‘Cotton’ Brynjolfson (right) and Vancouver manager Con Jones in 1915.
EDWARD (ED) ‘COTTON’ BRYNJOLFSON
(March 11, 1891 – April 17, 1967) Vancouver Athletics (1914)
Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1915)
Vancouver ‘Greenshirts’ (1918)
Born as Eggert Thorarini but known to all as ‘Cotton’, Ed Brynjolfson was regarded as the best known and most talented lacrosse player originating from Victoria in the pre-box lacrosse era – his fellow Icelander teammate ‘Boss’ Johnson perhaps the only other Island player from that era who could challenge him for ability and fame in the game.
‘Cotton’ generally played third defense (a midfield position) where he would set up many of his team’s offensive plays. During his short professional career, however, he was usually slotted into the inside home position on the attack as a replacement for ‘Newsy’ Lalonde. When Lalonde returned to the Coast in 1918 to play with Vancouver, ‘Cotton’ shifted back to his familiar place on the midfield defense.
In his brief career as a professional, ‘Cotton’ Brynjolfson played in 21 matches for Vancouver over the course of three seasons. He scored 12 goals, good enough for a midfielder but not particularly high numbers for his role as a crease attackman. In just one game did he manage to score a pair of goals.
It is intriguing why a rookie, defensive midfielder such as Brynjolfson would have been used up front as an attackman when there were already better suited players on the Vancouver squads who could have stepped into the role – such as ‘Dot’ Crookall in 1914, and then in 1915, the veteran legend ‘Bones’ Allen as well. Granted those 1914 and 1915 Vancouver teams were thinner for talent compared to most years in the professional era, but both the Athletics management and then Con Jones the following year must have seen or known something of ‘Cotton’ Brynjolfson’s ability which is subsequently lost amongst the stats, as his scoring numbers are on the low side for an inside home player.
Brynjolfson served in the Canadian Navy during the Great War and his military service automatically reinstated his amateur status when he was discharged.
Foundation Shipyards team that won the Mann Cup for Victoria in 1919; Brynjolfson can be seen in the back row, third from right.
He joined the Foundation Shipyards Company and helped organise and manage a senior lacrosse team sponsored the same company. The Victoria Foundation Shipyards club won the Pacific Coast Amateur Lacrosse Association league, brushing aside both the New Westminster Salmonbellies and Vancouver Athletic Club in the process with a 6-win, 1-loss record. The Foundation club then routed the Edmonton Eskimos 28-5 in a two-game, total-goals series before dispatching the Winnipegs 17-7 in the championship game for the Mann Cup – Victoria’s first Mann Cup championship.
In May 1921, he was close to returning to professional lacrosse and signing with the Vancouver Terminals. He later would play four years of field lacrosse with the Sons of Canada club before he retired as a player around 1928.
‘Cotton’ Byrnjolfson as he appeared in the Victoria Daily Colonist in 1931.
At the age of 40, Brynjolfson was approached in 1931 to sign as a player in the brand-new International Professional Lacrosse League but he declined all offers, believing himself done as a player. He would later become a referee when the game went indoors, and in the war years of the 1940s he refereed senior games in the Greater Victoria Box Lacrosse Association.
Outside of lacrosse, he was an avid rugby player with the James Bay Athletic Association for eleven years. He also played some soccer with local teams in Victoria.
One of ten children, Ed Brynjolfson later became related to the family of his former Vancouver lacrosse manager, Con Jones, when one of his sisters married Jones’s second son, Dill Jones, in 1960.
While ‘Cotton’ was well known in Victoria for his lacrosse exploits, two of his brothers also gained some fame in the realm of sports: His brother Harold was the 1931 amateur golf champion of British Columbia while Walter scored Canada’s only points, a drop goal, against the famous New Zealand All Blacks rugby team during their 1925 tour.
(PHOTO SOURCE: courtesy of John Fuller family collection; Victoria Daily Colonist August 19, 1931)
Special thanks to John Fuller (Brynjolfson’s grand-nephew) for providing biographical information and photograph.
ARCHIBALD EDWARD (ARCHIE) MACNAUGHTON
(July 26, 1864 – June 23, 1937) Montréal Amateur Athletic Association (1882-1891)
Victoria Lacrosse Club (1892-1893)
Victoria Capitals (1894)
Victoria Triangles (1895)
Archie Macnaughton (his surname has appeared spelt variously as McNaughton, MacNaughton, and Macnaughton) is an interesting figure in the very early days of the sport in Canada. While he never played in the professional ranks, he was one of lacrosse’s early star players in Montréal – as well as a pioneering figure in the establishment of the game on the Pacific Coast and the rise of the Victoria senior teams in the mid-1890s.
He was born to Archibald and Catherine Macnaughton in Lachine, Québec. His Scottish ancestry may possibly be linked to an old family in Glenlyon, Scotland as there is mention made of an Archibald McNaughton (possibly his father) in the church records at Scotch Presbyterian Church in Montréal, who was born in Callendar, Scotland but grew up near Saint-Eustache in suburban Montréal. However, “Archibald McNaughton” does appear as a name occurring sporadically in early Montréal and could quite easily refer to multiple, unrelated people with the same name.
Archie Macnaughton helped Montréal win a junior championship in 1881 and then turned senior the following year. He was widely regarded as one of the best home fielders (attack midfielders in modern language) and one of the fastest sprinters to play the game in his day, with phenomenal speed. He possessed a deadly and dangerous shot, usually taken on a dead run and the ball’s velocity was reported to be stronger in force than that of a baseball player fielding the ball home.
Macnaughton wearing the famous ‘Winged Wheelers’ sweater for Montréal AAA in August 1886.
He was the fourth-best goal scorer in the 1886 National Lacrosse Union season with 7 goals in 10 games for the Montréal Amateur Athletic Association. The following season however he was held scoreless in 7 games played. In 1888, Montréal AAA dropped out of the NLU and the league barely staggered to the finish. When Montréal AAA returned to the NLU in 1889, they lost Macnaughton to a twisted ankle in the pre-season. On his return to play, after missing two matches, he still managed to make up for goals to finish second in league scoring with 8 goals in 6 matches.
His final season with Montréal Amateur Athletic Association saw him playing the role of Atlas, shouldering the team’s goal-scoring in the wake of the retirements of Tom Paton and W. Hodgson, the two other leading players with the ‘Winged Wheelers’. He once again finished in second-place for goals with 8 scored in 8 games. Montréal AAA would once again drop out of the National Lacrosse Union in 1891.
He moved to the Pacific Coast in 1892 and joined the Victoria Lacrosse Club. He played in 3 matches that year, held scoreless in his first two appearances and then scoring 3 goals in his third outing for Victoria. He also refereed two senior league games that same season.
Archie Macnaughton married Miss Jean Esther Marie Bishop, a resident of Montréal who was born in Covingston, Kentucky, in a ceremony held at First Presbyterian Church in Vancouver on August 11, 1892. The newlyweds left Vancouver that same day and took up residence in Victoria. Prior to his relocation on the coast, he had commenced his business career in Montréal in 1878.
Archie Macnaughton with Montréal in 1889.
In 1893, as a member of the Victoria club, he helped lead the Capital City crew in victory over his former team, the Montréal Amateur Athletic Association, 6-0 during their tour of the Eastern clubs. The team’s return to their home town that October was met by the city band and a midnight reception which followed at the Driard Hotel. During the senior league season that year, he played in 6 matches and scored 3 goals.
Archie Macnaughton had his best campaign for Victoria in 1894, when he scored 11 goals in 10 matches – finishing off the regular season by scoring 5 of Victoria Capitals’ 6 goals in their rout over Vancouver Lacrosse Club on September 29, 1894. He then bagged another 2 goals in the Capitals’ playoff match played at Brockton Point the following month versus New Westminster. That playoff meeting ended in dispute as Victoria was leading the championship game 3 goals to 2 when the game was called due to darkness. Claiming the championship, the Victoria Capitals then withdrew from the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association on November 2, 1894 in protest of referee indecision in the playoff game and due to New Westminster arriving at Brockton Point an hour and a half late which resulted in the late start.
AE Macnaughton’s signature, showing how he spelt his surname
Macnaughton made only a single appearance for the Victoria Triangles in the 1895 season, which saw him scrape through Victoria’s fifth goal in a 6-2 rout over Vancouver to close out the final game of the season. In 1896, he moved to Vancouver where he continued his brokerage business.
Lacrosse was not the only athletic pastime which he excelled at. He played ice hockey for Montréal Amateur Athletic Association of the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada from 1887 to 1892, appearing in 19 games and scoring 21 goals. Macnaughton was the leading goal scorer in the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada in 1890. He was noted as the ‘all-round snowshoe champion of Canada’ for 1886-1890 as well as holding eight middle-weight amateur boxing championships of Canada.
Vancouver Province, 1920.
Macnaughton was a member of the Montréal Garrison Artillery which participated in the suppression of the North-West Rebellion in 1885. The Montréal Gazette called him one of three “crack snowshoers” who were welcomed home by club members after the rebellion ended.
In 1888 he had to testify in a libel lawsuit which involved accusations of lacrosse players match-fixing a game.
In the first week of April 1894, he was part of a British Columbia ‘Mainland’ team that traveled to San Francisco, California to participate in exhibition matches versus a British Columbia ‘Island’ team as well as a San Francisco team a few days later. These were the first lacrosse games played in that city and attracted considerable attention from the locals.
Archie Macnaughton managed the New Westminster Salmonbellies in 1900 and he took his team back east on tour. The following year he managed the Vancouver YMCA lacrosse team and he was later the manager of the Vancouver Lacrosse Club in 1908 and 1910.
Macnaughton passed away suddenly on June 23, 1937 whilst driving home from his work at the Harbour Board office. The location of his burial is unknown.
(PHOTO SOURCES: provided by Eric Zweig; CLHOF X994.1 excerpt; CLHOF X994.15 excerpt; CLHOF X994.29 excerpt; Vancouver Province October 16, 1920)
There are very few authenticated photos of lacrosse games played at Brockton Point. This undated photo of what looks like Vancouver vs. New Westminster is one of those few.
BROCKTON POINT GROUNDS
The Brockton Point Grounds, located on the peninsula of the same name in Stanley Park, are Vancouver’s oldest athletic grounds still in use (by cricket and rugby teams). Its heyday as a lacrosse field was from 1890 until 1905 – although the two seasons it was used by the professionals were in 1918 during the Mainland Lacrosse Association season and then one game in 1922.
The location was originally cleared for a sawmill in 1865 but when the mill was instead built over in Gastown, the site then became one of Vancouver’s earliest sporting grounds. There seems to be some uncertainty pinning down exactly when it was first used for sporting events – although it hosted its first lacrosse match no later than September 1890.
The isolated location and distance from downtown Vancouver made it somewhat unpopular as a venue. It also proved to be unavailable when professional baseball came to town, as the Brockton Point Athletic Association had a strict stipulation that the playing fields were for amateur use only. Once Recreation Park was built downtown in 1905 to solve this issue regarding professionals, the Vancouver Lacrosse Club soon followed baseball across Coal Harbour to the vastly improved, new stadium in April 1906 after disagreements over gate receipts.
Al Larwill’s shack on the Cambie Street Grounds, ca.1896. Somewhere in this photo are future Vancouver pro lacrosse players George and Earl Matheson.
In 1918, Con Jones signed a three-year, $700 per year lease for use of the Brockton Point grounds. By this point, the Parks Commission was controlling Brockton Point so its use by professionals for the Mainland Lacrosse Association season did not face the same opposition which earlier teams had dealt with. After one season however, and with Con Jones now out of the professional game after a dispute over the Minto Cup, lacrosse returned to Athletic Park.
The last recorded lacrosse games from those early days played at Brockton Point are believed to be amateur, holiday exhibition games which occurred in 1929. An exception to this was an exhibition field lacrosse match organised and played in 1986 between the North Shore Indians and a British Columbia Selects team in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of both the founding of the city of Vancouver and the first lacrosse game in the province.
The crowd capacity for lacrosse games at Brockton Point is unknown, although the grandstand could hold around 5,000 spectators.
The Cambie Street Grounds can be seen behind the Beatty Street Drill Hall in this 1939 photo. [click on image to magnify]CAMBIE STREET GROUNDS (1887-1943) LARWILL PARK (1943-1946)
First surveyed and assigned for athletics and sporting pastimes in the 1880s, the Cambie Street grounds were not that well-maintained and deemed unsatisfactory for sporting events well before the time professional lacrosse reached its glory years.
The grounds took up the entire city block bounded by Cambie, Dunsmuir, Beatty and Georgia Streets and was obtained through the persistent efforts of Lauchlan Hamilton, the Canadian Pacific Railway land commissioner and Vancouver’s first surveyor, and MP Arthur Wellington Ross.
In its early years, it could be leased from the Canadian Pacific Railroad for $5 per annum and cows and goats were kept on the grounds as a means to trim the grass. The grounds played host to Vancouver’s first sports event, a rugby game in 1887. Actual lacrosse games at the senior level were only played on the Cambie grounds in 1891, with three matches recorded as being played there.
Al Larwill, 1899
Alfred ‘Al’ Larwill had a shack on the grounds and lived there as a sort of unofficial caretaker from the time after the great fire of 1886 until 1902 when he was ordered to move so the site could be renovated. Larwill passed away on April 2, 1911. The Cambie Street grounds saw more use as a practice field – and its real legacy for the game of lacrosse is that many a young Vancouver lacrosse player honed and perfected his skills under the watchful eye of Larwill. Outstanding lacrosse players such as George Matheson and his brothers Waldo and Earl learnt their trade there while growing up as youngsters.
The Cambie Street grounds were renamed Larwill Park in 1943 in memory of the old caretaker, who has since become a now-forgotten yet important historical personage from the very early days of athletics and sports in Vancouver.
Sadly, the name did not remain in use for long. During the Second World War, the grounds were re-developed and Larwill Park became a bus depot for long-distance buses in 1946. The Greyhound Bus Lines depot remained there until 1993 when it was demolished sometime afterwards. Currently the block is occupied by a parking lot and the downtown farmers market.
This photograph of a game at Queens Park dates from three years after the pro game died in 1924. It clearly shows the considerable slope of the field along the grandstand.
QUEENS PARK
Unlike the Vancouver lacrosse teams which moved around from location to location depending on grounds availability over the years, the New Westminster Salmonbellies were firmly ensconced at Queens Park for their home playing field starting from 1890 onwards. Prior to the construction of Queens Park, Townsend’s Field nearby was used during the first season for New Westminster.
The lacrosse field used by the Salmonbellies was located where the modern baseball diamond is located today. The field was notorious for its noticeable uphill slope which the home team manipulated to their advantage.
A few games at Queens Park, such as when the Montréal Amateur Athletic Association and Montréal Nationals traveled to the Coast in their challenges against New Westminster for the Minto Cup, reached the 16,000 range – but between 10,000 and 12,000 spectators was considered large and 8,000 a fair-sized crowd.
Along with Recreation Park, Queens Park was probably the most photographed of all the lacrosse grounds in British Columbia – with the bulk of the images originating during the 1908 to 1911 period.
This incredible photograph is from one of the Minto Cup matches at Recreation Park played between Vancouver Lacrosse Club and Toronto Tecumsehs in the Autumn of 1911. Not only does it clearly show the capacity crowds drawn to lacrosse matches, but also the expansive size of playing fields used in those days. [click on image to magnify]RECREATION PARK (1905-1913)
Costing somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000 to build, Recreation Park opened in May 1905 as Vancouver’s first downtown stadium structure. It was home to the Vancouver Lacrosse Club as well as Vancouver’s professional baseball team in the Northwest Baseball League.
Located on the block bordered by what is now Homer, Smythe, Mainland, and Nelson Streets, the site was leased from the Canadian Pacific Railroad out of part of their railway reserve lands. At the time, Nelson Street did not go through – and the stretch between Homer and Mainland was part of the grounds.
The location was chosen as Vancouver was in dire need of a downtown sports facility for the growing city. The previously used Brockton Point grounds were deemed inaccessible for larger crowds as well as restricted to use for amateur sporting events.
However, downtown Vancouver was changing quickly. When built in 1905, much of the downtown core had still been lightly developed with large tracts still remaining. But in the boom years which preceded and followed its opening in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Vancouver’s population quadrupled. The Canadian Pacific Railroad had begun to look at using or selling off the land as early as 1909, just four years after the park had opened its doors to the public.
The 1911 season when Vancouver Lacrosse Club won the Minto Cup saw some of the largest crowds ever at Recreation Park, with a record-breaker in the 10,000 to 11,000 range early in the season on June 3. On Dominion Day, the stadium saw 12,045 in attendance – reported as one of the largest crowds ever to witness a lacrosse game in British Columbia.
The massive crowds would continue into the autumn when Vancouver and New Westminster needed a playoff series as both teams finished splitting the schedule with 5 wins apiece. The 14,009 paid attendance, possibly as many as 15,000, who filled Recreation Park on September 16, 1911 was probably the largest recorded attendance to witness a lacrosse game played in Vancouver until the birth of the Vancouver Ravens of the National Lacrosse League in 2002.
Capacity crowd looks on as the Salmonbellies defense rags the ball at Recreation Park, ca. 1911.
When Toronto Tecumsehs travelled west to challenge Vancouver for the Minto Cup in October 1911, standing room only crowds once again filled Recreation Park to capacity – and beyond – with many spectators watching precariously from neighbouring roof tops, window sills, fences, billboard signs, and even clambering up telephone poles for a view of the action. Oddly enough, the reported attendances for these matches were surprisingly low considering that photographic images from the series imply a completely different picture.
Recreation Park was closed after the 1912 season as Vancouver’s sports teams, forewarned and not surprised by the impending closure, simultaneously made their own arrangements to move elsewhere for their 1913 seasons. The grandstand was disassembled and moved to the new Athletic Park located on the south side of False Creek as the baseball team relocated its operations there. Meanwhile, Con Jones moved his Vancouver Lacrosse Club to the Hastings Park grounds near where he would eventually build a stadium that would bear his name.
Ironically, once the site had been leveled to the ground and all trace of the stadium removed, the vacant lot then sat unused as a blight on the downtown core, an eyesore on the landscape until 1937 when a Safeway storage facility was built on the site. All or parts of the block then later became a parking lot and storage facilities (unknown if the same storage building constructed in 1937) before redevelopment into high-rise condominiums around 2005.
Around 4,000 spectators showed up to witness Vancouver’s debut at Hastings Park on May 31, 1913.
HASTINGS ATHLETIC PARK (1913-1915?)
CON JONES PARK (1921-1971)
With the closure of Recreation Park, the Vancouver Lacrosse Club moved across the city to the wooded wilderness of Hastings Athletic Park for the 1913 season.
Pin-pointing the exact location of the playing grounds can be somewhat confusing as sources and maps sometimes present conflicting and incorrect information. Some sources – such as the atlas Vancouver: A Visual History have the ca.1913 grounds incorrectly located on the site of modern Callister Park where Con Jones’s stadium was located from 1921 until it was demolished in 1971 – while other sources have it correctly located across Renfrew Street in the modern Pacific National Exhibition grounds with the playing field located in the middle of where the Exhibition Park racetrack is currently located.
This confusion is further exacerbated as the newspapers of the day sometimes referred to Hastings grounds as “Con Jones Park” or “Jones Park” starting around 1914 or 1915, well before his stadium was built in 1920-21 – which sometimes gives the impression that there was a stadium structure already on site earlier than 1920.
In September 1920, Con Jones acquired a two-block lot (bounded by Renfrew, Oxford, Sunrise, and Cambridge Streets) across from the PNE Grounds. By May 1921, Jones’s lacrosse teams were making use of the brand-new Con Jones Park and its new wooden stadium. The years when Jones wasn’t involved in the professional game, the Vancouver Terminals were compelled to use Athletic Park. When Jones passed away in 1929, payments on its mortgage ceased and title of the property reverted back to original owner, John Callister – whose heirs later donated it to the City of Vancouver in the 1940s. The old stadium, which had become a shrine for local amateur soccer teams, was demolished in 1971, erasing the last legacy of Con Jones from Vancouver’s sporting map.
Athletic Park Stadium, 1920 – looking eastbound with Fifth Avenue in the foreground.
ATHLETIC PARK (1913-1951)
Athletic Park was located on the south shore of False Creek in Vancouver, on the north-east corner of Hemlock Street and West Fifth Avenue overlooking Granville Island. The second grandstand stadium built in Vancouver, it was home to the city’s baseball and lacrosse teams.
The stadium was built and owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway and managed by local baseball legend Bob Brown until 1944, when it was then sold to Emil Sick and his Capilano Breweries, who renamed it Capilano Stadium.
Athletic Park appears on a 1923 map.
The stadium suffered its second fire the following year and City Hall began to covet the site for construction of a new Granville Street Bridge and its required on-ramps along Hemlock Street as well as extending West Fourth Avenue. After further repairs and renovations to the rickety structure, the stadium was finally acquired by the City and demolished in 1951 – to be replaced by Nat Bailey Stadium at Queen Elizabeth Park.
The stadium was home for the Vancouver Athletic Club and Vancouver Terminals lacrosse teams – although it was generally used more by the various senior amateur teams and leagues than by the professionals, who usually opted for Con Jones Park when it was made available to them for their home grounds in Vancouver. As a general rule of thumb, Athletic Park was used as the home grounds whenever Con Jones was not involved in bankrolling the team in question.
Lacrosse game underway at Athletic Park; believed to be Vancouver’s season opener on May 29, 1915.
June 4, 1921 featured a unique occurrence when there were two professional lacrosse matches played in the City of Vancouver on the same day, at the same time, when Athletic Park hosted New Westminster in that day’s British Columbia Lacrosse Association game while Con Jones Park across town hosted the visiting Victoria Capitals of the rival Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association.
The modern day site is now dissected and overrun by bridge overpasses, roads, condominiums, concrete, and commercial buildings – with no hint of evidence remaining whatsoever that at one time there was once a 6,000 seat stadium in existence there.
BEACON HILL PARK / CALEDONIAN GROUNDS / ROYAL ATHLETIC PARK / OAK BAY GROUNDS / THE STADIUM
There were five playing grounds used by lacrosse teams in Victoria during the field lacrosse era – with three of them used by the professionals, albeit for just four games.
Beacon Hill Park hosted the first organised lacrosse match played in British Columbia, in 1886, and was used by Victoria senior teams until around 1891.
Lacrosse action at the Caledonian grounds in Victoria, ca. 1900
The Caledonian Grounds, which dated from 1887, replaced Beacon Hill Park as the home field for the Victoria Lacrosse Club during the 1891 season, with the first recorded senior game played there on August 15 of that year. Located in the James Bay neighbourhood of Victoria, the park was bounded by Government, Niagara, St. Andrews and Simcoe Streets and owned by the St. Andrews and Caledonian Society.
It is unknown what year the Caledonian Grounds ceased to be used for sporting events and redeveloped into residential housing – although it has been described as one of the last city blocks in the neighbourhood to see redevelopment.
Royal Athletic Park, located on the block bounded by Caledonia, Vancouver, Pembroke, and Cook Streets, was constructed in 1908 as a much needed replacement for the Caledonian Grounds and the Oak Bay Grounds. It underwent renovations after a fire in 1967 and the grounds are still in use for field lacrosse and other amateur sports to this very day.
Of the four professional lacrosse games played in Victoria, one was played at Royal Athletic Park and one at the Oak Bay Grounds. Both of these matches were New Westminster-Vancouver BCLA league games that took place in Victoria during the 1913 season.
The Oak Bay Grounds – now known as Windsor Park – hold the distinction for providing the first Victoria-based team to challenge and compete for the Mann Cup, in 1913. Oak Bay lost their first game 13-0 and then defaulted their second game to Vancouver Athletic Club.
The two other professional matches played in Victoria however actually involved a Victoria team. Both of these took place in June 1921 when Vancouver promoter Con Jones created the Victoria Capitals, a team made up of local lads and Eastern imports, for his upstart Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association as competition for his Vancouver Lacrosse Club.
The ‘Stadium’ in Victoria hosting a baseball game in 1920. This was the home field for the Victoria Capitals lacrosse team in 1921.
In May of 1920, a new stadium was constructed on a vacant lot behind the Empress Hotel on Douglas Street where the Crystal Garden is now located.
Referred in the local press as just ‘The Stadium’, it was used mostly by local professional and amateur baseball teams – but it was also briefly the home field for the Victoria Capitals lacrosse team in 1921. The Stadium hosted two home games for Victoria before the league folded after five games and three weeks of play.
Its capacity was reported to be 7,000 and the Victoria Daily Colonist spoke very highly of the venue during its construction – giving it high hopes for the future.
As it turned out, the Stadium’s sporting existence was very brief – no more than four years – as it was demolished at some point before the Crystal Garden was built and opened on the site in June 1925.
(PHOTO SOURCES: CVA Sp P90; CVA Sp P2; Leonard Frank collection 1939; CLHOF X994.10; CVA PAN P87; CVA 371-596; CVA 371-576; CVA 99-870; CVA 99-1020; BC Archives BCA G-02816)
WILLIAM (BILLY) JAMES FITZGERALD (February 20, 1888 – June 30, 1926) St. Catharines Athletics (1906-1908; 1918) Toronto Lacrosse Club (1909-1910; 1912) Vancouver Lacrosse Club (1911; 1915) Toronto Rosedales (1914; 1915) Cornwall Colts (1919) Victoria Capitals (1921) Vancouver Terminals (1924)
William ‘Billy’ Fitzgerald of St. Catharines, Ontario was one of the greatest players of the field lacrosse era. While the bulk of his lacrosse career was played back east in St. Catharines and Toronto, money thrown his way thanks to Vancouver lacrosse promoter Con Jones tempted him enough to make the trip west where he played four nonadjacent seasons for Vancouver and Victoria teams bankrolled by Jones.
Early descriptions describe him as “one of the most brilliant players that has ever handled a stick in the NLU”, one of the most dangerous home (midfield) players “with speed, sand, and strength” and the ability to bore his way through defensive opponents.
His three years with the St. Catharines Athletics saw the team go undefeated. He was reluctant to turn professional and leave the Athletics until the money prospects were simply too good for him to ignore.
Fitzgerald turned pro with the Toronto Lacrosse Club in 1909. The following year the New Westminster Salmonbellies tried to secure his talents but he remained with the Torontos for the 1910 season.
Regarded the best midfielder in the Dominion and the best player in the game after Édouard ‘Newsy’ Lalonde, in 1911 he was enticed by a hefty offer from promoter Con Jones to cross the country and sign with his talent-laden Vancouver Lacrosse Club. Eastern sources indicate he signed for $1350 for eight games plus $225 for travel there and back – a sum which worked out to be $225 per game. Western sources however throw around an incredible $5000.
Which numbers are true is anyone’s guess, as the newspapers were prone to printing hearsay and wild rumours as fact, but the lesser amount was still considered a ‘pretty fair’ salary – meaning ‘outstanding’, in the language of the day – for a lacrosse player back then. And it was money well-spent, as the Vancouver Lacrosse Club went on to win the Minto Cup championship that year in one of the few seasons when they managed to out-play the Salmonbellies for the silverware and national bragging rights.
Fitzgerald was expected by the Vancouver management camp to return in 1912 and help defend their cup title, but he opted to return to Toronto and accepted their $3000 offer. Con Jones and his business associate Matt Barr were unhappy with Fitzgerald’s honouring of their previous season’s agreement, and so they made a mad dash back east by train to both meet in person with Fitzgerald at his home, as well as sign potential replacements should he not return to the coast. Jones made him a $3500 offer to re-sign with the Greenshirts, but Fitzgerald turned down the Vancouver money, and he ended up being paid $4000 by Toronto.
Billy Fitzgerald, May 1911
Despite offers from the Toronto Lacrosse Club, their rivals Toronto Tecumsehs, and Vancouver, he steadfastly sat out the 1913 season on account of his upcoming marriage later that year. He married J. Adele Sheehan on November 5, 1913. The newlyweds took up residence in a home located at 15 Chaplin Avenue in his and his wife’s hometown of St. Catharines.
After resuming play the following year with the Toronto Rosedales, he made a return to British Columbia for a second stint playing for Con Jones when he signed with the Vancouver Lacrosse Club on June 1, 1915
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 Easterners that he had imported for the 1915 season packed up and left for home the following week. Once back in Ontario, Fitzgerald then signed on with the Toronto Rosedales, now playing in the Queen City Lacrosse League, for the remainder of the season.
Between his professional commitments, in March 1915 he was recruited to coach the Hobart College lacrosse team. He helped lead Hobart into the playoff finals for the northern section of the US Intercollegiate League, and returned as their coach the following year.
In the years immediately after the Great War, he played a season in St. Catharines followed with a season with the Cornwall Colts in the NPLU.
In late September and October of 1920, Con Jones met with his former star-player 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.
The international league never happened but Billy Fitzgerald did play and oversee the Victoria Capitals team in Con Jones’s brand-new Pacific Coast Lacrosse Association of 1921 – which lasted all of 5 games before folding.
He did not play the next two years although he refereed games back east in 1923.
His curtain call as a player came in 1924 when he signed, for a fourth and final time, with Con Jones and the Vancouver Terminals – appearing in 4 games before the team, the league, and professional lacrosse, all came crashing down on June 2, 1924 when Jones called it quits.
Billy Fitzgerald appeared in a total of just 26 games in British Columbia and scored 28 goals – but this was still good enough for him to finish 19th in career goal scoring.
Fitzgerald died at the age of 38 due to complications arising from an operation for gallstones. A few months later in September 1926, a memorial game in St. Catharines, which was attended by thousands, was played in his honour by former team-mates and opponents. He left a widow and two children.
In 1950, he finished second in voting by Canadian journalists for the honours of Canada’s greatest lacrosse player of 1900-1950. Billy Fitzgerald was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1961 and inducted four years later as an original charter member of the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
(PHOTO CLHOF X994.97; Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser May 11, 1911)
Old School Lacrosse 
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