"Talk About Strenuous Hockey": Violence, Manhood, and the 1907 Ottawa Silver Seven-Montreal Wanderer Rivalry

Abstract

This case study of violence and masculinity in Canadian hockey examines newspaper reports of matches involving the Ottawa Silver Seven and the Montreal Wanderers during the 1907 season. It analyzes media narratives of rough and aggressive hockey in relation to gender and class identities in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Canada. Newspapers created hockey narratives that combined elements of "brutal butchery" and "strenuous spectacle." These narratives spoke to different ways of experiencing and enjoying hockey, to tensions within public perceptions of the sport, and to a wider ambivalence about violence in the game. Depictions of "brutal butchery" combined outrage and fascination; accounts of "strenuous spectacle" portrayed violence as part of an absorbing, aggressive, masculine display. Ideals of respectable, middle-class masculinity and rough, working-class masculinity co-existed within accounts of fast, skilled, rugged, hard-hitting hockey. The danger, physicality, and competitiveness of "strenuous hockey" also cultivated and reinforced standards of passionate manhood and primitive masculinity during this time period. By evaluating key issues surrounding violence, gender, and class in early hockey, this article addresses important gaps in the study of Canadian sport history and the analysis of hockey and Canadian popular culture. In particular, it begins to answer the need for careful, focussed case studies that examine hockey violence in a historical context.