​​Lester Patrick’s letter to Nelson

I’m indebted to Sam McBride* for alerting me to something that appeared in the Nelson (BC) Daily News of June 12, 1933.

Lester Patrick, then manager of the New York Rangers and vice-president of Madison Square Garden, replied to a letter from his old friend and teammate Roy Sharp, with whom he had won a BC senior hockey championship in 1909. The newspaper explained Sharp’s connection to Lester and added that Sharp had sent the letter to Lester in Victoria, upon reading that he was there for his parents’ golden wedding anniversary. While we don’t have what Sharp wrote, Lester’s reply was as follows. I’ve annotated it in a few places.

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My Dear Boy — I was quite thrilled to receive your very kind letter of May 11, and the kind thoughts that you saw fit to record and direct to me and mine were very much appreciated. It sure was like taking a stroll down deep in Memory lane, to be reminded of friends back in Nelson, BC. Your letter indeed brought back fond memories of very happy years spent in the Queen City of the Kootenays.

Father and Mother had their day on May 7, and they were just as happy as could be. The day was Sunday, and they had all of their children and grandchildren as well as the in-laws on hand, and the day was a full one for the old folks. The next day their friends made merry. I was forced to leave on the afternoon boat of the 8th May to go back to New York, and I returned to Victoria yesterday. This will explain why I have apparently neglected to reply to your letter.

I let Lynn (the oldest boy) read your letter and he got quite a kick out of it. Yes, indeed, it is sure hard to realize that he is the same kid. He is now 21, and is 6 feet, 1 inch tall, and weighs 192. The youngest lad is to be 18 on the 28th of this month, and he is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 178. They both play all games fairly well, Roy, and neither one of the boys smokes, which in itself is quite a stunt in this cake-eating era. [1]

Yep—you are right. The old hair is getting pretty grey, and time marches on. [2] Gee, I guess we would all like to turn back the pages of time and go back to the good old days, eh, what?

Thanks ever so much for your kind references to the past season success of the Rangers. We had a very good crowd-pleasing and colorful team [3], and they happened to be hot when the showdown came in the spring, and this, coupled with the breaks, gave us the verdict. [4] The Maple Leafs are a powerful club, and so was the Boston club.

Have no local news for you. As a matter of fact, I am next door to being a stranger here myself.

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In 1948, at Sharp’s request, Lester returned to Nelson for the first and only time to referee an exhibition game between the Nelson Maple Leafs — with Chicago star Doug Bentley inserted into the roster — and the Trail Smoke Eaters.

Sharp’s daughter Dawn Penniket, who died in 2009, told me she remembered meeting Lester when he came to their home on that trip. But she didn’t mention anything about a finding letter from him among her father’s effects.

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* McBride’s grandmother Winnie McBride played on the 1911 Nelson women’s hockey team that Lester coached. More on that in his post here.

[1] Lester Patrick was something of an anti-smoking crusader. In addition to counselling young players to avoid smoking generally, according to the story below from the Vancouver Daily News Advertiser of Nov. 29, 1916, while coaching the Spokane Canaries of the PCHA, he forbid his men from smoking cigarettes (although pipes and cigars, for some reason, were okay.)

But was it a case of “do as I say, not as I do”? It appeared so, judging from this item in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner of Dec. 19, 1916.

The Vancouver News-Advertiser got to the bottom of it. Turns out Lester was not being hypocritical.

[2] Lester was well into his Silver Fox phase by then. His nickname was widely known.  

[3] This seems to have been a well-rehearsed line, for in one of the few snippets of surviving film that Lester appears, he described the same team as “the most crowd-pleasing, colourful and polished machine it’s ever been my pleasure to handle.”

[4] The Rangers posted a regular season record of 23-17-8, which was only good enough for third place in the American Division. But they beat Montreal in the first round of the playoffs, dispatched Detroit in the second round, and then defeated Toronto three games to one in a best-of-five final to win their second Stanley Cup championship.