It’s hard to imagine Centretown more than 100 years ago when local youngster Eddie McGrath’s passion for hockey was deeply rooted in the community.
McGrath was scouted by a school coach and decided to switch schools so he could join the Senators back about 1906.
When the principal was suspended because he didn’t file the proper paper work for McGrath, there was an outcry from the students. Some refused to go to class and others grabbed hockey sticks to smash windows and threatened to burn down the hockey arena.
Paul Kitchen, a local Ottawa hockey historian, knows McGrath’s story is one of many significant pieces of hockey history he is working to preserve. Kitchen is helping the City of Ottawa Archives and the Ottawa Senators collect and sort through local hockey artifacts at the new exhibit at Scotiabank Place.
“It all began with us receiving requests and phone calls from people wanting to donate their Senators artifacts to us,” says Karen Ruttan, a member of the hockey historic committee. “We didn’t really have a way to take care of them properly.”
Also on the committee are representatives from the City of Ottawa Archives, the Senators club and local sports historians Paul Kitchen and Jim McAuley.
“You can’t understand the history of a community fully unless you understand the sporting environment that goes along with it,” Kitchen says.
The 1927 NHL bid book and photo of the Ottawa Senators are both features in the exhibit. Back then, the team was playing at the Ottawa Auditorium which is now the present-day YMCA just off O’Connor and Argyle streets.
The heart of hockey in Ottawa was at the Dey’s Arenas in Centretown and most notably the arena at the northern corner of Gladstone Avenue and Bay Street, where the 1903 Stanley Cup game was won by the Ottawa Silver Sevens.
The planning of the exhibit in collaboration with the Senators began in June 2011, according to city archivist Paul Henry.
“The exhibit chronicles the early years, not only of professional hockey, but also amateur hockey in Ottawa,” Henry said in an email.