Brutal Butchery, Strenuous Spectacle: Hockey Violence, Manhood, and the 1907 Season

Stacy L. Lorenz University of Alberta Camrose

This paper examines violence and masculinity in amateur and professional hockey prior to the First World War by looking closely at the 1907 season in central Canada. It analyses media narratives of rough and aggressive hockey in relation to gender and class identities in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canada. Newspaper reports of matches involving the Ottawa Silver Seven and the Montreal Wanderers receive particular attention in this study. Newspapers created hockey narratives that combined elements of "brutal butchery" and "strenuous spectacle." This essay explores the meaning of these conflicting narratives of violent and physical play in hockey. It considers hockey's appeal to players and spectators in light of the complex relationship between "respectable" and "rough" masculine ideals. It also assesses hockey violence in the context of changing standards and perceptions of manhood in this period. By evaluating key issues surrounding violence, gender, and class in early hockey, this paper addresses important gaps in the study of Canadian sport history and the analysis of hockey and Canadian popular culture. The 1907 hockey season featured a number of notable incidents of on-ice violence. In a particularly rough match between the Ottawa Silver Seven and the Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa's "Baldy" Spittal, Harry Smith, and Alf Smith were involved in vicious stick attacks on Wanderer players. For instance, according to the Montreal Star, Spittal attempted to split Cecil Blatchford's skull "by bringing down his hockey stick upon it with all the force his two hands could command. Blatchford was carried off

27 senseless, the blood which dripped down in his wake marking the progress of his body to the dressing room." The Star labelled the match an "exhibition of butchery," and called for the arrest of "the cowardly butchers from Ottawa." On the other hand, the Ottawa Evening Journal described the game as "a hummer from start to finish and...one of the hardest fought games on record." "Talk about strenuous hockey," wrote the Evening Journal's reporter. "You haven't seen the real thing unless you were fortunate enough to be at the Ottawa-Wanderer game on Saturday night in Montreal." Narratives of "brutal butchery" and "strenuous spectacle" spoke to different ways of experiencing and enjoying hockey, to various tensions within public perceptions of the sport, and to a wider ambivalence about violence in the game. Hockey as "brutal butchery" expressed outrage and concern, while revealing a degree of popular fascination with the game's violent possibilities. On the other hand, hockey as "strenuous spectacle" portrayed violence as part of an absorbing, aggressive, masculine display. Ideals of respectable, middle-class masculinity and rough, working-class masculinity coexisted within accounts of fast, skilled, rugged, hard-hitting hockey. The physicality and competitiveness of "decidedly strenuous" hockey also cultivated and reinforced standards of passionate manhood and primitive masculinity during this time period. Elements of physical struggle and violent action in hockey helped to counter the fear that over- civilization was making men weak, effeminate, and over- sophisticated. At the same time, the cross-class appeal of an aggressive masculinity based on force and danger helps to explain the popularity of "strenuous," even "brutal," hockey among middle-class players and spectators.