During the First World War, all of Canada was in on the war effort. This included the stars of the National Hockey Association, and later the National Hockey League.
Some of the best players in history went into France to fight, and not all of them came back home again.
Today, we are looking at some of the hockey players from Canada who fought in France.
One player who served at the front lines was John Pethick, a close friend of Conn Smythe, another veteran of the war I will be covering today. He played hockey with the Varsity Blues, and enlisted when Conn Smythe and seven other teammates did. He was 25 years old and assigned with the Canadian Field Artillery of the 40th Battery. He played the position of rover and substitute defence in Toronto and with the Regina Capitals briefly.
On Nov. 11, 1916, he was killed in action. The Toronto Star wrote,
“He was a well-known hockey player on the intermediate OHA team of that city.”
Frank McGee was born on Nov. 4, 1882. His uncle, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was a Father of Confederation and his father, John Joseph McGee, was a clerk of the Privy Council. Following his schooling, McGee began to work for the Department of Indian Affairs but while he had a good paying job, his true love was sports. He did well in lacrosse and rugby, but it was hockey that he was meant to play.
His future career was nearly ended before it began when at the age of 18, he suffered a terrible eye injury in an amateur game while playing for the Canadian Pacific Railway team in on March 21, 1900. A lifted puck had hit him in the eye, and he would lose the eye in the process.
Still wanting to be on the ice, McGee would become a referee. Despite the fact he was missing an eye, he proved to be a good referee.
In 1903, McGee found he missed playing hockey so much that he wanted to get back on the ice. He would join the Ottawa Hockey Club, soon to be called the Ottawa Silver Seven, one of the greatest teams in hockey history.
He would begin practicing with the team in January of that year, and it seemed fans were happy to see him on the ice.
At the time, McGee was the youngest player on the team, and he stood five-feet-six-inches at a time when the sport was extremely brutal on the ice. Despite his age and small stature, he quickly excelled.
In his first game with Ottawa, he scored six goals.
By the time the season was done, he had 14 goals in six games and finished second in league scoring.
From 1903 to 1906, the years that McGee played for Ottawa, he won the Stanley Cup each year and scored 63 goals in 22 Stanley Cup games.
After the Montreal Wanderers claimed the Stanley Cup in a challenge game in 1906, McGee chose to retire from the game at the age of only 23. One reason for this was that his government position did not allow him to travel, and the job paid him better than his hockey job did.
McGee would continue to work for the government until the outbreak of the First World War. During those years, he spent his time playing golf at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club and curled with the Rideau Curling Club.
He would soon enlist with the Duke of Cornwall’s Own Rifles, serving as a lieutenant in the 21st Infantry Battalion. It is not known how McGee was able to enlist with only one eye. The medical officer wrote that he could see the required distance with either eye, which was not true.
According to Frank Charles McGee, the nephew of McGee, his uncle had tricked the doctor. When the doctor asked him to cover one eye and read the chart, he covered his blind eye. When he was asked to cover the other eye, he simple switched hands and covered his blind eye again.
Enlisting in October of 1914, McGee would be assigned to the 43rd Battalion and was expected to be one of the first Canadians to be called up to the front lines.
In January of 1915, McGee, who had the rank of a lieutenant, was playing hockey for the 21st battalion. The Winnipeg Tribune would report quote:
“Lt. McGee has lost but little of his cunning and was the centre of attention.”
In December 1915, the armoured car he was in was hit by a shell, causing McGee to suffer a severe knee injury. He would recover quickly from it according to the news reports. McGee would leave the military hospital in February and was sent to Wales to a convalescent home in order to recover before he returned to the front lines. After his time in England to recover from the knee injury, he was then given the option of a post away from the fighting, but he chose to return to his battalion at the front. He stated in a letter home on Sept. 4, that he wanted to be part of the big push with his old battalion. It would be a fateful decision.
He would arrive back in the trenches in August 1916 during the Battle of the Somme.
On Sept. 16, 1916, he was killed near Courcelette. His body would never be found. His death would written about in newspapers across Canada.
In 1945, McGee was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, one of the original nine players to be inducted. In 1950, the Ottawa Silver Seven and subsequent Ottawa Senators were voted the best team of the first half of the 20th century. In 1966, McGee was inducted into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame.
Future hockey executive Conn Smythe was the captain of the Varsity Blues men’s hockey team in 1915, having led them to the OHA Junior Championship that same year.
One week after winning the championship, he and eight teammates enlisted into the Canadian Army to fight in the First World War.
During training, Smythe rose to the rank of lieutenant and was sent over the France with his unit in February of 1916. On Oct. 12, 1916 his unit, the 40th Battery, was hit by shelling, killing both the Major and Sgt. Major of the unit, making Smythe the commanding officer.
For the next two months, his unit fought in the trenches at the Somme without relief. In February 1917, Smythe earned the Military Cross after running into a fight as Germans were throwing grenades. In the melee, he killed three Germans and saved several wounded Canadian soldiers. His citation read that he earned it for,
“dispersing an enemy party at a critical time. Himself accounted for three of the enemy with his revolver.”
In July 1917, Smythe transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. A few months after getting his pilot’s wings, he was shot down by the Germans on Oct. 14, 1917. Captured, he spent the remaining part of the war, despite two escape attempts, in a POW camp. In describing his life at the camp he said,
“We played so damned much bridge that I never played the game again.”
Upon returning to Toronto, Smythe started a sand and gravel business that he owned for the next four decades, on his way to reshaping hockey with his purchase of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Among the Winnipeg Falcons, who would go on to win Canada’s first Olympic Gold Medal a few years later, seven of the eight players on the team enlisted to serve in the war.
Those players went overseas, and two, Frank Thorsteinson and George Cumbers, did not come home.
Thorsteinson was considered one of the best players on the team, which the Manitoba Free Press called “the pick of the forwards”.
Thorsteinson was posted with the 10th Battalion and took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. He got the mumps in December 1917 and took four weeks to recover before he rejoined his unit. On March 13, he was wounded by shell gas.
Thorsteinson died from his wounds one day later on March 14, 1918.
Cumbers served with the No. 13 Light Railway Operating Company. He served locomotives for 10 months, which ran on the military railways. While camped with his unit on March 28, 1918, eight kilometres away from Vimy Ridge, an artillery shell exploded as they gathered for breakfast, killing 19, including Cumbers.
Team leader Frank Frederickson had been the first to enlist, and his teammates quickly joined him. Frank had a close call, when he was on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea that was hit by a torpedo.
Konnie Johannesson went to the Royal Flying Corps later with Hebbie Axford and Frank Frederickson, where they trained as pilots. Axford earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Frederickson was injured in a plane crash in September 1918.
The Benson brothers with Wally Byron and Gudmundar Sigurjonsson went with the 27th Winnipeg Battalion.
Robert Benson was wounded overseas when shrapnel hit his knee. He recovered at a hospital in France and returned home, ready to play hockey again.
Another player who spent their time at the front lines was future Hall of Famer Duke Keats. I covered the story of Duke Keats recently on this podcast. In 1915, he had just joined the Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association, recording 29 points in 24 games along with 112 penalty minutes. He continued to play for the team into 1916-17, when he had 18 points in 13 games.
It was after that season, he made the decision to enlist. Keats was far from a model soldier.
Enlisting with the 228th Battalion, he left for the United Kingdom on Feb. 19, 1917.
His time in the military wasn’t especially stellar. On Jan. 10, 1918, he was sentenced to 14 days field punishment for drunkenness.
Keats survived the war, and was back in Canada in March 1919.
The same can’t be said, sadly, for Scotty Davidson. Davidson had begun playing in the Ontario Hockey Association in 1908 as a 17-year-old, where he led the league in goals with eight in four games. He quickly moved up through the ranks and by 1912-13, he was playing for the Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association. In his rookie season, he had 19 goals in 20 games, second on the team.
One year later, he was named captain of the team and had 23 goals and 13 assists, helping the team finish first in the league. That season, he led Toronto to the city’s first Stanley Cup.
In 1914, Davidson became the first professional hockey player to enlist with the Canadian Expeditionary Force on Sept. 22, 1914. He arrived in Europe and was assigned with the Eastern Ontario Regiment. Soon promoted to lance-corporal, he earned the respect of his men for his bravery on the front lines. Once, he rescued a wounded officer at great risk to himself.
Sadly, on June 16, 1915, he was killed. There are various accounts of what how he died. One account states that he was shot in the back while carrying an injured soldier to safety. In another story, he died in a bombing raid by refusing to retreat until he had used all his ammunition. Some said he used his final grenade to kill a German officer before he was killed himself. There are a few of his contemporaries that state if he had lived through the attack, he would have been awarded the Victoria Cross. In 1950, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
One man who served with Scotty Davidson and also didn’t survive the war was George Richardson. Richardson played for the Queen’s University Golden Gaels from 1903 to 1906, helping lead his team to three championships in the process.
In 1909, he helped his team win the Allan Cup before he joined the Kingston Frontenacs.
While he never pursued a professional hockey career due to his family’s wealth, he was considered one of the best hockey players of his era. On Sept. 22, 1914, the same day as Scotty Davidson, he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. By February 1915, he found himself on the Western Front.
At a battle near Saint-Julien, he was the only survivor of the Second Battalion. This earned him a promotion to captain. With his wealth, he bought boots and gas masks for all the men under his command.
On Feb. 9, 1916, he was shot three times in the hip and abdomen. With his fortune, his will gave $15,000 to Queen’s University for art and athletics, $5,000 for bathing facilities in Kingston, $30,000 for charities in the city, and $30,000 for a fund for the education of the children of the married men in his company who were wounded or killed in the war. The George Richardson Memorial Trophy, given to the Eastern Canada hockey junior champion who then advances to the Memorial Cup, is named for him.
Like Robertson, Richardson was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950.
The last person I am profiling today is Edward Lyman Abbott.
While born in Ontario, he went west with his family as a child and soon picked up the sport of hockey. A gifted skater, he was known for his ability to score goals. He played for the Regina Shamrocks and Regina Bees, with whom he won the Valkenburg Cup in 1911 and 1912. In 1914, as captain of the Regina Victorias, he led the team to the Allan Cup championship.
On Sept. 23, 1915, he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Assigned to the 68th Battalion as a lieutenant, he reached the rack of Captain with the 52nd Battalion in October 1916. During his time in the war, he suffered gunshot wounds to his shoulder, and a shrapnel wound to the eye. Despite this, he continued to serve in the front lines and earned the Military Cross in July 1917. Three months later, after leading a raid into German trenches while outnumbered, he earned a Bar on his Military Cross.
On Aug. 14, 1918, he was killed by a sniper. Today, the Abbott Cup, presented to the Western Canada junior hockey champion who will play in the Memorial Cup, is named for him.
