A manly sport
During the early 1900s in both Canada and the U.S., the sport of bowling was reserved for men. Thomas Ryan from Toronto is credited with opening the first bowling alley in Canada in 1905. He also gets credit for the invention of five-pin bowling. As bowling was considered a gentlemen’s sport, no women were allowed in Ryan’s establishment.
Only three years later, the Royal Bowling Alley opened in Medicine Hat in a brand-new brick building on South Railway Street. The proprietor was 24-year-old Vic Ready, originally from the Toronto area. Ready leased the first floor of the new building for the bowling alley and for a retail tobacco business which included designated smoking rooms for the maleonly patrons. In November 1911, Ready, having taken on a new venture as the co-owner of the recently built Monarch Theatre, sold his former business to two CPR railroad men, Robert Boyd and Charles Cooper.
In a lengthy article by the Medicine Hat News, Boyd and Cooper’s four-lane bowling alley was described as healthful and wholesome, encouraging “gentlemanly conduct and clean sportsmanship.” The surroundings were depicted as being “patronized by a class of men” who conducted themselves “properly.” The bowling alley was highly recommended as a place for “manly sport.”
In 1917, the bowling alleys were replaced by another male dominated sport at the time, billiards. The business, now known as Boyd and Reid, continued to operate as a billiard parlour and successful tobacco outlet. Tobacco products during this time of the Great War years were considered essential to the overseas troops. So essential, that the local Over Seas Club placed newspaper advertisements that headlined, “Tommy
Needs the Smokes,” encouraging readers to make a 25-cent donation to Canada’s Tobacco Fund. Boyd and Reid also ran ads promoting the sale of their tobacco products to be sent to the Front.
Boyd acquired Reid’s interest in the mid 1930s, and the entire building located at 222 South Railway Street became known as the Boyd Block, the tobacco business on the lower level, apartments above. In 1935, the original name was reworked into a new billiards operation, known as Royal Billiards.
Royal Billiards continued to operate at the South Railway Street location until 1978, over 40 years.
Thomas Ryan who did not patent his invention of five-pin bowling, now enjoyed internationally, never profited from his creation.