Frank Frederickson stood on the deck of the ship as it sailed on the Mediterranean Sea.
Months ago, he enlisted to fight in the First World War. Now, his home in Winnipeg seemed a world away.
Before long, he would be in Egypt to begin pilot training.
The war, however, seemed distant.
The bombs and screams of the trenches were thousands of kilometres north.
But soon the battle would come to him when a U-Boat, hiding beneath the waters, deployed an explosive payload into the side of the ship.
Amidst the panic and smoke Frank had to find a way off the ship, but he needed to get one thing first.
His violin.
[BEAT]
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx.
This month, I am focusing on Canada’s Olympic history and in this episode, we travel to 1920 and the start of our hockey dominance.
This is the story of the Winnipeg Falcons!
When we talk about hockey most people think about Canada.
And we’ll get there… but the story of the Winnipeg Falcons doesn’t start in the Great White North.
It starts in Iceland.
In 1874, to be exact.
1,000 years after the Norse first arrived in Iceland, King Christian IX of Denmark visited the small island.
His visit coincided with Denmark granting Iceland its own constitution and limited rule over domestic matters.
But the Icelanders had been living for a while in hardship.
The economy was suffering, and years of poor weather led to constant crop failures.
If things weren’t bad enough, after centuries of dormancy, Askja, a volcano in the central highlands erupted.
For 17 hours on March 28, 1875, ash rained down across 5,000 square kilometres covering everything on its path and poisoning land and livestock.
Within a year, two percent of the sheep and seven percent of the cattle were dead and over the next 30 years, 20,000 Icelanders, or 25 percent of the population, left the island.
That great migration was aided by a Scottish missionary named John Taylor in the spring of 1875.
He encouraged Icelanders Sigtryggur Jonasson and Einar Jonasson to travel with him to find a new home in Canada.
They arrived in Winnipeg on July 20th and were immediately impressed by what they saw.
Two months later, 200 Icelandic immigrants arrived in Manitoba on Sept. 25.
They then travelled by flatboat along the Red River to the western shore of Lake Winnipeg where the Canadian government had promised them land.
The new arrivals named it, New Iceland.
Life in their new home wasn’t easy.
They had been expert fishermen in the North Atlantic but now they had to adapt to the shallowness of Lake Winnipeg.
It didn’t help that soon after they arrived in Winnipeg, they had one of the coldest on record.
The new arrivals had unsuitable clothing for the weather and by the time the snow melted that first spring 35 people had died from scurvy that had spread like wildfire.
At the time, Manitoba was known as the postage stamp province and was just one-eighteenth its current size.
This meant that New Iceland was independent of the government. The residents set their own laws, had their own schools and managed their own affairs.
They even had their own newspaper, Framfari, meaning Progress.
And at first the Icelanders had been welcomed but that isolation and their refusal to integrate into the broader society soon led to backlash.
Public opinion turned on them.
The Manitoba Free Press called them an unprogressive race who should succumb to the fate of the least fit.
Despite the hostility, more Icelanders followed and by 1876 New Iceland had an additional 1,200 people.
Over time, they learned to work the soil, fish and build houses that could handle the frigid Canadian winter.
But times was still tough.
A smallpox epidemic swept through the colony in 1877 followed by a series of floods and harsh winters which led to an exodus from the colony.
Some moved to North Dakota; others established the community of Gimli which today has the largest Icelandic population outside of Iceland.
By 1881, the population of New Iceland had quickly declined.
It had gone from thousands to just 250 people.
Manitoba as a province had been expanding and that same year it had grown to the point that it now took over New Iceland land.
It marked the official end of the colony, and a new beginning for the few that had remained.
Including… a newfound love for a game synthesized in the great white north.
By the mid-1800s, British settlers had adapted European stick and ball games they used to play back home to the colony’s frozen ponds and rivers.
Canada’s long winters made ice a natural playing surface, and on March 3, 1875, the first recorded indoor hockey game was played at Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal.
To better control the game indoors, players used a flat wooden puck instead of a ball.
The innovation became permanent.
By 1877, students at McGill University had published the first written rules of the game they called hockey, formalizing team size, basic penalties, and gameplay structure.
From there, organized clubs, leagues, and standardized equipment followed rapidly.
In Winnipeg the children of the first Icelandic arrivals had grown up with the game.
By the mid-1890s, those children were now adults wanting to keep playing the game they had grown to love.
David Grebstad, author of A Confluence of Destinies, said that at the time, hockey was booming in Canada.
DAVID CLIP [6:00 – 6:18] 18 seconds
His book tells the in-depth story of the Falcon’s quest for Olympic gold, and he mentions that at the time prejudice towards the Icelandic immigrants prevailed.
Their odd sounding names didn’t fit into a society where French and British culture dominated.
They were outsiders.
No one wanted to play Canada’s game with them or allow them to play it on their turf.
With no other options, they formed the Icelandic Athletic Club and the Winnipeg Vikings hockey teams.
The two teams were divided Notre Dame Street, which today runs through several central and northwestern neighborhoods, starting near the downtown core.
The Icelandic Athletic Club was on north, the Vikings in the south.
The Winnipeg Tribune wrote in 1899,
“This creates no small amount of enthusiasm in the Icelandic people living on their respective sides of that street, which could easily be seen and heard by the noise and excitement that prevailed all through the match.”
The Vikings were more physical and a stronger team, while the Athletic Club was small and fast on the ice.
Of the two teams, the Vikings had more skill and won the Icelandic League Championship every year from 1897 to 1902.
But a two-team league wasn’t sustainable, and the league eventually folded although the teams continued to play whenever they could.
In 1905, the Icelandic Athletic Club applied to join the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.
They were denied.
Three years later, the Vikings and Athletic Club decided to make one single team out of their best players.
The new super team would need a new name.
For that, they chose the national bird of Iceland.
The Falcon.
The Winnipeg Falcons were established in 1908.
At the same time a young teenager was skating at outdoor rinks in the city.
Sigurður Franklín Friðriksson, who went by the first name Frank, was born to Icelandic immigrants Jón and Guðlaug.
For as long as he could remember he had spoken Icelandic at home.
In fact, he only learned English when he began school.
By the time he was five he was bilingual and his parents made an ice rink in the backyard where he learned to skate.
Frank was good and before long, he was playing organized hockey with whatever team would take him.
By the time he was a teenager, he was taller and stronger than most other players on the ice.
He was also a born leader.
He joined the Winnipeg Falcons for the 1913-14 season and was immediately named captain. This was the same season that the Falcons became part of the Independent Hockey League.
It didn’t start out great for them in that league.
The team finished in last place
But under his guidance and leadership, they won the league championship the following year.
It seemed that everything was looking up and they were on their way to glory.
But then Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was killed on 28 June 1914.
And that blocked the team’s chance at greatness.
Across the pond World War One erupted
And Canada sent thousands of men from every walk of life who had enlisted to serve overseas.
Out of eight million people, 619,000 joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Frank Frederickson always led by example and he was the first to enlist for The Falcons.
Within days, seven of the eight players had their new uniforms too.
Except these were military khakis.
Five of the players were placed with the 223rd Canadian Scandinavians Battalion, commanded by the team executive, Hannes Hanneson.
The remaining Falcons players were sent to other battalions.
Frank Thorsteinson went to the 209th Battalion.
While George Cumbers, a skilled locomotive mechanic, reported to the Canadian Railway Troops.
Except for Cumbers, the rest of the team was sent to Camp Hughes in Manitoba to begin training.
While waiting to be shipped overseas, the Falcon players joined the Winnipeg Patriotic League and played together for the battalion’s hockey team.
The following spring, the battalion was shipped to England.
For years, the Winnipeg Falcons had fought on the ice together.
Now, they were separated and sent to different corners of the war.
Frank Thorsteinson found himself with the 10th Battalion.
He arrived at the Vimy Ridge trenches on April 28, 1917, weeks after the Canadian Corps had achieved a stunning victory and pushed back the Germans.
But the small win didn’t mean they were done fighting.
Frank fought from Aug. 15 to 25, 1917 at the Battle of Hill 70. where Canada suffered 9,000 casualties.
Frank escaped unharmed but with little time to catch his breath.
By October 1917 Frank was fighting the Germans at Passchendaele.
By the time the battle was over, and the Canadians had captured the ridge on Nov. 6, 16,000 were dead or wounded.
Once again, Frank escaped injury.
He got a break from the fight in December 1917 but didn’t escape the horror.
The welcomed reprieve was thanks to the mumps.
He spent weeks in a hospital, away from the explosions, the constant screams and stench death of the trenches.
But he spent the nights listening to the sound of his comrades as they healed from wounds… the fight never too far away.
During that time, sitting in hospital, he likely thought of his fellow Falcons, scattered across the continent.
He had escaped death in two battles, but had they?
By February 1918, he was back in the trenches.
By March 12, the raiding party he had been assigned to was near a place called Twisted Alley,
They had been tasked with blocking a trench intersection known as Humbug Alley.
In the chill of late spring air and under the cover of night, the men made their way across No Man’s Land.
Their silence was broken by a dreaded whistling sound across in the sky.
It wasn’t artillery shells, whizbangs as the soldiers called them, but gas canisters.
Since 1915, poison gas had become an unfortunate reality of the war, used by both sides.
The raiding party scrambled to put on their gas masks as quickly as they could as they rushed back to their trench.
Soon the grim reality of the failed raid became apparent.
One officer and three soldiers were wounded by enemy fire, seven were suffering the effects of poison gas.
Frank was one of them.
As his condition worsened, he was evacuated to a hospital at Barlin.
It was too late.
For two days he lingered on this earth as his lungs burned.
Each breath became more difficult as they filled with fluid.
He took his last, painful gasp on March 13, 1918.
The other Falcons didn’t find out about the death of their teammate for weeks.
The hockey team from Winnipeg had been scattered across Europe. While some enjoyed the camaraderie of the trenches, others looked at the clouds and saw freedom in flight.
They wanted to be Knights of the Sky.
Three Falcons players, Hebbie Axford, Konnie Johannesson, and hockey captain Frank Fredrickson all wanted to leave the confines of the infantry to be able to soar like …. Well…. falcons.
Hebbie Axford became a flight commander, rose to the rank of captain. He eventually earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.
Konnie Johannsen became a flight instructor at an airfield in Egypt where he remained in relative safety for the duration of the war as he trained English and Egyptian pilots.
Falcon Captain Frank Frederickson had a more eventful time…. including several brushes with death.
First, he trained in England and France and then traveled to Egypt to train with his teammate Konnie.
He became a pilot scout and quickly proved himself in flight.
He would be needed on the Western Front, and when his transfer orders came in, he was headed back to Britain.
Frank was supposed to enjoy a leisurely journey across the Mediterranean, but a German U-Boat had other plans.
On May 28, 1917, his transport ship was torpedoed.
Over 90 men lost their lives but Frank managed to escape with his cherished violin when he jumped on a lifeboat to safety. The survivors drifted for days until they were rescued.
When he finally arrived in Britain, he trained at an RAF base in Scotland.
As soon as he arrived, he impressed his commanders so much that he was made an instructor and test pilot.
That wasn’t a bad thing.
Afterall, life expectancy for pilots above French trenches was just 20 hours of flight time.
But that didn’t mean Frank was free of danger.
And some of it was self-caused.
While stationed in Scotland a woman caught his eye.
Wanting to impress her, he took a British biplane fighter plane and flew over a tea party she was hosting in Edinburgh.
He was hoping to impress her by performing aerial tricks.
Unfortunately, the engine failed and the plane crashed.
Frank, thankfully, only suffered bruises and multiple cuts.
He had a few more close calls while piloting those experimental aircrafts but survived the war and returned to Canada in 1919.
As for the other Falcons?
Robert Benson, Wally Byron and Gudmundur Sigurjonsson were posted with the 27th Winnipeg Battalion in France.
While they had their share of scrapes and near misses, all three returned to Winnipeg following the war.
While the other Falcons were scattered George Cumber was with the No. 13 Light Railway Operation Company.
He wouldn’t be in the trenches fighting the Germans.
Instead, he was in rays, serving in locomotives for the military.
But when the whole world is in conflict, war has a funny way of finding you.
His unit was camped out near Maroeuil, France on March 18, 1918.
Although they were about 8km away from Vimy Ridge, the 20 soldiers had sat down for breakfast in relative quiet.
Whether it was sent deliberately or went off course due to poor German calculations an artillery shell suddenly shrieked through the air and landed at their breakfast table.
Every single one of them was killed.
Author David Grebstad said that George Cumbers and Frank Thorsteinson were the only Falcon lives lost to the war.
DAVID CLIP [4:58 – 5:11] 12 Seconds
The rest of the Winnipeg hockey team returned to Canada, that’s when they grieved their teammates.
They would honour them in their own way.
By becoming legends on ice.
[PAUSE]
The Falcons had endured countless injuries and experienced losses.
For their service they received medals and two of their friends never returned.
But their sacrifices didn’t seem to matter.
The hockey community in Winnipeg still didn’t welcome them.
Falcon’s Captain Frank Frederickson said,
“We couldn’t get into the senior league because the players were from well-to-do families and wanted no part of us.”
Author David Grebstad said Winnipeg still didn’t care for those with Icelandic heritage.
DAVID CLIP [1:54 – 2:19] 24 seconds
Just like they had done 15 years earlier, they formed their own team.
When they were denied entry into the City Senior League, they formed the Manitoba Hockey League with teams from Brandon and Selkirk.
Fred “Steamer” Maxwell was their coach and manager.
He had played with various Winnipeg teams and was considered one of the best players of his time.
He played for five seasons with the Winnipeg Monarchs in the early 1910s, where he scored 21 goals and 25 points in 37 games.
He built the returning Falcons into one of the best teams not just in Winnipeg, or Manitoba, but Canada.
By his side were former Falcons Gordon Hofdal, as trainer, and Hebbie Axford, as club president.
On the ice, at centre was Captain Frank Frederickson.
Magnus Goodman was on left wing and Haldor Halderson on the right.
The defence was patrolled by Konrad Johannsesson and Robert Benson and the net was guarded by a stone wall named Waly Byron.
Allan Woodman served as the rover, a position that has now been eliminated from hockey, while Chris Fridfinnson was a substitute.
They may have been away from hockey during the war but upon their return it was clear they hadn’t lost their edge or skill.
The Victoria Daily Times wrote on Dec. 22, 1919,
“The visitors were completely outclassed throughout and were never dangerous, while the Icelandic boys always were noisy and aggressive. Frederickson and Johanneson starred for the winners.”
During the 1919-1920 season the Falcons took first place in the Manitoba Hockey League as Frank Frederickson scored 23 goals in 10 games, while Wally Byron led the league in shutouts.
They would play for the league championship against the Selkirk Fishermen, in front of a crowd of 5000 people at the Amphitheater Rink in Winnipeg.
The Falcons won the first of two games 5 to 1.
In the second, they fell behind early and were down 5 to 1 before the second period.
The dug deep and had an unbelievable third where they scored four goals to tie the game.
It would all come down to an overtime win.
The Falcons scored and took the Manitoba Hockey League championship.
With a championship under their belts, they now had to face the Fort William Maple Leafs, who were the champions of the Thunder Bay region. This was the next step to eventually competing for the Allan Cup against an eastern Canada team.
In the series, the Falcons had speed and size on their side.
They wiped the ice clean with the Maple Leafs and took the first game 7 to 2.
If that beating was bad, the Leafs would be humiliated even more in the second game when The Falcons won with a resounding 9 to 1 score for the win.
The Ottawa Journal wrote that the Falcons had quotes.
“Frequent flashes of real and spasmodic genius.” end quote
Those two wins secured the Falcons a bid at the national championship.
The Allan Cup.
During the first decade of the trophy’s existence, a Winnipeg team won it five times.
Now the Winnipeg Falcons were hoping for glory.
The Allan Cup was born out of a schism in Canadian Hockey.
Sir H. Montagu Allan, a businessman and president of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association had provided a trophy, named after him to be presented to the Canadian amateur hockey champion.
That had been the role of The Stanley Cup but by the early 1900s, teams were paying players on the down low to bolster their squads.
Eventually, the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association allowed professionals in the league, and the trustees of the Stanley Cup decided that the trophy would only be awarded to professional teams.
This meant that amateur teams had their own national championship.
And at the end of the 1919-1920 season the Falcons would be facing the University of Toronto Blues for the Cup and most pundits didn’t give them much of a chance.
Even The Falcons believed they didn’t belong and expected to be home before long and only packed enough clothes for a few days.
Their decision to pack light would prove to be foolish.
The Falcons had grown up together.
They had grown up playing against and with each other on frozen ponds in frigid Manitoba.
They had seen the ravages of war and had been ostracized by their city and been there for each other every step of the way.
When you think of the word team. The Falcons were a unit that looked out for one another on and off the ice.
Whenever they hit the ice, they carried the memory of Frank Thorsteinson and George Cumbers with them.
Meanwhile, the Toronto University Blues had only assembled and played together that year.
The Falcons would prove impossible to beat.
The Edmonton Journal wrote,
“The Allan Cup goes west after an absence of three years, and, judging by the ability of the new holders, it may be a long time before it comes back again.”
With the amateur national championship under their belt the Falcons did something else other than take home hardware.
They earned a trip to Belgium.
In two weeks, they will be competing at the Olympics.
Remember when I said that the Falcons’ players packed light for their trip to Toronto?
Well, now that was a problem.
They were about to head to Antwerp, Belgium to play at the Olympics and they needed enough clothes to last them a few weeks.
Who would save the day?
The citizens of Winnipeg.
The same people who had made them feel unwelcome raised $500 to outfit the team.
The Falcons would depart for Europe alongside W.A. Hewitt. a representative of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
He would oversee finances and report for Canadian newspapers.
Hewitt and his wife Flora became parental figures for the Falcons on their Olympic journey while the couple’s 18-year-old son remained in Canada.
If the name sounds familiar it is because Foster Hewitt, would eventually become the voice of Hockey Night in Canada.
But at the time he waved his parents goodbye as they joined the Falcons on the SS Melita.
The ship departed in Saint John, New Brunswick for Europe
The 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium were the first Olympics since World War One had broken out.
The previous one had been hosted eight years earlier in Stockholm, Sweden Antwerp was awarded The Games as a tribute to the Belgian people who had suffered during the four years of conflict.
The Games would feature only 29 nations, with Hungary, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire all banned for their role in the great war.
These would be the first games to feature hockey would be played at the SUMMER Olympics.
You heard that right… ICE HOCKEY at the SUMMER Olympics… that’s because the Winter Olympics wouldn’t exist until 1924.
Seven nations, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States all took part in the hockey tournament which would be played at the Ice Palace of Antwerp
Each game would consist of two 20-minute periods, and if the game was tied, there would be five-minute overtime periods until someone won.
Headed into the tournament, Canada was the clear favourite.
The United States was expected to be the toughest competition but that’s because half their team was made up of Canadians.
On April 20, The Victoria Daily Times wrote,
“The players from the Dominion have been given a great reception by the British army contingent stationed here and will have a strong rooters chorus to give them encouragement during the games.”
As soon as the Falcons hit the ice, their size and physicality scared the other teams.
The Europeans padded their uniforms, gloves and skates with cotton.
Some even lined their shins with magazines.
David Grebstad says that many of the players in Europe were brand new to hockey.
DAVID CLIP [9:04 – 9:29] 25 seconds
To help them, the Falcons started to coach the Europeans during practices.
Hewitt said in one of his dispatch’s quotes,
“We virtually trained the Swedes, Czechoslovaks, Belgians and French teams for their contests against us.”
Even with the Canadians’ help, the games were not even close.
The Falcons demolished the Czechs 15-0 on April 25 as Frank Frederickson scored four goals.
The Weekly Albertan wrote,
“The Falcons were clearly the superior team and played short passes at a terrific speed.”
For their second game they would face the US, and they would put up a fight.
No one scored for the first 20 minutes.
At the beginning of the second, Frank Frederickson put one in the net to give the Falcons the lead and the Brits in the crowd gave him a standing ovation.
The Americans attempted to get past the strong Falcon defence but were denied even with Wally Byron’ broken finger.
Konnie Johannesson scored late in the game to give Canada a 2-0 victory.
Then it was on to the gold medal game against Sweden.
They wouldn’t prove to be a challenge.
Six minutes into the first period, the Falcons were up 3-0.
However, the Swedish team did something no other team in the tournament had accomplished so far.
They scored on Wally Byron…
Kind of… because …well… fell shall we say.
Nearly everyone believed that the Canadians had given Sweden a gimme goal as a sign of sportsmanship.
The Swedish team even thanked the Falcons right after they scored.
Frederickson said,
“I guess it is safe to confess that we gave it to them. The Swedes went wild. They were yelling and cheering, shaking hands with themselves, shaking hands with us. It was great.”
With that bit of charity out of the way, the Canadians got back to business and by the time it was all said and done, they were up 12 to 1.
In the last 24 minutes of the game, Frank Frederickson scored six goals.
The Toronto Globe wrote that their performance was like,
“The gallantry of Canadian troops on Belgian soil in the defense of Ypres in the Great War.”
The Falcons were Olympic champions, and they didn’t know it yet but at that game in Antwerp they had won the first of 14 gold medals for Canada.
The Swedish team didn’t leave empty handed.
They took home the silver medals, and the Falcons’ hockey sticks as a gesture of goodwill from the Canadians.
The Vancouver Daily World wrote,
“The victory of the Canadian team was fully expected; it being regarded largely as a question of the size of the score the Canadians would run up against their sturdy but less experienced opponents.”
The Falcons were ready to return to Canada as Olympic heroes.
But first they had one more stop to make.
While Canada waited for their arrival, the Falcons walked through the battlefields of France.
The scars on the land, and in the minds of the players, were still fresh.
They toured the trenches, saw the wreckage and thought of those left behind, including their two former teammates.
It was a sobering moment after the high of winning gold at the Olympics.
After paying their respects, they boarded their ship for the trip home.
The week at sea gave them time to decompress before2,000 people would greet them in Toronto.
Once they reached Winnipeg, they were welcomed as conquerors and a half day holiday was even proclaimed in the province.
At a huge banquet each Falcon was given a gold watch Then they were honored with a 2 km long parade made up of 200 cars, trucks and horse-drawn buggies.
The Saskatoon Star Phoenix wrote,
“Winnipeg is making great preparations for the reception. The civic fathers will tender the boys a banquet and there will be a grand parade in the city. All sport followers in the Manitoba capital will turn out in honor of the champions.”
David Grebstad said Canada’s response to their win was amazing.
DAVID CLIP [7:08 – 7:20] 12 seconds
CUT TO
DAVID CLIP [7:27 – 7:40] 13 seconds
But good things aren’t always meant to last, and soon individual needs superseded by the team.
At the start of the 1920-21 season, Manitoba league president H.J. Sterling hired a private investigator because he was suspicious of a few of the Falcon players who had recently changed their addresses to play on new teams.
He wanted to determine if they were being paid under the table.
Haldor Halderson and Robert Benson had both moved to Saskatoon, and after the investigation their amateur cards were revoked because they were paid $6,500 to play hockey for the Saskatoon team.
The team was also banned from competing in the 1921 Allan Cup.
By then nearly every player was playing for a professional team and the Falcons as they had existed for disappeared and their golden glory dimmed.
For decades, the Falcons were not celebrated for their Olympic victory.
Hockey Canada listed the 1924 Toronto Granites as the first Olympic gold medalists.
But by the late 20th century, things began to change.
Brian Johannesson, the son of Falcons player Konnie Johannesson, started a website to document the team’s history which led the Canadian Olympic Committee to recognize the Falcons as the first gold medal winning team.
By the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, Hockey Canada used replica yellow and black jerseys as alternative jerseys to honour the Falcons.
Ten years later, the Winnipeg Falcons story was told in a Heritage Minute starring Letterkenny’s Jared Keeso as Hebbie Axford.
On July 31, 2019, Parks Canada recognized the Falcons win as a National Historic Event.
And the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto created a permanent display to honour the Falcons and their victory at the Olympics.
The team has also been inducted into the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.
But their legacy has gone far beyond Canadian borders.
The Icelandic national hockey team honours the Falcons on their own jersey by using the Falcon and the Maple Leaf as their emblem.
But what happened to the players after they achieved Olympic glory?
Robert Benson continued to play hockey until 1932 and joined the Boston Bruins for 8 games during the 1924-25 season.
After he retired, he worked as a clerk for the Eaton’s store and coached various minor league hockey teams.
Allan Woodman played hockey until 1925.Haldor Halderson played until 1937. He played with the Victoria Cougars and added a Stanley Cup to his trophy case. Chris Fridfinnsontook a job as a clerk at the Dominion Bank. When he passed away in 1938 at the age of 40, he was the first of the gold medal winning team to die.
Magnus Goodman played mostly in the American Hockey Association with various teams in Duluth and Kansas City until 1939. Throughout his life, he carried his gold medal in his pocket.
Konrad Johannesson played until 1929, then went on to train 231 pilots during the Second World War.
Wally Byron retired from hockey in 1925 and coached various teams in the minor leagues.
As for Frank Fredrickson, he took his leadership skills to the NHL and played from 1926 to 1931 with the Detroit Cougars, Boston Bruins, and Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 161 games, he had 71 points and won the Stanley Cup with his friend and Falcons’ teammate Haldor Halderson in 1925.
In 1958, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, the only member of the Falcons to be enshrined.
Until 1998 when NHL players began playing in the Olympics, he was considered the greatest hockey player to ever represent Canada at the Games.
David Grebstaad says, that in the end, the f the Falcons’ legacy is not just the gold medal, but what they endured to become champions.
DAVID CLIP [11:56 – 12:12] 16 seconds
[OUTRO]
