Newfoundlanders at war in 1915 played hockey in Scotland
Regimental soldiers beat team of Canadian students 14-0
One hundred years ago, Newfoundlanders gathered on a skating rink in Scotland and, in a shutout game of 14–0, won against a team of Canadians.
The First World War began in August 1914 for Canada. One year later, in Edinburgh, Scotland, soldiers from the Newfoundland Regiment gathered on an artificial skating rink to face off against fellow Canadians who were students attending university in Scotland.
“There is a section where Frost recounts a game, I think it was in Edinburgh, (Scotland), which would put it in the first year of the war,” said Ed Roberts, editor of “A Blue Puttee at War,” which was written by Sydney Frost.
“It was a surprise to many of us that Edinburgh possessed an artificial ice rink,” is the excerpt in the book that starts off the story about the game on an ice rink surrounded by a tea garden.
Men and women used the ice rink for waltzing, dancing and skating, and Newfoundland officers were invited to participate whenever they pleased.
The rink had no sideboards or screens, so it was not suitable for a hockey game. But a group of hockey enthusiasts from Frost’s regiment decided to break in the rink with a game of hockey.
On March 20, 1915, a team of Canadians was organized from Canadian students attending Edinburgh University. They played against a team made up from Frost’s battalion.
The lack of boards and screens didn’t hinder the teams much, as stiff body checking just meant the players would end up falling over and into the surrounding plants.
A statue of Venus de Milo, which stood nearby, would be the start of a rumour along the “less classically minded troops” that the reason for her armless appearance was a result of being hit by a flying Newfoundland puck.
“The real loser, however, appeared to have been the tea garden which by the end of the game had been pretty well reduced to shambles,” Roberts read in an excerpt from “A Blue Puttee at War.”
“This story tells me that the young men that were there, Newfoundlanders and Canadians, were like other young men anywhere in the world. The Newfoundlanders were soldiers, the Canadians at that stage were students and many would’ve ended up in the war fighting, of course,” said Roberts. “Here’s a bunch of young men, they were in Scotland and somebody organized a hockey game and they had a whale of a time.”