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I hope you don’t mind a hockey story tonight in the midst of Grey Cup week.
Actually, it’s more than a hockey story — it’s also a story about the Free Press.
The story features two stars. The first is the Winnipeg Victorias, the historic hockey team that thrice hoisted the Stanley Cup.
The second star is John W. Dafoe, whose 43 years as Free Press editor will never be equaled.
As it turns out, a game involving the first star in Montreal was instrumental in getting the second star to come to Winnipeg.
“When I first met Mr. (Edward) Macklin, I was living in exile in Montreal, and going down one winter night to a skating rink to cheer for the Winnipeg team in a Stanley Cup match, I met a visitor from Winnipeg – a vigorous, active young man, bearded like the bard and filling out as well as the rest of the Shakespearean definition who was engaged in the same occupation,’’ read Dafoe’s account in the Free Press.
“We had in the intervals of our hockey enthusiasm some talk about the Free Press – with which I had an earlier connection covering six years – and some talk about the West. He seemed to me a thoroughgoing westerner – I couldn’t see any Toronto hangover about him and my heart warmed to him.”
Dafoe recalls his recruitment back to Winnipeg in Macklin’s obituary in 1946. Zoom in on a PDF version of the page.
The Macklin that Dafoe was referring to was then the general manager of the Free Press. And their meeting at a hockey game in 1901 featuring the Victorias led to more than the Stanley Cup coming to Winnipeg.
“Not long afterwards, Sir Clifford Sifton asked me if I would be willing to return to the Free Press as editor.’’
The rest, as they say, is history. Dafoe went on to become a legend of Canadian journalism, serving as the newspaper’s editor from 1901 until his death in 1944.
While I play hockey year-round and Dafoe’s old red leather chair has pride of place outside my newsroom office, I didn’t know about the puck-luck historical connection until last week.
Our front-page photo of a new mural on Main Street honouring the Victorias led local communications expert Ken Goldstein to send me a note along with that page from our archives to get me up to speed.
You can see that mural on the south side wall of the Palomino Club at 436 Main Street. Fittingly, that new bit of artwork stands tall just a block north of Winnipeg’s old Newspaper Row, watching over the old home of the Free Press, where Dafoe began his run as editor.
The new mural celebrating the Winnipeg Victorias hockey team, three-time winners of the Stanley Cup in the first decade it was awarded, is officially unveiled Wednesday on the Palomino Club building downtown. Read more about the mural in a story by sports reporter Taylor Allen.
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