Hockey team, Dawson City, 1905
Toronto. Brrrr, it was real cold in 1905. Up in Dawson City, the guys put down their sticks and stopped flinging the rubber disk around long enough to let a local snap-shooter take this group photograph.
David Shribman, published it in his review of Tim Falconer’s book. “Klondikers“, in the Globe and Mail’s October 7, 2021 edition. These guys played hockey as the Dawson City Nuggets and came to Ottawa to try winning Lord Stanley’s cup.
Shribman begins his review with this paragraph which nicely summarizes the team’s spirit, “If it is not the destination but the journey that matters, then consider the voyage a rag-tag assemblage undertook 116 years ago to Ottawa from Dawson City: on foot, on bicycles, on a narrow-gauge railway, on a steamer ship and on a dream and a prayer, across 5,630 kilometres by land and 1,600 by sea, all to lose two Stanley Cup matches of a primitive sport that nonetheless transformed the notion of hockey night in Canada into a national rite.”
Exciting stuff even today. Read the rest of the review, and if you can, grab the book (buy it or borrow it). My thanks to good friend, George Dunbar. for sharing this piece of Canadiana with us.
