History pieces for the weekend
The Centre d’histoire piece this weekend digs back into some of the oldest bits of built history here, the two towers on Sherbrooke Street, dating from 1685.
This week, Radio-Canada has a piece on the Wax Museum. The building still stands on Queen Mary at Côte-des-Neiges, but is used now by a Pharmaprix; wax museums, after going out of fashion for some decades, returned with the opening of a Musée Grévin branch here in 2013.
The Gazette’s “History through our eyes” looked at archive photos of a fascist rally in Verdun (1938), the opening of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (1989) and other incidents from the past, always worth a look.
Who has a hockey history to hand? The Journal’s “this week in history” claims the first ever Stanley Cup was awarded on May 15, 1893 to the Montreal hockey club. However, Wikipedia’s article on the cup says the first award was in 1894: “On March 17, in the first ever Stanley Cup playoff game, the Montreal Hockey Club (Montreal HC) defeated the Montreal Victorias, 3–2. Five days later, in the first Stanley Cup Final game, Montreal HC beat the Ottawa Hockey Club 3–1.” I’m thinking March is far more likely given the smaller number of teams, shorter season and rink refrigeration of the time, but I can’t seem to get a solid fact, and online newspaper archives haven’t been helpful.
dwgs 11:38 on 2019-05-12 Permalink
The Canadian Encyclopedia doesn’t give an exact date but also cited 1893. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/stanley-cup
Matthew Surridge 13:35 on 2019-05-13 Permalink
Almost 20 years ago I was given a book called Total Hockey (The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League) as a gift one Christmas. It’s mostly statistics, and I’d been considering getting rid of it since it’s basically duplicated by web resources, but lo and behold it has an article on exactly this. Both the Journal and Wikipedia are technically correct. The Montreal Hockey Club won the first Cup in 1893 by placing first in a round-robin season. There was a controversy over who would be awarded the Cup (the hockey club or the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, which had founded it) and how; the upshot was that the official presentation of the Cup was made well after the season, not at a game but at a meeting of the MAAA. The first Stanley Cup playoffs and final came the next year when four clubs finished the season tied at the top of the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, which then had to improvise a tie-breaker and came up with the idea of playoff games.
Wikipedia actually has a good brief rundown in their articles on the 1893 Stanley Cup Championship and the 1894 Stanley Cup Championship. (I’m afraid I don’t know how to do links here.)
Matthew Surridge 13:36 on 2019-05-13 Permalink
Oh, right, copy/paste:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1893_Stanley_Cup_championship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1894_AHAC_season#Playoffs