Frank Calder

Early Life and Career

Frank Calder was born to Scottish parents in Bristol, England. His father was a physician. Calder’s desire to see the world led him to flip a coin to choose between Canada and Newfoundland, at the time a British colony. By 1900, he was a teaching master at Abingdon School, a private, English-language preparatory school in Montreal.

Calder married Amelia Cope, an English immigrant who had been born near Bristol. They had three sons (Frank Jr., John, Thomas) and a daughter (Edith).

Calder arrived in Canada knowledgeable about the popular British sports of soccer, rugby and cricket. As a young man, he played soccer and cricket for Montreal Amateur Athletic Association teams. He also took up golf and handball. He helped establish an interschool rugby league in Montreal and later served as a treasurer for the provincial soccer association. He immersed himself in the relatively new sport of ice hockey so that he could teach it to his pupils.

In 1907, Calder became a newspaperman. He began working as a sports editor with the Daily Witness, a position he later held with the more influential Montreal Herald. He built a reputation for fearlessness by condemning fixes in professional wrestling matches and exposing poor conditions at horse-racing tracks.

Hockey Executive

On 15 November 1914, Calder was elected secretary-treasurer of the National Hockey Association, a professional circuit with six teams in Ontario and Quebec. (See The Birth of the National Hockey League.) His candidacy was promoted by George Kennedy, owner of the Montreal Canadiens. The NHA, which instituted six-man hockey by eliminating the rover position, had a troubled history. Competition with rival leagues, the loss of players to military service during the First World War and squabbles among the owners all made the league’s future uncertain. (See also Jack “Doc” Gibson.)

Matters came to a head three years after Calder joined the executive. To be rid of E.J. (Eddie) Livingstone, nettlesome owner of a Toronto franchise, the other owners decided to form a new circuit to be known as the National Hockey League. It was formed at a meeting in a room at Montreal’s Windsor Hotel on 22 November 1917. Calder was elected president and secretary.

The new league had four teams — the Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Hockey Club (also called the Blues or Blue Shirts, and known as the Toronto Arenas during the 1918–19 season).

The league’s first season was rocky. The Wanderers were outclassed by the other teams. The owner made demands for better players. Then, on 2 January 1918, the Westmount Arena burned down, leaving the Canadiens and Wanderers homeless. The Wanderers’ unhappy owner withdrew his team. The Canadiens moved into the smaller Jubilee Rink. The league hobbled to the conclusion of its first season with only three teams.

The Toronto franchise folded near the conclusion of the second NHL season, so Calder cancelled the final two scheduled games. The Canadiens then defeated the Senators in five games in a best-of-seven series, winning the right to travel west to face the Pacific Coast Hockey Association champion Seattle Metropolitans for the Stanley Cup. After five games, the series was suspended and never completed as an outbreak of the Spanish influenza among the players made it impossible to continue. Joe Hall of the Canadiens died in Seattle.

Those two turbulent seasons did not augur well for the future of the NHL. The league survived, largely due to Calder’s steadfastness as he thwarted rival leagues. Crowds grew after the end of the First World War. The 1920s were a booming decade of expansion. The Montreal Maroons joined the league for the 1924–25 season, playing out of the new Montreal Forum. The Boston Bruins were also added that season as the NHL’s first American team. By the end of the decade, the NHL had 10 teams. Meanwhile, the collapse of major professional hockey in Western Canada left the NHL in command of the Stanley Cup, essentially ending its era as a challenge trophy.

The effects of the Depression were soon felt by the league. The Ottawa franchise moved to St. Louis before folding. The Pittsburgh team moved to Philadelphia for one season before ceasing operations in 1931. The Maroons suspended operations in 1938, never to return. The New York Americans did the same at the end of the 1941–42 season, leaving just six teams in operation — Canadiens, Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs. These would later be referred to as the Original Six.

As if financial woes were not enough of a struggle, the league also suffered the sudden deaths of star players Charlie Gardiner, from a brain hemorrhage at age 29 in 1934, and Howie Morenz, from complications stemming from a broken leg at age 34 in 1937.

As league president, Calder played a key role in breaking the players’ strike conducted by the Hamilton Tigers before the start of the 1925 playoffs. Another notable event in his tenure was the suspension of Boston’s Eddie Shore for 16 games for assaulting Toronto’s Irvine “Ace” Bailey in a game on 12 December 1933. Bailey nearly died after striking his head on the ice and never played again. A benefit game held on the following Valentine’s Day in Toronto raised money for Bailey and is seen now as a precursor to the annual NHL All-Star Game.

The outbreak of war in Europe just before the start of the 1939–40 season led to a drain of players, as many signed up in the following seasons for service in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Death

On 25 January 1943, Calder suffered a heart attack during an NHL meeting in Toronto. He was rushed to hospital. He recovered enough to be transferred to a Montreal hospital where, on the morning of 4 February, he ate breakfast surrounded by his family in his room at Montreal General Hospital. He died shortly afterwards.

Though Calder had been much criticized as president, his unexpected death led to a re-evaluation of what he had achieved in guiding the NHL to a dominant place in professional hockey. “It is to the everlasting credit of Mr. Calder that for 25 years he managed to placate the quarrelsome moguls and guided the league with wisdom and impartiality,” the columnist Jim Coleman wrote.

Calder Memorial Trophy

At the end of the 1933 season, Calder named Carl Voss the NHL’s rookie of the year, the start of an annual tradition. Four years later, Calder purchased a trophy to present to top rookie Syl Apps, which the player was allowed to keep. After Calder’s death in February 1943, the award was renamed the Calder Memorial Trophy. It has since been presented to some of the greatest players in hockey history, including Terry Sawchuk, Bobby Orr, Ken Dryden and Mario Lemieux.

Calder Cup

The professional American Hockey League, which now comprises teams that function as the minor league affiliates of NHL teams, named its championship trophy the Calder Cup, in honour of Frank Calder. It was first presented in 1937.

Honours

Calder was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Builder category in 1947. He was inducted posthumously into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.