RUGBY’S ROOTS
The sport has a rich history in Cape Breton.
Last Saturday while in Ireland for Joe’s daughter’s wedding we went to the Guinness Pro 14 Rugby final in the gorgeous Aviva Stadium.
Hometown Leinster defeated a Welsh squad and the crowd of 46,000 went wild.
I understand the game and totally get rugby now.
Cape Breton Rugby had its origins close to the turn of the 20th century. Boys and men from various social strata played. Things changed during the First World War and our rugby became much more associated with the working class, in particular, coal miners.
Rugby reigned as one of the more popular sports in terms of participants and spectators up until the 1950s when Canadian rules football pushed it off the Cape Breton pitches. Today there’s a local resurgence.
In those robust rugby days of the 1920s and 1930s teams were usually made of young men who worked in the same mine. Many mines meant many teams. The most successful and legendary of them all was the Glace Bay Caledonia mine team. On Halloween,1929, the Caledonian team arrived at Montreal’s Windsor Hotel.
Roughly a week before, the coal mining contingent had tied a squad from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. In most other locales the best rugby teams were made of university students. UNB was considered a powerhouse in Eastern Canada and had won the McTier cup five years earlier.
The fan base of the Caledonia team was so big hundreds of fans crowded around the Union Street office of the Post newspaper from 4 p.m. until after eight awaiting results from New Brunswick. Women who worked the telephone exchanged were reputed to have answered over 500 rugby related calls that evening. After forty minutes overtime the game was called on account of darkness and Caledonia was set for the train ride to Montreal.
The day before the Montreal match the Caledonia team spent the afternoon practicing in a downpour. Afterwards they were guests of A.D. McTier, donor of the championship challenge cup for Eastern Canadian rugby supremacy. With no national rugby championship, the McTier cup champs were considered best in the land.
To increase rugby interest in Montreal more than 500 boys from five schools were in attendance at the game as guests of the McTier cup trustees. By game’s end these school lads had witnessed history. Caledonia defeated the Montreal squad 16:6. This would become the first of twelve McTier Cups they’d win, in addition to 12 consecutive maritime championship McCurdy Cups.
When the Caledonian mine
team arrived at the Sydney train station two days later more than 5,000 fans greeted them. A huge roar went up when the train pulled into the station. Four bands played in what was considered,
and still may be today, one of the biggest turnouts for a sport-related event in Cape Breton.
When coach John MacCarthy stepped off the train it was said cheers were heard miles away. Five hundred cars were parked around the station and 400 drove in the victory parade.
It’s been told that at the reception before the Montreal game, McTier asked J.W. “Toots” Boutilier what university he graduated from. Boutilier replied, “Did you ever hear of Dinn’s College?” McTier didn’t.
“Well, I hold a past master’s degree in the art of pan-shovelling coal from that institution,” said Boutilier.
J.R. Dinn was the Caledonia mine manager. He started at the mine at 16 and through hard work, studying at night and good luck was made manager in 1921. Dinn said at the ceremony for the team, he knew and talked to the players, and their fathers who played before them, for 30 years. He was sure there wasn’t a happier man and a happier community in the world than himself and the people of the Caledonia area.
Judge L.D. Currie summed up the victory by saying, “It would have been no great thing for Montreal to have won last Saturday where they have millions to spend on athletics ... It was really a great thing for a bunch of boys from the oldest producing colliery of British Empire Steel to go to Montreal, the heart of the coal market and there beat the cream of Upper Canada’s rugby players.”
We also caught a hurling match in Wexford. Wexford defeated Dublin by two points in stoppage time.