Second Take

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Champion City

If Winnipeg-based Farpoint Films’ Andrew Wall wasn’t a hockey historian before his latest project, he’s willing to say he’s at least an amateur one now.

For that matter, says the writer/director, "I think it’s time the city remembered" the subject of his second MTS Winnipeg Video on Demand documentary, Champion City: the 1896 Winnipeg Victorias. Wall determined to uncover the real story behind local legend —  that is, the capture of the Stanley Cup by a Winnipeg hockey club, over 100 years ago.

"It’s something that everyone in Winnipeg seems to know happened, even if they couldn’t tell you the details," says Wall, who himself discovered the actual record after stumbling through the Internet and Winnipeg Free Press archives. "There were traces all around, though, like the banners for the Winnipeg Victorias that used to hang in the old arena."

Indeed, before the Jets there was the Victorias, named for Canada’s one-time monarch, and which was the first Canadian hockey club from outside Montreal to claim the Stanley Cup. In a historic match — the 116th anniversary of which falls Feb. 13, the date of the doc’s public premiere — the Victorias won their sport’s most coveted prize from… the Montreal Victorias.

"The doc really is fun with regard to little details like that," Wall laughs. Certainly it was fun just on the level of realizing period accuracy, from the slicked-down hairstyles to the fashions in facial hair. "My one regret is that never managed to find a set of period skates that any of the actors could fit into."

Such arcane highlights express the doc’s overriding themes, Wall continues — that is, how much the game of hockey has changed from then to now, how it is in fact always evolving, and how the historic Victorias vs. Victorias challenge actually changed the way hockey was played.

To begin with, "the (Winnipeg) Victorias’ victory made the Cup a national championship," Wall says. "It really ‘woke up’ hockey teams and fans across Canada to the reality that there could be nationwide competition." (The Winnipeg Victorias would claim a second Stanley Cup championship in 1901.)

That’s the big picture. Equally interesting , however, are the various smaller points.

"The Winnipeg goalie, George ‘Whitey’ Merritt, may have been the first goalie to use pads," Wall says; certainly the first to play in a challenge cup game with them.

It’s precisely this sort of material Wall hopes will surprise and delight audiences as much as it did for him in the process of researching it. For that matter, there are dimensions to the story that lie directly on a straight line from two centuries back, to now.

"Winnipeg was considered ‘the wild and wooly west’ back then," Wall says. (By contrast, a historian in the doc relates how Manitobans characterized Ontarians and Quebecers as "effete Easterners.") "There was a complex on the part of Winnipeggers even then to not just prove they could play great hockey, but simply that they were ‘civilized.’

"I think there’s likely no Winnipegger who can’t relate to that."

Champion City: The Winnipeg Victorias 1896 will be available on MTS Winnipeg Video on Demand starting Feb. 14.