Often when reading about classic old time era hockey teams one comes across the intriguing story of the 1907 Kenora Thistles. The small town boys from the city originally known as Rat Portage, on Lake of the Woods in westernmost Ontario near the Manitoba border, eventually bringing home the Stanley Cup in January 1907 by downing the mighty Montreal Wanderers 12 goals to 8 (4-2, 8-6) at the Montreal Arena.
It’s the smallest town in history claiming the Stanley Cup, with roughly 4,000 inhabitants present at the time of the event.
Names such as Tommy Phillips, Si Griffis, Billy McGimsie and Tom Hooper are forever engraved on the famous bowl.
But what happened with the team soon thereafter?
In an era of hockey quite defined by its many sudden turns, quick changes and sometimes short careers, the nucleus of the 1907 team would soon disperse. Griffis, McGimsie and Hooper were all out of hockey by 1908, and Tommy Phillips held on until 1912.
And even though Si Griffis later resurfaced in hockey, on the 1912 Vancouver Millionaires in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, alongside Tommy Phillips, the old band never got back together in its full original line-up.
But in the immediate shadow of the old celebrated generation of players, a new hungry group of boys had quietly emerged in Kenora, spearheaded by the three MacKenzie brothers: Billy, Monty and Harry.
Billy, Monty & Harry MacKenzie
Although jokingly referred to as the “Kenora Triplets” by the Winnipeg Free Press cartoonist in the February 28, 1911 issue of the newspaper, the three MacKenzie brothers were actually not born on the same day. Billy, a forward, was the eldest one born in 1889. Then Monty, a defenseman, in 1891, and the youngest one Harry, a forward, in 1893.
The MacKenzie brothers, of Scottish descent, were originally from Brandon, Manitoba but they had grown up in Kenora where they had played hockey for the St. Alban’s church team in the local church league in 1906–07 and 1907–08, around the time when the Stanley Cup was won by the city. On the same St. Alban’s team also played Winnipeg native forward Jack Hughes, who would ascend the amateur hockey ranks alongside the three MacKenzie boys.
Billy and Harry MacKenzie were both on the smaller side of things stature wise, standing at about 5 feet and 4 inches, and playing a dashing game from each wing, whereas their taller brother Monty, at 5 feet and 8 inches, was deployed in the role of a stay-at-home defender.
For the 1910–11 season the Kenora Thistles had put together quite a promising young team, playing in the Manitoba Independent Hockey League against the Brandon Shamrocks from Brandon, and the Winnipeg Falcons and Winnipeg AAA from Winnipeg.
Outside of the three MacKenzie brothers and Jack Hughes, alongside defenseman Jerry Morrison, the Thistles also had on the forward corps a young Port Arthur, Ontario native in Wilfred Harris, nicknamed “Smokey”, and guarding the goal cage was another Ontario boy in 17-year old Nelson Love from Rainy River.
The Thistles, led offensively by the goal scoring prowess of Harry MacKenzie and Smokey Harris, pushed themselves to the top of the 1910–11 standing of the Independent Hockey League, scoring five wins and one loss over the course of the season, which gave them an opportunity to challenge for the Allan Cup, as amateur champions of Canada.
On February 27 and March 1, 1911 the Thistles would square off at the Auditorium Rink in Winnipeg against the renowned amateur side of the Winnipeg Victorias, with the Allan Cup on the line. And even though the young lads from Kenora were routed 12 goals to 5 in the first game between the two sides – after having scored the first three goals of the contest – they rebounded nicely for the second game where they won 5-4, for an aggregated losing effort of 10-16.[1][2] Smokey Harris and Jerry Morrison led the Thistles in goal scoring in the series with three goals each.
The Thistles performed so well in 1910–11 that some of its best players were soon picked up by bigger league clubs for the 1911–12 campaign: Billy MacKenzie and Jack Hughes joined the Winnipeg Varsity team in the Winnipeg Amateur Hockey League, and Smokey Harris went even further west to join the Vancouver Millionaires in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.
On top of that the Thistles also tragically lost Nelson Love when the young goalkeeper succumbed to pernicious anemia on August 6, 1911 at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Kenora, at a ripe age of 18.[3]
With a largely depleted roster, the Thistles only appeared in a few exhibition games in 1911–12.
Nelson Love and Wilfred "Smokey" Harris
For the 1912–13 season Billy MacKenzie joined the Winnipeg Hockey Club, and the team claimed the Allan Cup, as champions of the Winnipeg Amateur Hockey League. The team also later defended the trophy against teams from Moose Jaw and Edmonton.
The Thistles were back with a team in the Independent Hockey League in 1912–13, where Monty and Harry MacKenzie saw a couple of new teammates in goalkeeper Chris McKinnon and forwards Louis Goodie and Harold Hilliard. The team again won league championship honors, after having defeated the Winnipeg Strathconas in the league playoffs, but they were not in an eligible position to challenge for the 1913 Allan Cup.
Billy MacKenzie rejoined his brothers and the Kenora Thistles for the 1913–14 season, for another push at the Allan Cup. Kenora won the Manitoba & Western Hockey Association in 1913–14, in front of the Brandon Shamrocks, Winnipeg Civics and St. Boniface Saints, and finally made themselves eligible for a second Allan Cup challenge, three years after the first one in 1911.
Billy MacKenzie brought some well needed Allan Cup winning experience to the Thistles, from his 1912–13 tenure with the Winnipeg Hockey Club. But the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper still speculated, prior to the March 11, 1914 sudden death meeting between the Thistles and the Allan Cup holding Winnipeg Monarchs, that the Thistles weren’t as strong a side as they had been in 1911, when they had lost to the Winnipeg Victorias.
The Winnipeg Tribune claimed that the 1913–14 version of the Kenora Thistles were “not an overly well balanced team,” compared to the teams in the Winnipeg league, and that Louis Goodie and Harold Hilliard also didn’t match up to the old center ice duo of Smokey Harris and Jack Hughes.[4]
On March 11 the Winnipeg Monarchs, led by a Stan Marples hat-trick in the second half of the game, managed to hold off the challengers from Kenora 6 goals to 2. Despite a slow and sluggish ice surface in Winnipeg speedsters Stan Marples and Fred “Steamer” Maxwell still managed to pull off a few sensational rushes for the Monarchs, while Billy MacKenzie and Harold Hilliard scored for the Thistles.[5]
Kenora Thistles vs Winnipeg Monarchs box score March 11, 1914
The 1913–14 season would see the definite end to the Allan Cup chase from the perspective of the Kenora Thistles. But Billy and Harry MacKenzie would still give it another try, in 1914–15 with the Melville Millionaires.
Melville, playing out of the South Saskatchewan Senior Hockey League, successfully claimed the Allan Cup at the end of the 1914–15 season in two challenge series against the Prince Albert Mintos (15-13) and the Toronto Victorias (15-11), until they finally lost the trophy to the Winnipeg Monarchs (6-7), a fate familiar to the two MacKenzie brothers from the previous season.
Billy (1) and Harry (5) MacKenzie with the 1914–15 Melville Millionaires
With World War I not only on the horizon, but in full effect overseas, hockey in many ways became an afterthought in Canada, although there were still military leagues running in Manitoba and in other provinces.
Both Monty and Harry MacKenzie, as well as their former Kenora Thistles teammate Harold Hilliard, would join the Canadian military ranks in Europe. Monty survived the war, but Harold Hilliard and Harry MacKenzie both died in the war, roughly two weeks apart from each other in August 1918, in the Somme region of northern France, aged 28 and 25 respectively.
Monty and Harry MacKenzie last played together on the 1915–16 Winnipeg Soldier All-Stars team in the Winnipeg Patriotic League, before going overseas. Their brother Billy would return briefly to hockey after the war years, playing for the 1918–19 Calgary All-Stars and later for the 1919–20 Winnipeg Hockey Club in the Winnipeg Senior Hockey League.
Wilfred “Smokey” Harris would go on to enjoy a long professional hockey career, predominantly in the PCHA where he played for the Vancouver Millionaires, Portland Rosebuds and Seattle Metropolitans. He twice played in the Stanley Cup Finals – in 1916 with Portland and in 1921 with Vancouver – but his teams lost both times in nail-biting Game 5 one-goal decisions.
For the 1924–25 season Smokey Harris joined the Boston Bruins expansion team in the National Hockey League, where he is credited with scoring the first goal in Bruins history on December 1, 1924 against the Montreal Maroons, beating Clint Benedict with a sizzling shot.[6] Three weeks later, with three goals in six games to his credit in the NHL, Harris was traded back to the west and the Vancouver Maroons.
Sources:
[1] Winnipeg Tribune, Feb. 28, 1911
2] Winnipeg Tribune, Mar. 2, 1911
[3] Winnipeg Tribune, Aug. 7, 1911
[4] Winnipeg Tribune, Mar. 11, 1914
[5] Edmonton Journal, Mar. 12, 1914
[6] Ottawa Journal, Dec. 2, 1924
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
It’s the smallest town in history claiming the Stanley Cup, with roughly 4,000 inhabitants present at the time of the event.
Names such as Tommy Phillips, Si Griffis, Billy McGimsie and Tom Hooper are forever engraved on the famous bowl.
But what happened with the team soon thereafter?
In an era of hockey quite defined by its many sudden turns, quick changes and sometimes short careers, the nucleus of the 1907 team would soon disperse. Griffis, McGimsie and Hooper were all out of hockey by 1908, and Tommy Phillips held on until 1912.
And even though Si Griffis later resurfaced in hockey, on the 1912 Vancouver Millionaires in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, alongside Tommy Phillips, the old band never got back together in its full original line-up.
But in the immediate shadow of the old celebrated generation of players, a new hungry group of boys had quietly emerged in Kenora, spearheaded by the three MacKenzie brothers: Billy, Monty and Harry.
Billy, Monty & Harry MacKenzie
Although jokingly referred to as the “Kenora Triplets” by the Winnipeg Free Press cartoonist in the February 28, 1911 issue of the newspaper, the three MacKenzie brothers were actually not born on the same day. Billy, a forward, was the eldest one born in 1889. Then Monty, a defenseman, in 1891, and the youngest one Harry, a forward, in 1893.
The MacKenzie brothers, of Scottish descent, were originally from Brandon, Manitoba but they had grown up in Kenora where they had played hockey for the St. Alban’s church team in the local church league in 1906–07 and 1907–08, around the time when the Stanley Cup was won by the city. On the same St. Alban’s team also played Winnipeg native forward Jack Hughes, who would ascend the amateur hockey ranks alongside the three MacKenzie boys.
Billy and Harry MacKenzie were both on the smaller side of things stature wise, standing at about 5 feet and 4 inches, and playing a dashing game from each wing, whereas their taller brother Monty, at 5 feet and 8 inches, was deployed in the role of a stay-at-home defender.
For the 1910–11 season the Kenora Thistles had put together quite a promising young team, playing in the Manitoba Independent Hockey League against the Brandon Shamrocks from Brandon, and the Winnipeg Falcons and Winnipeg AAA from Winnipeg.
Outside of the three MacKenzie brothers and Jack Hughes, alongside defenseman Jerry Morrison, the Thistles also had on the forward corps a young Port Arthur, Ontario native in Wilfred Harris, nicknamed “Smokey”, and guarding the goal cage was another Ontario boy in 17-year old Nelson Love from Rainy River.
The Thistles, led offensively by the goal scoring prowess of Harry MacKenzie and Smokey Harris, pushed themselves to the top of the 1910–11 standing of the Independent Hockey League, scoring five wins and one loss over the course of the season, which gave them an opportunity to challenge for the Allan Cup, as amateur champions of Canada.
On February 27 and March 1, 1911 the Thistles would square off at the Auditorium Rink in Winnipeg against the renowned amateur side of the Winnipeg Victorias, with the Allan Cup on the line. And even though the young lads from Kenora were routed 12 goals to 5 in the first game between the two sides – after having scored the first three goals of the contest – they rebounded nicely for the second game where they won 5-4, for an aggregated losing effort of 10-16.[1][2] Smokey Harris and Jerry Morrison led the Thistles in goal scoring in the series with three goals each.
The Thistles performed so well in 1910–11 that some of its best players were soon picked up by bigger league clubs for the 1911–12 campaign: Billy MacKenzie and Jack Hughes joined the Winnipeg Varsity team in the Winnipeg Amateur Hockey League, and Smokey Harris went even further west to join the Vancouver Millionaires in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.
On top of that the Thistles also tragically lost Nelson Love when the young goalkeeper succumbed to pernicious anemia on August 6, 1911 at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Kenora, at a ripe age of 18.[3]
With a largely depleted roster, the Thistles only appeared in a few exhibition games in 1911–12.
Nelson Love and Wilfred "Smokey" Harris
For the 1912–13 season Billy MacKenzie joined the Winnipeg Hockey Club, and the team claimed the Allan Cup, as champions of the Winnipeg Amateur Hockey League. The team also later defended the trophy against teams from Moose Jaw and Edmonton.
The Thistles were back with a team in the Independent Hockey League in 1912–13, where Monty and Harry MacKenzie saw a couple of new teammates in goalkeeper Chris McKinnon and forwards Louis Goodie and Harold Hilliard. The team again won league championship honors, after having defeated the Winnipeg Strathconas in the league playoffs, but they were not in an eligible position to challenge for the 1913 Allan Cup.
Billy MacKenzie rejoined his brothers and the Kenora Thistles for the 1913–14 season, for another push at the Allan Cup. Kenora won the Manitoba & Western Hockey Association in 1913–14, in front of the Brandon Shamrocks, Winnipeg Civics and St. Boniface Saints, and finally made themselves eligible for a second Allan Cup challenge, three years after the first one in 1911.
Billy MacKenzie brought some well needed Allan Cup winning experience to the Thistles, from his 1912–13 tenure with the Winnipeg Hockey Club. But the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper still speculated, prior to the March 11, 1914 sudden death meeting between the Thistles and the Allan Cup holding Winnipeg Monarchs, that the Thistles weren’t as strong a side as they had been in 1911, when they had lost to the Winnipeg Victorias.
The Winnipeg Tribune claimed that the 1913–14 version of the Kenora Thistles were “not an overly well balanced team,” compared to the teams in the Winnipeg league, and that Louis Goodie and Harold Hilliard also didn’t match up to the old center ice duo of Smokey Harris and Jack Hughes.[4]
On March 11 the Winnipeg Monarchs, led by a Stan Marples hat-trick in the second half of the game, managed to hold off the challengers from Kenora 6 goals to 2. Despite a slow and sluggish ice surface in Winnipeg speedsters Stan Marples and Fred “Steamer” Maxwell still managed to pull off a few sensational rushes for the Monarchs, while Billy MacKenzie and Harold Hilliard scored for the Thistles.[5]
Kenora Thistles vs Winnipeg Monarchs box score March 11, 1914
The 1913–14 season would see the definite end to the Allan Cup chase from the perspective of the Kenora Thistles. But Billy and Harry MacKenzie would still give it another try, in 1914–15 with the Melville Millionaires.
Melville, playing out of the South Saskatchewan Senior Hockey League, successfully claimed the Allan Cup at the end of the 1914–15 season in two challenge series against the Prince Albert Mintos (15-13) and the Toronto Victorias (15-11), until they finally lost the trophy to the Winnipeg Monarchs (6-7), a fate familiar to the two MacKenzie brothers from the previous season.
Billy (1) and Harry (5) MacKenzie with the 1914–15 Melville Millionaires
With World War I not only on the horizon, but in full effect overseas, hockey in many ways became an afterthought in Canada, although there were still military leagues running in Manitoba and in other provinces.
Both Monty and Harry MacKenzie, as well as their former Kenora Thistles teammate Harold Hilliard, would join the Canadian military ranks in Europe. Monty survived the war, but Harold Hilliard and Harry MacKenzie both died in the war, roughly two weeks apart from each other in August 1918, in the Somme region of northern France, aged 28 and 25 respectively.
Monty and Harry MacKenzie last played together on the 1915–16 Winnipeg Soldier All-Stars team in the Winnipeg Patriotic League, before going overseas. Their brother Billy would return briefly to hockey after the war years, playing for the 1918–19 Calgary All-Stars and later for the 1919–20 Winnipeg Hockey Club in the Winnipeg Senior Hockey League.
Wilfred “Smokey” Harris would go on to enjoy a long professional hockey career, predominantly in the PCHA where he played for the Vancouver Millionaires, Portland Rosebuds and Seattle Metropolitans. He twice played in the Stanley Cup Finals – in 1916 with Portland and in 1921 with Vancouver – but his teams lost both times in nail-biting Game 5 one-goal decisions.
For the 1924–25 season Smokey Harris joined the Boston Bruins expansion team in the National Hockey League, where he is credited with scoring the first goal in Bruins history on December 1, 1924 against the Montreal Maroons, beating Clint Benedict with a sizzling shot.[6] Three weeks later, with three goals in six games to his credit in the NHL, Harris was traded back to the west and the Vancouver Maroons.
Sources:
[1] Winnipeg Tribune, Feb. 28, 1911
2] Winnipeg Tribune, Mar. 2, 1911
[3] Winnipeg Tribune, Aug. 7, 1911
[4] Winnipeg Tribune, Mar. 11, 1914
[5] Edmonton Journal, Mar. 12, 1914
[6] Ottawa Journal, Dec. 2, 1924
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
