Early Ice Sports in St. Thomas by Pete Sheridan

In the autumn of 1865, 150 years ago, a lot at Wellington and Queen Streets in St. Thomas, just opposite the Elgin County Courthouse, was being prepared for the winter. The land was being levelled, a well was being sunk, and a shed to house the pump was being built. As soon as the weather was right, this would become the new rink of the St. Thomas Skating Club.

Read the entire article below or in Relish Elgin Holiday 2015. 

Skating was not a new activity for the area. The winters of the nineteenth century were cold. Ice was not only possible, it was inevitable. The mill ponds and flood plains that surrounded the western edge of St. Thomas were natural playgrounds for the winter sports lover. Just as today, these natural rinks held danger. Two years before the construction of the Queen Street Rink, a young boy of 13, Richard Hutchinson, son of Hutchinson House proprietor William Hutchinson fell through the ice while skating. He would die two days later. The newspaper report of the time urges boys of St. Thomas to take care while skating.
 
In 1877 the Curling Club was established. They would join with the Skating Club to build a new rink on the northeast corner of Metcalfe and Centre Streets. This site would remain the most important ice surface in the City for the next seventy-seven years.
 
Demand for ice time grew and soon privately operated rinks were on John Street, Catherine Street (now St. Catherine Street), The Gravel Road (now Sunset Drive), and anywhere else an expanse of frozen water would allow the locals to skate or slide a rock.

Top left: The RCAF-T.T.S. Hockey Team vs. the Fingal Bombers (probably representing the Fingal Bombing and Gunnery School) in the Granite Arena, St. Thomas, circa 1944 (Elgin County Archives, Scott Studio Fonds). Top right: an unidentified girls' hockey team in the Granite Arena, St. Thomas, circa 1900 (Elgin County Archives, C.W. Ellis Fonds). Top right: Granite Curling rink, St. Thomas circa (1906?).

By 1880 the management of the Metcalfe arena was handed over to the St. Thomas Curling and Skating Rink Company. Both the skaters and the curlers desired their own ice surfaces; eventually the curlers would retreat across Elgin Street, to become the winter occupants of the Roller Skating Rink.
 
In 1893 the first indoor ice surface was built at the Metcalfe site. It would be named the Granite Arena and arrived just in time for the new winter religion: Hockey.
 
By the early 1890s Canada was in the grip of a hockey mania from which it has never fully recovered. The Ontario Hockey Association was formed in 1890. St. Thomas joined in the competition for the league's second season in 1892-93. We played in a group with London, Stafford, Ayr, Galt, and Berlin (now Kitchener). 1893 was the first year for the Stanley Cup, then known as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. The challenge rules had not been set by the start of the 1893 season, but in theory, the St. Thomas team could have been eligible to challenge for the Cup if they had won the OHA Championship. Unfortunately they placed last in their group, a feat they managed to repeat the next year losing two games to London, 12-2 and 9-2. This would be the end of St. Thomas' involvement in Senior hockey competition for seventy five years.
 
Soon the OHA added junior and intermediate divisions. St. Thomas entered these leagues with mixed results. The lack of victories did not stop the growth of the game. A small city league played for local glory. Teams from St. Thomas Collegiate, the MCR Railway, and even the Bankers gathered on Friday nights at the Granite Arena. The City League was a popular entertainment. The league received $100 annually in exchange for the Rink Co. collecting the gate.
 
By the turn of the Twentieth Century the Granite arena was feeling cramped. Plans were made to replace the ageing Granite.
 
On January 1, 1906 the new Granite arena was opened with a masquerade carnival. Over thirteen hundred people turned out to skate, over 400 in costume. Skating fever swept St. Thomas. Merchants offered the lowest prices in “skating boots” and skating scarves were advertised as the “fad of the season”.
 
Hockey and Curling tournaments were held at the new facility attracting teams from Detroit, Toronto, Toledo and Buffalo. The Arena's proximity to the Grand Central Hotel provided one of the necessities of recreational hockey and curling: easy access to a bar. The new Granite Arena would serve St. Thomas for the next half century.
 
The 1930s saw a series of warm winters. The natural ice of the Granite was unreliable, and activity at the old arena decreased. By 1939 the St. Thomas Curling Club folded due to lack of ice after sixty two years. In Hockey, the entire home schedule of the 1931-32 OHA season was cancelled due to lack of ice.
 
In the late 1940s the Granite saw hockey played on roller skates with the St. Thomas Pill Pushers, sponsored by Small's Drug Store.
 
With the opening of the Memorial Arena in 1954 artificial ice came to St. Thomas. The Granite Arena was torn down. The new arena brought hockey success. The old arena and outdoor rinks are now largely forgotten, but they can easily be recalled or imagined when we walk down a winter street under the streetlights and the stars, and remember when we were young.
 
Pete Sheridan is a local historian and president of the Elgin Historical Society (EHS). He created and maintains the EHS website and has added and/or created a substantial amount of content for the site, including several videos, making it an invaluable resource. The EHS Annual Sports Night, Wed Nov 25th, 2015 will feature aspects of St. Thomas’ century plus love of hockey. The meeting will be held at the Memorial Arena Auditorium, 7:30pm and all are welcome to attend.