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Newspaper Coverage of Early Professional Ice Hockey: the discourses of class and control

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1368880042000311528

1469-9729

Daniel S. Mason, Gregory H. Duquette,

American Sports and Literature

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Correspondence: Daniel S. Mason, PhD, Associate Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H9. E‐mail: dmason@ualberta.ca See Daniel S. Mason, ‘The International Hockey League and the Professionalization of Ice Hockey, 1904–1907’, Journal of Sport History, 25 (1998), 1–17. As explained by sociologist, John Hargreaves, popular working‐class sports have been historically associated with rough play; see John Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture (New York: St Martin's Press, 1986). See Charles L. Coleman, The Trail of the Stanley Cup, Volume 1 (New York: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 1966), 610. In his work, Coleman meticulously compiled statistics and narratives of every player, team, and hockey league that had vied for the Stanley Cup, a symbol of hockey supremacy in North America, between 1893 and 1926. To do so, he relied on Canadian newspapers from Brantford, Calgary, Edmonton, Galt, Guelph, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, Waterloo, and Winnipeg. It is doubtful that he consulted any of the newspapers in any of the IHL communities. As a result, one can assume that Coleman's impressions of the levels of violence in the IHL arose from the coverage the IHL received in the Canadian press. Frank Cosentino, A history of the concept of professionalism in Canadian sport, PhD thesis (University of Alberta, 1973), 226–27. According to sport historian Alan Metcalfe, through the end of the nineteenth century hockey was played and organized almost exclusively by middle‐ and upper‐class Canadians; Canada Learns to Play: the emergence of organized sport, 1807–1914 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987), 64. For example, at the time of IHL operations, there were approximately 45,000 people living within a 3‐mile radius of Calumet. The nearby Calumet and Hecla mine employed 16,500 in 1904, which rose to 21,014 by 1907; Arthur W. Thurner, Strangers and Sojourners: a history of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula (Chicago: Great Lakes Books, 1994), 164. See Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play; Alan Metcalfe, ‘Power: a case study of the Ontario Hockey Association, 1890–1936’, Journal of Sport History, 19 (spring 1992), 5–25; Richard Gruneau and David Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada: sport, identities, and cultural politics (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1993), 7; Scott Young, 100 Years of Dropping the Puck: a history of the OHA (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989). It has been suggested that the first game of modern hockey was played on 3 March 1875, in Montreal. David Seglins, ‘Just part of the game’: violence, hockey and masculinity in central Canada, 1890–1910, MA thesis (Queen's University, 1995), 14. Beverly Bogert, ‘Ice Hockey’, Outing (January 1893), 252. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 69. Metcalfe, ‘Power’, 15. Douglas Booth and John Loy, ‘Sport, Status, and Style’, Sport History Review, 30 (1999), 16. C.A. Tony Joyce, ‘Sport and the Cash Nexus in Nineteenth Century Toronto’, Sport History Review, 30 (1999), 147. See David Seglins, ‘Just part of the game’; Alan Metcalfe argued that this practice reflected a desire by the middle and upper classes to defer to organizational practices and ideals of amateurism adopted from Britain; Canada Learns to Play, 31. Alan Metcalfe, ‘Organized Sport and Social Stratification in Montreal: 1840–1901’, in Richard Gruneau and John G. Albinson, eds, Canadian Sport: sociological perspectives (Don Mills: Addison‐Wesley Canada, 1976), 96; Alan Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 65. In a study of class conflict in the UK, John Hargreaves recognized this problem vis‐a`‐vis sport during the last few decades of the nineteenth century, as voluntary sport organizations grew and expanded: ‘this process was interlaced with and existed in some tension with an accelerating tendency to commercialize sporting activity in response to the evident popular demand’; Sport, Power & Culture, 65. J. Parmly Paret, ‘Ice Hockey’, Outing (January 1898), 373. Ibid., 374. Jack Glazier and Arthur W. Helweg, Ethnicity in Michigan: issues and people (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 28–29. Thurner, Strangers and Sojourners, 92. Orris C. Herfindahl, Copper Costs and Prices, 1870–1957 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1959), 83; immigrant groups included Finns, English, Scots, Italians, and Germans, Glazier and Helweg, 28–29; see also Armas K.E. Holmio, History of the Finns in Michigan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001). See Daniel Mason and Barbara Schrodt, ‘Hockey's First Professional Team The Portage Lakes Hockey Club of Houghton, Michigan’, Sport History Review, 27 (1996), 49–71. At the same time, a semi‐professional league had commenced operations in Pittsburgh, whose teams also were made up of transplanted Canadian players. See Mason and Schrodt, ‘Hockey's First Professional Team’. See N. Merrill Distad with Linda M. Distad, ‘Canada’, in J. Don Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, eds, Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire: an exploration (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 61–174; Paul Rutherford, A Victorian Authority: the daily press in late nineteenth‐century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Martin Conboy, The Press and Popular Culture (London: Sage, 2002); Minko Sotiron, From Politics to Profit: the commercialization of Canadian daily newspapers, 1890–1920 (McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1997). Martin Conboy, Journalism: a critical history (London: Sage, 2004), 109. Rutherford, A Victorian Authority, 133. Ibid., 134. See Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play; Michael Oriard, Reading Football: how the popular press created an American spectacle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Paul Rutherford, The Making of the Canadian Media (Toronto: McGraw‐Hill Ryerson, 1978). See Scott Young, Hello Canada! The life and times of Foster Hewitt (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985); this might lead to questions concerning the objectivity of some newspaper coverage. See Oriard, Reading Football. Gruneau and Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada, 85. James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: essays on media and society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 21, 20. Seglins, ‘Just part of the game’, 49. Danuta Reah, The Language of Newspapers (London: Routledge, 1998), 50. Seglins, ‘Just part of the game’, 54. Rutherford, A Victorian Authority, 141. At this time, there was no penalty box for players to serve penalties. Instead, they sat on the edge of the boards surrounding the ice surface (or fence, as it was also called) until they had served their penalty time. Rutherford, A Victorian Authority, 139. Ottawa Citizen (9 December 1904). Toronto Globe (4 December 1904); a semi‐professional league, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, had operated in Pittsburgh in the years prior to the formation of the IHL. Toronto Globe (15 December 1904). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (10 January 1905). Toronto Globe (2 February 1905); Ottawa Citizen (3 February 1905). Toronto Star (3 February 1905); the Houghton Daily Mining Gazette also featured a similar headline, Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (3 February 1905). Toronto Globe (14 February 1905); Toronto Star (14 February 1905). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (10 February 1905). Ibid. (3 December 1905). Montreal Gazette (15 December 1905). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (15 February 1905). Montreal Gazette (20 December 1905); Toronto Globe (21 December 1905); Toronto Star (21 December 1905); Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (20 December 1905). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (24 December 1905). Sault Ste. Marie Evening News (26 December 1905). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (27 December 1905). Sault Ste. Marie Evening News (26 December 1905); Calumet Copper Country Evening News (27 December 1905). Toronto Globe (27 December 1905); Ottawa Citizen (28 December 1905); Toronto Star (27 December 1905). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (5 January 1906). Ibid. Pittsburgh Gazette (5 January 1906). Ottawa Citizen (6 January 1906). Ibid. Toronto Star (5 January 1905). Pittsburgh Gazette (6 January 1906). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (6 January 1906); Montreal Gazette (6 January 1906); Toronto Star (6 January 1906). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (9 January 1906). Montreal Gazette (17 January 1906). Toronto Star (9 January 1906). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (9 January 1906). Ibid. (4 February 1906); (7 February 1906). Calumet Copper Country Evening News (4 January 1907). Sault Ste. Marie Evening News (4 January 1907). Montreal Gazette (9 January 1907). Calumet Copper Country Evening News (10 March 1907). Toronto Globe (11 March 1907). Ibid. (16 March 1907). Houghton Daily Mining Gazette (15 March 1907). Linda J. Borish and Barbara L. Tischler, ‘Labor, Leisure and Sport in the Cultural Perspective’, Rethinking History, 5 (2001), 1. Booth and Loy, ‘Sport, Status, and Style’, 13. Steven W. Pope, Patriotic Games: sporting traditions in the American imagination, 1876–1926 (London: Oxford University Press, 1997), 19. Booth and Loy, ‘Sport, Status, and Style’, 6. Rutherford, A Victorian Authority, 38. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 101. Distad with Distad, ‘Canada’, 110. See Morris Mott, ‘The Problems of Professionalism: the Manitoba Amateur Athletic Association and the fight against pro hockey, 1904–1911’, in E.A. Corbet and A.W. Rasporich, eds, Winter Sports in the West (Edmonton: Historical Society of Alberta, 1990), 132–44. James W. Martens, ‘Rugby, Class, Amateurism and Manliness: the case of rugby in northern England, 1871–1895’, in John Nauright and Timothy Chandler, eds, Making Men: rugby and masculine identity (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 38. J. Parmly Paret, ‘Basket‐ball’, Outing (December 1897), 225. Walter Camp, ‘The Two Problems of Amateur Athletics’, Outing (December 1891), 199. Mott, ‘Professionalism’, 136. Paret, ‘Basket‐ball’, 225. See Henry Roxborough, The Stanley Cup Story (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1964). Bruce Kidd, The Struggle for Canadian Sport (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 185. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 57–58. Ottawa Citizen (12 December 1905). In a study of early professional hockey in Manitoba, Mott found that ‘the main reason Manitobans wanted more indulgence of professional practices was because doing so would allow them to see and support higher caliber performances’, Mott, ‘Professionalism’, 140. Sotiron, From Politics to Profit, 19. Steven W. Pope, ‘Negotiating the “Folk Highway” of the Nation: sport, public culture and American identity’, Journal of Social History, 27 (winter 1993), 327.