One hundred years ago this Friday, a twenty four year old industrialist, J Ambrose O'Brien, was turned down in his attempt to get a team into the Canadian Hockey Association. Outside the room in the old Windsor hotel, where the meetings were taking place, he met Jimmy Gardner. Jimmy, the manager of the Montreal Wanderers hockey team, was another spurned CHA suitor.
The two men got together and decided to form their own league, the NHA, or National Hockey Association. Ambrose bought the Renfrew Creamery Kings to play in the league. He owned the Cobalt Silver Kings and the Haileybury Comets and they became NHA teams as well. At the behest of Gardner he also started up a fourth team to be a rival for Gardner’s Wanderers.
The team Ambrose started was to be a french canadian rival for the Anglophone Montreal Wanderers. He recruited french canadian hockey players and called them Le Club de Hockey Canadien. So the Montreal Canadiens were born.
At the time many Francophone Quebecers referred to themselves as les habitants or settlers. The nickname became syno ...
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Article written by Scott Weldon