History
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The FAHL was formed December 5, 1903, at a meeting held at the Savoy hotel in Montreal.
The first executive officers were:
- President: William Foran, Ottawa Capitals
- Vice-president: W. Fitzgibbon, Cornwall
- Second vice-president: A. Meunier, Nationals
- Secretary-treasurer: J. Strachan, Wanderers.
The first franchises were granted to the Wanderers, the Capitals, Cornwall and Le National. Three of the four teams had been rejected for membership by the Canadian Amateur Hockey League (CAHL), while the fourth – the Montreal Wanderers – was composed of disillusioned players from two Montreal-based CAHL teams. Montreal Le National, a francophone athletic organization, which also operated a lacrosse club, had operated an intermediate team in the CAHL. Only the Cornwall team would be a member for the FAHL's entire six seasons of play.
The league adopted the constitution of the CAHL, except that new teams could join on a majority vote, unlike the unanimity required by the CAHL; and that any players who played in another league would be permanently suspended from play in the FAHL. Games in Montreal would be played on week-nights – at the Montagnard and Victoria rinks – to not conflict with the Saturday games of the CAHL.
The inaugural 1904 season ended on February 24. Montreal Le National jumped to the CAHL, while the CAHL's Stanley Cup champion Ottawa Hockey Club (HC) jumped to the FAHL, immediately (March 2) defending the Stanley Cup and taking the one week old FAHL league championship away from the regular season champion Wanderers.
The Ottawa HC would repeat as FAHL champion, and retain the Stanley Cup, in the 1904-05 season, before moving (with the Cup) to the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA, later ECHA) for the 1905-06 season.
The 1906-07 season ended early following the death of Owen McCourt of Cornwall, after an on-ice brawl in a game March 6, 1907 between Cornwall and the Ottawa Victorias. This led to criminal charges of manslaughter against Charles Masson of the Victorias, who was acquitted when witnesses at the trial stated that other Ottawa hockey players had hit Mr. McCourt in the head prior to Mr. Masson's blow.
The 1908 season saw the Federal League return with only three teams, all professional. Brockville, unable to field a competitive team, hired the Renfrew Creamery Kings club to play as the Brockville entry. This was unacceptable to the Ottawa Victorias, which refused to play the Renfrew players, causing the league to suspend operations.
The final season, 1909, saw the Renfrew Creamery Kings become a full member of the league. Ottawa's new entry, officially called the Senators, was organized by players who resigned from the ECHA's (and former FAHL) Ottawa "Senators/Silver Seven" HC.
The league dissolved in 1909, with only Renfrew continuing professional play when the team joined the National Hockey Association.
Read more about this topic: Federal Amateur Hockey League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)