Lester Patrick vs. Pauline Johnson

A few months after Lester Patrick arrived in Nelson in 1907 to join his family’s lumber business, he was convinced to recite poems at a Thanksgiving program put on by the local Methodist church. Both of his parents being staunch Methodists, he probably didn’t have much choice.

His source material was William Henry Drummond’s popular 1897 book The Habitant and Other French Canadian Poems, which consisted of narrative verses written in dialect. (Although the Patricks were Anglophones, they had lived in French-speaking communities in Quebec, and Lester’s early schooling was in French.)

According to Eric Whitehead in The Patricks: Hockey’s Royal Family, Drummond’s poem Little Bateese “had been Lester’s pièce de résistance at parties back in Montreal” and now he would bring it to a Nelson audience.   

But when he agreed to the performance, booked for Nov. 26, 1907, he probably didn’t realize another event was scheduled the same night at the opera house — much less that it would feature one of Canada’s most popular entertainers, E. Pauline Johnson, whose Mohawk stage name was Tekahionwake. What’s more, Johnson’s show was a benefit for the Nelson hockey club!

The two shows were advertised side by side in the newspaper, with Johnson’s ad taking up more than twice as many column inches as Lester’s and brimming with endorsements from English newspapers.

Nelson Daily Canadian, Nov. 23, 1907

How could Lester possibly compete with such a legendary figure of the Canadian stage? As it turned out, very well. While we don’t know the exact attendance at each performance, the church event was declared a success and Johnson’s a failure, through no fault of her own.

While Johnson was normally a reliable draw, according to the Daily News, a “small house” greeted her, which the paper concluded was probably due to a stormy night. She and partner Walter McRaye “gave several excellent numbers but were much interrupted by disorderly conduct in the gallery.” A sketch called Fashionable Intelligence, filled with “brilliant and delicate repartee” was abandoned partway through, “it being quite impossible to proceed with it.”

The Daily Canadian agreed the performance wasn’t well attended but thought it would have been enjoyed had it not been “frequently interrupted by disorderly conduct.”

“After the performance several citizens called upon Miss Johnson and Mr. McRaye and apologized for the unruly conduct of the offenders,” the paper added. Both the Daily News and Daily Canadian used the phrase “disorderly conduct” to describe whatever happened, but offered no further details. Was it a euphemism for drunken heckling?

Coincidentally, McRaye was also known for reciting Drummond’s habitant poems, but there was no word if it was part of that evening’s program.

Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), circa 1885-95. (Library and Archives Canada/Wikipedia)

By contrast, the church performance was well attended (the storm was apparently no impediment there) and Lester’s recitations were a hit. The program, which also included choir and solo vocal performances, raised $70. I’d like to imagine Lester commiserating with Johnson later that evening, but nothing suggests they crossed paths. 

Lester performed an encore a month later for the Baptist church Christmas entertainment. In April 1909, the Patricks also took part in an evangelical campaign. On horseback, Lester’s brother Guy led 300 Sunday school students from St. Paul’s church to the Alice roller rink for the service. As part of the lengthy program, Lester recited Drummond’s When Albani Sang.

One boy who was there never forgot it. George V. Ferguson grew up to be editor of the Montreal Star and, upon Lester’s death in 1960, he reminisced about the event. Ferguson described the “classic moment when Lester Patrick played a prominent and honorable role in a religious revival meeting.”

[T]he biggest crowd of all gathered when the word went round that the incomparable Lester had got religion and would make an appearance. You had to fight your way into the rink that night and there, sure enough, was the handsome Lester Patrick sitting on the platform with the evangelists and all ready to go.

This revival campaign was a quiet one as such things go. There was a minimum of tub-thumping. There was no sawdust trail. But the services and the hymn-singing and the preaching were something everyone could join in, and finally they called on Lester as a man whose soul had been stirred, and Lester rose his platform seat and, to everyone’s delight, recited a whole series of Drummond’s so-called habitant verses. He did them well too for he had a fine voice and a dramatic flair.

He brought down the house for the greater glory of God. Nor is this written sarcastically. There are many ways of giving testimony, and a hockey player who had those Drummond poems at his fingertips was bearing witness as best he could.

Ferguson said it was hard to tell how much Lester wanted to be there. He suspected Lester did it just to please his mother. “But this doesn’t matter much. It was a good thing to do, and it was done with simplicity and charm.”

Lester also recited habitant poems in February 1911 at a banquet of the Mountain Lumber Manufacturers Association at the Strathcona Hotel, one month before news broke of the sale of the Patrick Lumber Co. and plans for what became the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

Decades later, Lester could still rattle off the habitant verses when the mood suited. In the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix of Dec. 14, 1937, Mac Eggleston wrote: “Lester Patrick speaks French as well as English, but rarely admits it. His rendition of a famous French poem would put him on the stage.” 

In The Vancouver Sun of Feb. 22, 1958, Dick Beddoes also related a story that Frank Patrick told him: “They were born in Quebec and attended McGill University. One day a friend chided Frank. ‘Your brother Lester,’ the friend said, ‘sure speaks more French than you do.’ ‘Yes,’ Frank said. ‘And he speaks more English, too.’”