‘Fat’ Painter, goaltender Jake Davis, and Gillanders himself, all who had previously combined to form the back-half of the Vancouver Athletic Club amateur dynasty in the decade prior and had made the move to the professionals in the early 1920s.

Eustace Dawson Gillanders was born in 1893 in Sapperton, New Westminster. His parents were Wesley Clark Gillanders and Arabella Holmes of Chilliwack. His father was from near Peterbourough, Ontario and had moved west around 1873-1874 at the age of 18, settling in Chilliwack with his mother, brothers, and sisters, all who had accompanied him to British Columbia by way of San Francisco, California. There his father Wesley met Eustace’s mother Arabella, a schoolteacher. The young couple married and lived on their pre-emption which was located between Chilliwack and Rosedale. Then at some point prior to Eustace’s birth in 1893, his parents moved to New Westminster to care for Arabella’s aging parents. In 1910, the family moved again, this time to Vancouver.

Gillanders started playing lacrosse at the age of 11, with one newspaper article stating that he had moved to the West End of Vancouver at a very young age. The same article mentions that during one of his early attempts at the sport, he smashed a window and frightened several youths who had to scurry for cover. With roots in two lacrosse-playing communities, he played junior lacrosse for Sapperton and then played defensive point for the Vancouver Olympics in 1912 when he moved up to the intermediate ranks.

He turned senior in 1913 with the powerhouse Vancouver Athletic Club team during their Mann Cup dynasty run prior to the First World War – however he remained a senior and did not play when the Athletics challenged for the Minto Cup in 1913. His first season after the First World War saw him win another Mann Cup title in 1918 – this time with the Vancouver Coughlans Shipyards Amateur Athletic Association team who pushed aside the New Westminster Salmonbellies, North Vancouver Squamish Indians, and Winnipeg Argonauts on their run of 7 win and 2 ties.

On June 3, 1916 Eustace Gillanders married Gertrude Oglivie Marsh. They would have four children: Kenneth, Gordon, Marguerite, and an unnamed child who probably died at birth.

At the start of the 1919 campaign, he rejoined the Vancouver Athletic Club when the team reformed in the Pacific Coast Amateur Lacrosse Association after a three-year absence due to the war. Gillanders was elected team captain by his team-mates and was generally regarded as the best player on the roster. However, with VAC fielding a weak squad and suffering through poor results, Gillanders was convinced to turn professional around July 30, 1919 – a “bombshell” signing according to the Vancouver Province. The Vancouver Terminals had been in serious need of reinforcements for two to three weeks prior due to injuries and suspensions, and with newly-permitted substitutions now requiring more bodies to be carried by the team, the pro outfit had earlier tried to sign the Winged V star but to no avail.

Playing most of his professional career as a defensive midfielder in the first defence position, he made a great impact in Vancouver’s own end of the field, being dubbed a year later by the Terminals team manager Harry Pickering as the “find of the season”.

Eustace Gillanders, 1923.

1921 would prove to be a career production year on the field for the first defenceman. He started the season by signing up with Con Jones’s rival Vancouver team in the upstart Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association. Never a serious goal-scoring threat around the net, it would be during the league’s fifth and final match on June 11 that he would bag his only career hat-trick. After scoring Vancouver’s second goal of the match to even the score line 2-2 at the end of the first half, Victoria Capitals then built up a 5-3 lead over the next two quarters. Heading into the final stanza, Vancouver had pulled to within 1 goal, when Eustace Gillanders scored a minute later to tie the game, and then the game-winning goal a minute after that for Vancouver’s 6-5 win. The league would fold two days later. Gillanders then re-joined his old Terminals team and score another 2 goals. In all, he had 7 goals to his name for the year – out of the 11 total he would score during his five-year professional career.

Around September 1922, he was sidelined due to a bad case of appendicitis and missed games late in the season.

Eustace Gillanders’s final season as a player took place in 1923. It is unknown why he did not return the following year but it may have been due to work. He left the professional game with 68 games, 11 goals, and a lone assist to his credit, along with 21 penalties totaling 102 minutes watching from the sin bin.

Three years later in 1926 he would be involved, either as the coach or the manager (or both), with the Ocean Falls Amateur Athletic Association lacrosse team. Gillanders was a working resident of the company town, the site of the largest pulp and paper mill in British Columbia. That year saw a large contingent of former New Westminster lacrosse players gain employment there, so a lacrosse team was organised. It is unknown if the Ocean Falls AAA team played any league games, but they challenged the Richmond Farmers, champions of the Vancouver & District League, for the Kilmarnock Cup, the senior provincial championship trophy of British Columbia. The first game of the two-game total-goals series ended in a 6-6 draw, followed by a close 3-2 win for Ocean Falls. They then moved on to the Western Canada finals, where Ocean Falls won their first game over the Winnipeg Tammany Tigers 6-5 but then lost the second game 8-6 – missing out moving on to the Mann Cup finals by 1 goal, 13-12.

Eustace Gillanders passed away at home in “North Surrey, Delta” (according to his death certificate), his place of residence for the last two years of his life. His house was located at 11946 – 80th Avenue, which is now the site of a commercial office building in the Kennedy Heights area along the Surrey-North Delta border. He had worked as a pipe fitter, for 35 years, retiring the year prior to his passing. Gillanders was cremated with a memorial at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia.

(PHOTO SOURCE: Vancouver Sun May 21, 1922; Vancouver Province April 7, 1923)

Jake Davis

Jake Davis with the Victoria Foundation club in 1919.

JAKE DAVIS
(born ca.1893 – May 1981)
Vancouver East End (1909-1911)
Vancouver Athletic Club (1912-1914)
Victoria Foundation Club (1919)
Vancouver Terminals (1920; 1921-1923)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1921)

Jake Davis was born in Toronto but moved to Vancouver when he was just a tiny child. He played junior lacrosse for two years with the East End club before turning senior with the Vancouver Athletic Club in 1912.

The Athletics had won their Mann Cup challenge the year before when they defeated cup holders Young Torontos in a two-game, total goal series 9-3. The young rookie Jake Davis soon found himself part of the new senior amateur dynasty team taking root in Vancouver, defending their hold over the cup against all challenges in 1912 and 1913 – and gaining a reputation as an outstanding, young lacrosse goalkeeper. His older brother Bill Davis also played for the Vancouver Athletic Club, up front as a midfielder, during their Mann Cup years.

In the 1914, the core group of VAC players felt there was nothing else to achieve by remaining in the senior amateur game, so the team joined the professional ranks in the British Columbia Lacrosse Association league with their desire to step up to the next challenge and wrestle the Minto Cup away from the New Westminster Salmonbellies. However, the club refused to let Jake Davis turn pro as they still wanted to defend the Mann Cup and required his services in goal. During the defense of their Mann Cup challenges that year, he played with cracked ribs – tearing off bandages during a game when they began to interfere and hinder his play.

Mann Cup play that year would become bogged down by disputes. The Athletics had defeated the Calgary Chinooks and Brampton Excelsiors in challenge matches but then the Mann Cup trustees disputed the status of one of the Vancouver players in the series versus Brampton.

Despite the views of British Columbia lacrosse, national lacrosse and amateur athletic organisations that supported Vancouver’s position, the trustees instead awarded the cup to the Calgary Chinooks on September 29, 1914. Vancouver however held on to the gold trophy and refused to turn it over to either the trustees or the Chinooks. Finally, resolution to the issue came on December 7, 1914, when the Canadian Amateur Lacrosse Association overruled Mann Cup trustee Joseph Lally and awarded the cup to the Vancouver Athletic Club.

Jake Davis married at a young age around 1913 and the couple would later have four sons. As well as lacrosse, he also played soccer and ice hockey, both in goal, and was a shortstop in baseball.

Formal portrait taken in 1913 for Vancouver Athletic Club photo-montage.

The Great War would put a hold over Jake Davis’s lacrosse career, although he did participate in some of the patriotic charity fund-raising matches organised during the war years.

When formal play resumed in 1918, Davis joined the Vancouver Coughlans Shipyards team in the Vancouver Amateur Lacrosse Association. After besting the cup-holders New Westminster Salmonbellies in league play and defeating the North Vancouver Squamish Indians 6-4 in a single-game playoff, the Coughlans then won (or retained) the Mann Cup by defeating the Winnipeg Argonauts.

The following year he joined the Foundation Lacrosse Club founded by ‘Cotton’ Brynjolfson in April 1919 to represent the Victoria Shipyards – and Davis would add his final Mann Cup crown, won with his third team, to his name that season.

1920 saw Jake Davis finally turn professional and sign with the Vancouver Terminals, in the process pushing out veteran keeper Dave Gibbons in what could be viewed as a changing of the guard. Unlike their Salmonbellies rivals, the various Vancouver teams did not boast the same numerical depth of local trained talent in goal. In lieu of Eastern imports, Gibbons and Davis were by far the best goaltenders to come up through the ranks of Vancouver organisations for the first-quarter of the 20th century – and Gibbons’s best years were now behind him when Jake made the step up to the pro game in 1920.

When Con Jones started up the rival Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association, he recruited Jake Davis for his Vancouver Lacrosse Club. When the second league folded a few weeks into its season, Davis then jumped back to his former Terminals club – and for a second time, pushed out Dave Gibbons from the starting spot between the pipes.

During the 1922 season he missed some games from an abdomen injury when he was butt-ended by a stick on the sly during a game versus New Westminster. The following year Jake Davis went “South” in August 1923 and quit the Vancouver Terminals in mid-season, moving to California along with his father and becoming a carpenter there.

The relocation became permanent in 1930 when he was hired by Mobil Oil. He worked for the oil company for 31 years and retried as the plant yard foreman in 1961. He lived in Berkeley until retirement and then moved to Richmond Heights a year later. At the time of his hall of fame induction in 1977 he was residing in Long Beach, California.

In November 1946, Davis wrote to the Vancouver Sun asking for contact information for ‘Newsy’ Lalonde as well as for any lacrosse films available to show in California. He also wrote a letter to the Victoria Colonist newspaper in October 1969, asking “to find out if any of the [Foundation] boys are still living”. Otherwise, he had disappeared off the radar of the old lacrosse fans and the press, so much so it was not even known if he were still alive or not by the time he finally returned to Vancouver around 1973-74, visiting the city for the first time since moving to California in the 1930s. His arrival and subsequent meeting with one of the local sports reporters sparked the move to get him finally inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1977 – although with hindsight and the benefit of research, it appears his legacy and his legend had become misreported, blurred, and more so, embellished over time.

“Eight straight Canadian championship teams between 1912-1920”, as reported in the Vancouver Sun in 1977 at the time of his induction, is a falsehood, along with the claims of “seven Mann Cup winning teams” and “first Minto Cup shutout in 1912”.

Jake Davis with the Vancouver Athletic Club in 1912.

So much emphasis was placed in 1977 on this lone shutout that he was even bestowed the nickname “Mr. Zero”. This moniker is completely unwarranted. While shutouts were rare during the professional field era, they were not unique nor unheard of – with 8 shutouts occurring in professional play on the Pacific Coast: 2 each by Alban ‘Bun’ Clark, Alex ‘Sandy’ Gray, and Bernie Feedham, and one each by Dave Gibbons and Jake Davis (in 1923 – not 1912). It seems, however, with the benefit of time, the passing of observers, and the complete lack of statistical information in 1977, Jake Davis became the only goalkeeper who was remembered by such a performance and his career subsequently became memorialised by it.

When examining his championship wins, there is much more factual truth there. In the challenge era for the Mann Cup and Minto Cups, it can be quite difficult to determine and tabulate totals as some seasons did see multiple challengers as well as league play also factoring who the cup holders were. Jake Davis won, retained, or defended the Mann Cup during league play over the course of five seasons, to which can be added another six successful challenge victories. However, in 1915 the Athletic Club dynasty was finally broken when the Mann Cup was won by New Westminster. This and the two-year gap on account of the war broke the so-called succession of straight championships. His lone Minto Cup championship came in 1920, his last hurrah on a championship team. Despite the grand claim of “eight straight Canadian championship teams between 1912-1920”, his six years of championship seasons in less than a decade is nevertheless impressive.

Compared with other goaltenders from the professional era on the Coast, Davis would be ranked third for most career wins (27), tied fifth for career winning percentage (.500), and sixth for career goals against average (5.00) – with some of those placements ahead of him held by a few emergency players having to go in goal in one-off starts. At the professional level, he was certainly a very capable and reliable goalkeeper but nowhere near the outstanding figure that later press (or the hall of fame press) made him out to be – although to be fair, his performance during his senior years spent with the Vancouver Athletic Club seems to be by what he was remembered most for, and it can be argued that he was probably the best amateur keeper on the Pacific Coast in the 1910s. Over time, aged minds likely blurred his full career and results all together.

Just for the record: his ‘famous’ shutout occurred on June 9, 1923 in a 2-0 decision at Queens Park, coming two weeks after New Westminster goalkeeper Bernie Feedham himself had blanked the Terminals 1-0.

(PHOTO SOURCES: Victoria Colonist October 29, 1969; CLHOF X979.190.1 excerpt; CVA 99-1019 excerpt)

Bay Carter

Bay Carter with the Vancouver Terminals, 1923

BAYARD (BAY) MARSHALL CARTER
(1895 – October 26, 1974)
Vancouver Athletic Club (1914-1915; 1919)
Vancouver Terminals (1920; 1921-1924)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1921)

Bay Carter was part of a core group of local-bred players that included Everett McLaren, Harry ‘Fat’ Painter, and Eustace Gillanders who fortified the Vancouver Terminals defense during their post-war campaigns of the 1920s.

Bayard – known by all as ‘Bay’ – was the son of Emily Lavina Carter (née Barr), who later married Andrew Grieve Waddell, the chief of police of Steveston between 1914 and 1918 and the first chief of police in Richmond. Young Bay would have been around five years-old at the time of his mother’s second marriage on April 19, 1900, which was reported in the press as far away as Owen Sound, Ontario, near where his new step-father originated from. His mother was born in London, England and she was recorded as a 30-year-old widow on their marriage certificate. Waddell’s obituary from 1931 mentions two stepsons, which would have been Bay and his younger brother Stan.

Carter attended the same high school as the Painter brothers with whom he later played alongside on the Vancouver Terminals in the 1920s. Both Bay Carter and ‘Fat’ Painter were also members of the Vancouver Athletic Club senior lacrosse team although they never played in the same season with each other – as ‘Fat’ had moved up to the professional ranks in 1914 when Bay joined the senior amateur team as a much-needed replacement to help fill all the departures of its players to the professional league. Out of around 30 players trying out for the team, Carter was one of those named to the roster on May 13, 1914 and he soon established himself as a crack defender.

A young Bay Carter as a rookie with the Vancouver Athletic Club in 1914.

When the First World War intervened, Bay Carter served overseas in the military for three to four years – first in the Canadian field artillery with the 46th Battery from Kingston, Ontario and the later as a Royal Air Force pilot. He received his officer’s commission as a lieutenant in 1917. He returned home to Vancouver on July 16, 1919.

He landed work as a mining engineer at Britannia Mines. He then graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1921 with a Bachelor of Science, all the while playing professional lacrosse to pay for his education.

With the Vancouver Terminals, his usual position on the playing field was at first defence and second defence, although when needed he could slot in anywhere from point up through the defensive ranks to centreman. The year after Bay had turned pro and signed with the Terminals, his kid brother Stan Carter also signed with the team and filled the role of substitute.

In one match at Queens Park, on June 24, 1922, Bay had to come to the rescue when his brother was embroiled in a fight with ‘Haddie’ Stoddart of the Salmonbellies, which then quickly exploded into a free-for-all brawl which saw benchwarmers and spectators from the stands spill out on the field to settle old and new scores. It took ten minutes for police and firemen to break up the fight, only for it to erupt again a few seconds later. When the riot finally ended and the dust had settled, and not before old Archie Macnaughton had walloped Pat Feeney in the head with his cane, it was found that most of Vancouver’s equipment – sticks, gloves, and caps – littered about on the ground …had now disappeared! – pilfered by New Westminster youngsters who had run off with anything that had been left laying about during the ensuing chaos.

Once his professional lacrosse days were over, Bay Carter would then find employment embarking on a 36-year career in marketing and advertising. He found this line of work the perfect calling for him, as his imposing six-foot-two frame gave him a deliberate manner of appearance while his mind was full of imagination.

Carter worked for the Vancouver Daily World newspaper for two years, later moving to Farm & Home for eight years. Then the Vancouver Province newspaper became his final employer from January 1931 until his retirement as their advertising director in January 1959. During his years with the Province, he was promoted to assistant advertising manager in 1936, advertising manager in 1941, and director in 1947. When he retired from the newspaper, he was bid adieu with send-off articles printed in both his former employer’s pages as well as those of the crosstown rival Vancouver Sun.

His residence at the time of his retirement was a house located at 6069 Oak Street in Vancouver.

Bayard Carter passed away in 1974. He was survived by his two daughters, Shirley Miller and Nancy Baird, and five grandchildren; his wife Hilda had predeceased him in 1972.

(PHOTO SOURCES: Vancouver Province April 7, 1923; Vancouver Sun September 16, 1914)

Aaron ‘Bunt’ Watson

May 1921 press photograph of Aaron ‘Bunt’ Watson with the Vancouver Terminals.

AARON W. ‘BUNT’ WATSON
(1896~98 – October 1, 1929)
Vancouver Terminals (1921-1922)

Although Aaron Watson’s nickname was actually ‘Bunt’, the Vancouver newspapers mistakenly referred to him as ‘Bun’ – and so ‘Bun Watson’ was what ‘Bunt’ Watson was generally called while he played on the Coast. Aaron Watson was a product of Cornwall, Ontario and had played for the Cornwall Colts starting from 1916 onward, quickly regarded in his rookie season as the best home (midfield) man to come from the Factory City.

Heading into the 1921 campaign, the Vancouver Terminals were plagued with a divisive contract dispute between the players and management. A large majority of the Terminals players bolted the club to sign with Con Jones’s brand-new, rival Vancouver Lacrosse Club in his newly-founded Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association, leaving the remaining Terminals organisation in the lurch and scrambling on short notice to find replacement bodies. ‘Newsy’ Lalonde came to the rescue when he recruited eight Easterners to make the trip across the country to sign with the Terminals and play alongside him, with Aaron ‘Bunt’ Watson proving to be one of the best components of that mixed-bag contingent.

Of those Easterners brought west by Lalonde in 1921, Watson was by far at the top of the list whom the Terminals were eager to re-sign the following season. Despite playing just two seasons for Vancouver, his 23 goals in just 34 games places him at an impressive 20th for career goal-scoring totals during the professional lacrosse era on the Pacific Coast. He finished fourth in scoring for the Terminals in 1921 and second in 1922.

‘Bunt’ was noted for his speed and toughness, so much so the Salmonbellies had to pay special attention in specifically assigning defenders on him.  What Watson may have lacked in stick skills and brilliance, he made up with shooting power and more so his physical prowess to bull and smash his way through the New Westminster defensive line. Bill Patchell was particularly effective in shadowing and shutting down ‘Bunt’, although Waston did gain instant credibility and respect as one of Vancouver’s toughest players when he laid out the Salmonbellies’ heavyweight enforcer Dave ‘Buck’ Marshall during his debut season with the Terminals. The pair would have multiple scraps throughout the season, one of which spilled into the stands and entangled spectators from both camps of supporters. After breaking up the two combatants and shooing them off for an early shower, Fred ‘Mickey’ Ion’s bloodied shirt from the fracas made the referee look like he had just worked a shift in an abattoir.

During his time in Vancouver, Watson would sometimes referee amateur PCALA senior league games.

Watson was expected to return for a third season with the Vancouver Terminals and was reported in early May 1923 to have agreed to a deal and would be making his way west from his recreational residence in Massena, New York, just across the border from his hometown of Cornwall. He was even contemplating a permanent move to Vancouver – but despite confirmation he was in transit west, he never showed up in Vancouver nor communicated his change in plans. It is very possible his father had some part in the decision and advised his son to remain home in the East – or he may have had a change of heart regarding Vancouver’s community payment method of split gate receipts. Whatever the reason, his hard-hitting physical absence was duly noted by observers and fans early that season.

He was married on November 28, 1916 to Anna Isabella Smith at the Methodist parsonage in Cornwall.

Watson was involved in a tragic, fatal accident on September 30, 1929 when the automobile he was driving along the state route heading to Ogdensburg, New York, failed to make a curve and struck a culvert. The automobile then leapt across a ditch, with the top of the vehicle coming apart and crashing into a tree. One male passenger was killed instantly while Watson suffered a fractured skull. ‘Bunt’ made it to Hepburn Hospital in Ogdensburg in critical condition but died from his injuries two days later. The two other men in his automobile survived and escaped with cuts and bruises.

Forty years later in 1969, Aaron ‘Bunt’ Watson was inducted to Cornwall Sports Hall of Fame in the Lacrosse category.

(PHOTO SOURCE: CVA 99-1018.23)

Everett McLaren

Everett McLaren with the Vancouver Athletic Club in 1913.

EVERETT JAMES McLAREN
(1893 – September 4, 1948)
Vancouver Athletic Club (1913)
Vancouver Athletics (1914)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1915; 1921)
Vancouver Terminals (1920; 1921-1924)

Everett McLaren played with various Vancouver professional squads for seven seasons.  Coming up through the ranks of the famed Vancouver Athletic Club, he was originally signed by Con Jones in 1915 to re-train and fill a more defensive role, although that experiment did not seem to stick and he slotted into the roster in his familiar centreman spot. Later in his career, rejoining the Terminals after his brief stint playing in Con Jones’s rival league in 1921, he did spend more time patrolling the defensive end of the midfield.

His speed and more so his fit physique made up for any lack of goal scoring, as Everett McLaren was the second-most penalised player during the professional era on the Pacific Coast with 57 infractions. His time spent in the sin bin clocked him with 283 minutes, placing him seventh in penalty minutes.

In the 1920s he saw himself named the captain of the Vancouver Terminals. During one game, on June 2, 1923, the Vancouver Daily Province noted that Everett McLaren was the first-ever player in the league fined $5 – for swearing at the referee, when he implied Referee Grumpy Spring was blind and then vocally protested a penalty, “you’re a blank blank!” The fine was a new rule initiated at the start of the 1923 season to help clean up play and ‘unseemingly conduct’. McLaren later went on record saying that in the future when he needed to do any impromptu speaking to the referee, he would not – and simply rely on tapping out his messages or finger wig-wagging gestures behind Referee Spring’s back.

Outside of his lacrosse career, very few details are known about Everett McLaren – one of the many Vancouver professional lacrosse players whose story has been sadly lost to history.

Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association action at Con Jones Park in 1921 as the Victoria Capitals and Vancouver Lacrosse Club battle it out. The player wearing #7 on the draw for Vancouver is believed to be Everett McLaren.

The Vancouver Daily World newspaper mentioned in a May 1915 edition that Everett McLaren, along with teammate Charlie McCuaig, were in Kansas City and on their way back to re-join the Vancouver team for the 1915 season – their business for being in Kansas City is completely unknown. The pair seemed to travel together for employment throughout the western United States although the nature of their work is unknown. In August 1915 the pair, along with Fred ‘Mickey’ Ion, their pugilistic team-mate and future NHL hall-of-fame referee, headed to Saskatchewan together to work as harvesters.

As a veteran of two world wars, McLaren was active in the Army, Navy, and Air Force Veterans Association and steward at the clubrooms located on Fraser Street in East Vancouver. Just prior to his passing, he had been busy working on securing a license to open a new veterans club in Marople.

The probable, unmarked resting place for Everett McLaren at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Everett McLaren died suddenly on September 4, 1948, drowning in the Harrison River during a weekend fishing trip – his companion Joseph Francis also perishing on the river under unknown circumstances. He was well-known by local anglers, as McLaren had owned a cabin located on the Harrison River for 25 years. His body was found two miles from the mouth of river by one of his cabin neighbours. They were last seen alive heading up the river on a Sunday night, and their water-logged boat was found the following morning.

Obituary notices and newspapers reporting on his passing mention that he was survived by his wife Catherine along with a brother Robert, a local resident, and his sister Mrs. W.R. Strong, of Long Beach, California. No children are mentioned. He was buried five days later in an unmarked gravesite at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, the final resting place for many of his contemporary team-mates from his playing days.

(PHOTO SOURCES: CVA 99-31 excerpt; CVA 99-1018.8; author’s photograph)

Ernie Murray

Ernie Murray with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club, 1912.

ERNIE MURRAY
(born 1887 – died possibly 1967 or 1979?)
Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs (ca.1907-1908)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1909-1910; 1912-1913)
North Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1911)
New Westminster Salmonbellies (1911; 1918)
Vancouver Athletics (1914)
Vancouver Terminals (1919-1920)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1921)

Inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965 as a charter member in the field player category, Ernie Murray played 10 seasons of professional ball between 1909 and 1921.

Like many local home-brew Vancouver players from that era, no personal information is now known about him outside of the game. He played senior lacrosse in 1907 and 1908 for the Mount Pleasant Maple Leafs, alongside three of his four lacrosse-playing brothers. Con Jones would then sign “the speedy little home fielder” in 1909 for his Vancouver Lacrosse Club team when the professionals first became organised as a league under the British Columbia Lacrosse Association name that year.

In November 1907, he was suspended by the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union after travelling to California with the Vancouver Athletic Club rugby team for a match being played there versus McGill University. There appears to have been some protest made by McGill University regarding his playing status which would affect the collegians’ own playing status, so Murray chose instead to watch from the grandstands.

The majority of his lacrosse playing career was with the various Vancouver teams, although he did bolt to the New Westminster Salmobellies for the 1911 season after having a disagreement with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club president and money man, Con Jones.

Ernie Murray was one of a group of four local Vancouver players (along with goalkeeper Dave Gibbons, George Matheson, and ‘Toots’ Clarkson) who quit the team in early June 1910 after they went to Jones with demands for more money. With the Eastern imports that season earning $50 per week, the four upshots ‘held up Jones’ for more pay because they were only getting half that amount per week – but felt they were doing the lion’s share of the hard work while the imports reaped all the benefits.

Despite the hold-outs having a lot of sympathy from the local fans, Con Jones refused their demand of $40 per week. Along with Gibbons and Clarkson, Ernie Murray quit the team for the rest of the season while Matheson eventually caved in and re-joined the team in August. The following year, the cross-town rivals New Westminster Salmonbellies would approach Murray and sign him for one season – before seemingly making amends with Con Jones in time for the 1912 campaign and returning to the greenshirts.

When the Vancouver Lacrosse Club folded mid-season in July 1913, Ernie Murray found himself once again embroiled in a wage dispute with Con Jones. His November 1913 lawsuit filed against Jones was dismissed in county court after Murray tried to sue Jones for $650 which he alleged remained from a $1,000 contract. The judge ruled in Con Jones’s favour, as Jones stated he had promised $50 per week so long as play continued and had not guaranteed any contracts for 20 weeks of salary, as Murray claimed, due to uncertainly whether the 1913 season would be completed.

Ernie Murray would later get picked up by the replacement Vancouver Athletics in 1914. He would return to New Westminster in 1918 when ‘Grumpy’ Spring signed him to the Salmonbellies for the Mainland Lacrosse Association season.

Ernie Murray played in the midfield zone usually at third home or second home, occasionally slotted as the centreman. In 1920, he was primarily used in a substitute role, while the following season, his last as a player, he found himself moved up on the attack as the outside home, a position he had played back in his senior days with the Maple Leafs. His final season saw him in the role of player-manager for Vancouver in Con Jones’s rival Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association outfit. When that league folded in mid-season on June 13, 1921, after 5 games, Murray packed in his playing career.

He appeared in 69 professional games, scoring 31 goals – which places him 17th in career scoring for players during the pro field era.

There is scant biographical information about Ernie Murray away from the playing field. He was the youngest of five brothers, all of them accomplished athletes in an assortment of sports. He was born in a house on Harris Street (now Georgia Street) west of Main Street, which was located under where the viaducts were later built in downtown Vancouver. He played rugby for the Vancouver Collge high school, later re-named King Edward High School. While he excelled at lacrosse, in his elder years he claimed that when he dreamt, it was not of lacrosse but of his rugby days.

The five Murray brothers, Fred, Whitley, Bert, Walter, and Ernie were all intervied by Vancouver Province reporter Alf Cottrell for his December 5, 1953 article entitled “the Murrays Played Everything”. At the time of the interview, Ernie Murray was still working, in his mid-60s, as a plumber for the Murray Plumbing and Heating Company. Oddly enough, Ernie had a Vancouver teammate named Bob Murray whom he played alongside for three seasons, who was same age as Ernie but otherwise unrelated.

It is unknown when he passed away, as there are newspaper obituaries listed for an “Ernest Murray” printed in 1967 and 1979, neither indicating the deceased as a former lacrosse player. The last living mention of Murray occurred when he attended the inaugural induction dinner on May 12, 1966 for the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

(PHOTO SOURCE: CVA 99-43)