Kenora Thistles

In the boom-and-bust resource economy of early 1900s northern America, hockey was serious, fast, and furious entertainment, and local players such as Roxy Beaudro, Bill McGimsie, Tom Hooper, Si Griffis, and Tom Phillips captured the country’s imagination with an innovative passing game and graceful skating. The amateur Rat Portage Thistles challenged for the Stanley Cup in 1903 and 1905, then became the professional Kenora Thistles, joining the Manitoba Professional Hockey League in 1906 after Rat Portage was renamed Kenora in 1905. With professionalism spreading, including the debut of the first all-pro hockey league in Houghton, Michigan, in 1904, the team won the Stanley Challenge Cup in 1907 by taking it from the Montreal Wanderers on January 21 in a two-game series, then defeated the Toronto Professionals in an exhibition game four days later. At the end of the season, veteran star Tom Phillips announced he would join any team that paid him $1800, scored in Ottawa, and his teammates also accepted big-city offers or retired, leading the team to drop out of the Manitoba Professional Hockey League in 1908. In 1909 the Allan Cup was introduced as the top prize for senior amateur teams, and Fred ‘Cyclone’ Taylor said the Thistles, by skating fast, turned the game wide open and led senior teams across the country to adopt that style.

Ontario · Canada