The tennis legend who idolized Lester Patrick
- Greg Nesteroff
- Jan 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 24
When Frederick Edwards wrote about the Patricks for the Feb. 15, 1936 edition of Macleans magazine, he noted that during the family’s time in Nelson, BC, between 1907 and 1911, Lester Patrick “became a local hero and the idol of the small boys, who followed him, pop-eyed, up and down the streets.”
One of Nelson’s leading citizens, a real old-timer, was named Wright. One fine winter day Citizen Wright stopped Lester abruptly, to speak harshly as follows:
“See here, young Patrick. I’m getting good and sick of this. I didn’t mind that kid of mine coming home and yelping that he wants a sweater like Lester Patrick’s. I got it for him. Next he wants a hockey stick like Lester Patrick’s. Well, I got him that, too. But I’ll be dad burned and eternally hornswoggled if I’m going to stand for him saying he’s got to part his hair like Lester Patrick.”
The long Patrick forelock was famous in those days. The last time I talked to Dr. Jack Wright, ex-tennis champion and Canadian Davis Cup player, he was still wearing his hair in a modernized version of the Patrick part … That must have been one argument, anyway, that Jack Wright won from his dad.
(My New Year’s resolution is to use “dad burned and eternally hornswoggled” in a sentence at least three times per week.)
John Andrew Wright was born in 1901 either in Nelson (according to his birth registration) or nearby Trail (according to his obituary and death registration). He captured the Canadian Open singles titles in 1927, 1929, and 1931 and won the doubles title in 1923, 1925, 1929, and 1931. Wikipedia says he was ranked third in the world as of 1927, the highest tennis ranking by a Canadian before Milos Raonic in 2016.
Wright was posthumously inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame. He was voted in 1950 by newspaper editors as Canada’s top tennis player of the first half of the 20th century. Off the court, he was a medical doctor who served in the Royal Canadian Medical Corps during World War II and was assistant superintendent of Vancouver General Hospital.
Yet for all of that, he is not well remembered today in Nelson. Even when he died in 1949, age 47, after suffering some months from a circulatory ailment, the Nelson newspaper could only offer vaguely that he was “a resident of Nelson, for a time, years ago.”

Jack Wright, one of Canada’s greatest tennis players, is seen during Davis Cup play, circa 1930s. (Underwood and Underwood photo)
The anecdote about Wright driving his father crazy with Lester Patrick-worship is charming, and would be interesting enough if it ended there. But there’s more to the story. For it seems rather unlikely to have occurred as described for a few reasons.
For one, Jack’s father, Harry Wright, was hardly an old-timer considering that in 1910 he was all of 35! Second, Harry’s complaint to Lester must have been in jest, for Harry was closely associated with the Patricks.
Harry served as an insurance agent, mining recorder, assessor, government agent, and gold commissioner in Nelson before being elected to the provincial legislature in 1903 to represent the Ymir riding. He didn’t seek re-election in 1907 but then represented the Nelson riding from 1909-12 as a Conservative. In 1912, he ran as an “Independent Conservative” and lost in a landslide to the actual Conservative.

Harry was on the founding board of the Nelson Rink Ltd., incorporated in 1909 to run the new Hall Mines arena, built with considerable assistance from the Patricks. Joe Patrick was another director and Lester Patrick was the rink manager. Harry was an occasional timekeeper at the rink and served as president of the Nelson team that won the provincial championship in 1909. He is seen here on the team picture.
Harry was also on the board of the company that ran the rink in Victoria that the Patricks built in 1911 as part of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. (Other board members included Kootenay member of parliament Robert F. Green, and Dr. George A.B. Hall, Lester’s brother-in-law, who was Wright’s predecessor as the Nelson riding’s representative in the BC legislature.)
Furthermore, Harry Wright was said to have been a “prominent guest” at Lester’s wedding in Victoria in 1911.
Little is known of Wright’s life after 1912. He died in 1960 in Beaton, Ont.
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