For rabid fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs.........
Long before Leafs, T.O. had a team to call its own
Stephen Harper
Toronto Star
Although the Maple Leafs have the night off, next Thursday marks a milestone in Toronto's professional hockey history.
On Dec. 28, 1906 – 100 years ago – a team of paid players skated onto Toronto ice for the first time.
The Toronto Hockey Club, known as the "Toronto Professionals" or more simply the "Torontos," didn't even belong to a league. But the players proposed to suit up in their white sweaters with the big purple "T" for exhibition matches against the best clubs in Canada and the United States.
It is hard to fully comprehend today the controversy that such a band of entrepreneurs would generate. "If we Britons are as great as the glory of our Empire," thundered John Ross Robertson, president of the Ontario Hockey Association, "then the flag of amateurism will be as safe from harm as the Union Jack in the hands of your fathers and mine!"
Robertson was no small opponent. Owner and publisher of the Toronto Telegram, philanthropist, member of Parliament, his views represented the powerful social and newspaper elite that controlled sports, particularly hockey, in Ontario's capital city. In the eyes of such gentlemen, a man paid for playing hockey was a deviant from polite society, disreputable to a fine sport if not outrightly disloyal to the country itself.
Robertson was so opposed to professionalism in hockey that he had instituted a lifetime ban for its practice. Through the OHA's connections, the ban would not just be from hockey, but from any sanctioned athletic activity.
And a professional was not merely someone who accepted pay for play in some form. It included anyone who ever played with or against a professional. So serious was the charge of being professional that the accused was required to prove his innocence. To be found to be guilty of professionalism meant exclusion from virtually all sporting fraternities for life.
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