Origins of the Maple Leafs' Name

[Jack Butler]

In the case of the team, there are a lot of theories, that Smythe borrowed the name from an actual army regiment so it stuck.

Except that the Canadian government kept good records of the C.E.F., and there is no record of any Maple Leaf regiment.

There's the IBL team as well, but there's no record of there being any connection.

That depends on what you mean by connection.

The Maple Leafs baseball team had blue and white uniforms, with a blue maple leaf as their crest.

They played in a place called Maple Leaf Park, and later in one called Maple Leaf Stadium.

They did this for 30 years before the arrival of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.

Add to this the fact that the baseball team won championships, attracted as many as 30 000 per game, and had 5 teams listed in the top 100 minor league ball teams of all time. It's difficult to imagine that a well connected sports businessman like Conn Smythe had never heard of the Leafs ball team, and that the name and uniform he chose for the hockey team is just some sort of coincidence.

 

[Killion]

^^^ What exactly is it that your trying to determine Jack? I may actually be able to help.

 

[Jack Butler]

^^^ What exactly is it that your trying to determine Jack? I may actually be able to help.

Just wondering where the name Toronto Maple Leafs originally came from. It's probably something that's been mentioned in this thread, but I wonder if we will ever really know.

 

[Killion]

^^^ Ya, and I think its pretty hard to pin down, give attribution to one individual as I havent ever come across anything biographical or otherwise that does. My suspicion however is that it was landed on as a result of the popularity of the song written by a Torontonian in the Maple Leaf Forever & its popularity at the time as the unofficial National Anthem, its semi~pro British leanings, the Maple Leaf a symbol of Canada, the tree itself beyond ubiquitous throughout the east, Southern Ontario & certainly Toronto. So it worked on a number of levels obviously. Possible if you or someone else who might have access to newspaper archives of the time when the Baseball Club went from the Canucks to the Royals to the Maple Leafs an answer can be found therein.