PCHA All-Stars tour the Kootenay-Boundary, 1916

Pacific Coast Hockey Association players took part in several all-star exhibition games in 1915 and 1916, but one tour has been completely forgotten. It took players to the Kootenay-Boundary district of British Columbia’s interior, including the city where Lester and Frank Patrick lived prior to starting the league, although the Patricks didn't take part themselves.

The games occurred on four consecutive nights in March 1916 against each town’s established senior men’s club.

At the time, Portland was getting ready to become the first American-based team to play for the Stanley Cup, in a series in Montreal against the Canadiens. (Spoiler alert: Montreal won the first of their 24 cups.) Therefore Portland didn’t provide any players to the all-star team.

The other three PCHA clubs — Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle — each contributed a few. For some reason, more were from Seattle than the others, so newspaper coverage sometimes just referred to the All-Stars as Seattle. (Perhaps the team wore Seattle uniforms? None of the coverage commented on this point, and no photos are known to exist of the series.)

Several players initially announced as taking part did not do so, namely Ed Carpenter, Frank Foysten, and Jack Walker from Seattle, along with Lloyd Cook from Vancouver. Those who did make the journey were Bernie Morris, Roy Rickey, Bobby Rowe, and Cully Wilson (Seattle); Hugh Lehman and Mickey MacKay (Vancouver); and Sibby Nichols (Victoria).

How starry were the All-Stars? Morris and MacKay were legitimately among the top players in the league. Morris was second in scoring in the PCHA that season, behind Cyclone Taylor. Lehman also had an outstanding career, although he was only the third-best goalie in the league in 1915-16. Cully Wilson (along with Morris, Rowe, and Rickey) would be part of the 1917 Seattle team that won the Stanley Cup. A week prior to the exhibition tour of BC, Wilson had scored eight goals in another exhibition game between Seattle and Portland.

The PCHA was still using a seven-man game in those days with a rover. The All-Stars didn’t bring any spares, so they all played every minute of every game. It doesn’t appear they brought a coach with them either.

March 8: All-Stars 8, Nelson 4

The series began in Nelson, on the West Arm of Kootenay Lake, and took place in the Hall Mines rink, which the Patricks helped finance, build, and operate. In 1909, they led the local senior men’s team to the 1909 provincial championship.

The match, organized on short notice, was originally supposed to take place one night earlier, but was postponed because the PCHA All-Stars first played in Portland against the league champions. They won 6-3.

The Nelson Daily News promised a “stellar aggregation of puck chasers.” Over 2,000 spectators were present, which made it one of the best-attended games in the city’s history. Admission was 50 cents and 75 cents.

Among those in the Nelson line-up were the Bishop brothers, Harry (goal) and Archie (point), who had both played with the Patricks on the aforementioned 1909 team. In fact, Archie (pictured) captained that team. He was involved in arranging the game against the All-Stars and perhaps the whole tour. There was talk in August 1914 that Archie would try out for Victoria of the PCHA but it didn’t happen. As for Harry, Frank Patrick later said he was “good enough to have made professional company had he cared to make the jump.”

One player on the Nelson roster did go on to appear in the PCHA: Albert (Dooley) Dieldal, who scored one goal in 20 regular season games with Victoria in 1922-23. He also appeared in two playoff games with no points.

The Daily News offered virtually play-by-play coverage of the game, yet didn’t bother to identify the last four goal scorers! The ones they did mention for the All-Stars were MacKay, Wilson, Nichols, Morris, and Wilson. Responding for Nelson were Archie Bishop, Freddie Grant (assisted by Dieldal), and Paddy McDonough.

For all of the column inches the newspaper devoted to the game, the only other interesting thing it revealed was that in the second period, Dieldal fired a shot that bounced off Lehman’s glove and landed in his sweater. Both players “hunted hopelessly” for the puck until it was finally discovered.

Hotel arrivals listed in the newspaper show at least five All-Stars stayed at the Hume Hotel, which is still in business. Only Lehman and Rowe were unaccounted for.

The Trail Fruit Fair building. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

March 9: All-Stars 8, Trail 3

The next stop was the smelter city of Trail, about 43 miles (70 km) south of Nelson, along the Columbia River. The game took place in the Fruit Fair building, built in 1912, before a crowd of about 500, including delegates from the Western Federation of Miners.

Speed Moynes opened the scoring for Trail at the six minute mark of the first period. (Moynes would go on to play 18 games for the Vancouver Millionaires in 1917-18 and score five goals.)

Trail then took a 2-0 lead on a goal by Snyder before Sibby Nichols replied. Trail escaped the first period leading 2-1. In the second, MacKay scored for the All-Stars in an end-to-end rush. Wilson added another before Haddock got one back for Trail. It was 3-3 after two.

Early in the third, Trail’s Snyder was hit in the nose and had to be carried from the ice. Oddly, even though Trail had a couple of spares, rather than insert one of them, Nichols went off for the All-Stars to even things up and the game continued five on five. MacKay scored and then Morris had a natural hat trick. The eighth goal scorer was not identified. Archie Bishop was the judge of play and Harry Wright, a friend of the Patrick family, was the timekeeper.

Rossland Miner, March 10, 1916. The ad promoted Jack Walker, inventor of the hook check, but he didn’t end up being part of the tour.

March 10: All-Stars 3, Rossland 1

The third game on the tour was held in the mining town of Rossland, which was nearby but at a much higher elevation. A “good-sized audience” came to the Rossland Arena, where admission was 50 cents. Despite the loss, the Rossland Miner felt the game demonstrated the city’s team was “the class of the West Kootenay.”

Rossland’s lineup included Johnny Matz, a former teammate of Mickey MacKay’s in nearby Grand Forks, which was part of the Boundary league, which funneled several players to the PCHA. (Matz had scored a goal in his lone game for the Vancouver Millionaires in 1914-15 and would go on to play for Edmonton and Saskatoon in the Western Canada Hockey League as well as the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL.)

On this evening, Wilson, Morris, and Ricky scored for the All-Stars while Charlie Taylor replied for Rossland. The All-Stars stayed at the Allan Hotel on Columbia Avenue, a local landmark until it burned down in 1978.

Phoenix rink interior, circa 1914. (Boundary Museum and Archives 1987-033-001)

March 11: All-Stars 5, Phoenix 3

The All-Stars, who would have been travelling by train, then headed west about 90 miles (144 km) to the mining town of Phoenix, which had an elevation even higher than Rossland. It was here that Bernie Morris had led the locals to a Boundary league championship in 1913.

The game took place before “a crowded house” at the Phoenix arena. Scoring for the All-Stars: Wilson (assisted by Morris and MacKay), Wilson again, Rickey, Nicholls (assisted by Morris), and Morris. “The spectators still admire Barney [sic] Morris’ style of playing,” the Phoenix Pioneer wrote. Scoring for Phoenix were Bassett, Shore, and Treherne. Shore may have scored twice; the newspaper game’s description indicated as much, but it gave a final score of 5-3.

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What to make of the series overall, then?

All four home teams lost, but Nelson scored the most goals, Rossland allowed the fewest, and Rossland and Phoenix had the best goal differential (minus-2). Overall, the All-Stars outscored the opposition 24-11.

The All-Stars used their Kootenay-Boundary tour as a tune-up for a three-game exhibition series that took place in San Francisco a few weeks later against the newly crowned Stanley Cup-champion Montreal Canadiens. The All-Stars won the middle game 5-2 but lost the opener and closer 5-4 and 6-2.

What happened to the venues:

• Nelson’s Hall Mines rink was torn down in 1935. Its replacement on a different site, the Civic Centre, still stands but is now a secondary ice surface to a newer rink that opened next door in 2005.

• Trail’s Fruit Fair building was torn down in 1950, after the new Cominco Arena opened. This rink, home to the Trail Smoke Eaters, recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and is in terrific shape

• When Phoenix’s mines closed around 1919, the city swiftly descended into a ghost town. The company that owned the rink decided to sell it for salvage and put the proceeds towards a memorial for the city’s fallen soldiers. Sadly, the demolition itself in 1920 claimed a life when the building collapsed on a seven-year-old boy. The rink sale raised enough to pay for the cenotaph, which is still there, although not in its original location.

• Rossland’s rink, which until 1917 was home to an annual winter carnival that crowned men’s and women’s provincial hockey championships, was torn down in 1948. A replacement is still operating.

Updated on Jan. 27, 2025 with more details about Archie Bishop and Dooley Dieldal.