The 1961 Senior High School Semis

The 1957 United Funds Football Tournament: Fisher Park 22, Toronto Bathurst Heights 15

Well, son of a bitch, Ottawa actually brought in one of these at some point and has Fisher Park to thank for it.

Having taken some time to give a longer look at the first Panda Game in 1955 earlier today, I thought I'd move ahead with this tournament. Since the next one to cover was 1957's and I was in the neighborhood, so to speak, I took a few minutes to glance at its results. I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

Ottawa schools have a history of success at this football exhibition; they usually defeat the opponent presented to them in fairly convincing manner.

However, the trophy was normally handed off to another team that also won its game that weekend so seeing it handed over to an Ottawa rep was a bit of a shock. I suspect the dramatic fashion in which the game was won played a significant factor. Good for Fisher. 

The 1955 Red Feather Tournament: St. Patrick's 27, East York 01

In 1954, some complained when St. Patrick's did not get an opportunity to play Nepean for the right to represent the region in Toronto in the annual Red Feather Tournament.

In 1955, things fell into place a little more nicely. St. Patrick's opened the season with a couple of wins  and it just so happened that they were going to play another undefeated team a few days prior to the tournament representative being chosen. That team was Fisher Park, and though St. Pat's only won by a score of 01-00, it was enough to perceive them as worthy of being our flag-bearers, so to speak, and to make the trip to Toronto. 

St. Patrick's actually had one more game at home to settle prior to making the trip and it turned out to be against the previous year's "controversial" Red Feather Tournament participant, Nepean.  Referred to as a "tune up" match, St. Patrick's won that game as well, with a more convincing score of 13-00.

Their selection thus further justified, the following St. Pat's team headed for Toronto.

The trip alone was something of an adventure. 

Undaunted by a near-tragedy, the kids dominated their opposition...

...And yet were not recognized as tournament champions. Bloor is mentioned in the article above because they were given that honour, partially based on a 28-00 victory against a school from Timmins.

And so again an Ottawa rep excels at the tourney but the prize is awarded to another club. St. Patrick's didn't appear to be too broken up about it, however; they went on to successfully defend their 1954 senior championship and in doing so, extend their undefeated streak to 17 games.

1953 Red Feather Tournament: Fisher Park 34, Alliston Memorial 00

Recent posts about the National Capital Bowl brought the Red Feather Tournament to mind so we'll take another step forward with recording that event's history.

Fisher Park represented the area that year and based on the score, did so handsomely. It should be pointed out that Alliston was a replacement participant. A team from Oshawa was supposed to attend but were disqualified from doing so due to a rules violation.

Despite the lopsided score, Fisher did not take the trophy home. Perhaps Alliston being a substitute participant played a part in that. Here's how the Fisher Park Boys performed, regardless.

Parity At Its Finest

We recently had a look a Ottawa Tech's streak of success in high school football in the late 40s and 1950. An unusual thing happened a few seasons later.

Two-game, total points playoff series were not unusual. They were the preferred method of determining supremacy in several leagues, at different levels, during the game's formative years.

In most cases, it was by choice. In Ottawa high school football in the early 50s, it was by necessity.

In 1953, St. Patrick and Fisher Park met for the city championship but that game ended up in a scoreless tie.

The second meeting actually took place the following Saturday (as opposed to Wednesday, suggested above) and the "scarlet and white" of Fisher Park took it 17-00. It was the school's first championship in only its second season playing at the senior level.

The two teams would again meet in the finals in 1954. That time, they would tie 7-7, forcing another game to be played for the second consecutive year. The return match would result in a shut out again, but with reversed roles; it was 12-00 in favour of St. Patrick.

Glebe got into the mix in 1955 but St. Patrick was in no hurry to give up its spot. This was reflected in a another scoreless tie in the final. In the return encounter, St. Patrick would defeat Glebe 11-10 in overtime to defend its crown.

So three city finals in a row had to be played a second time and the third one of them went into overtime. Crazy.

It's funny to read reports about these games today and sense the frustration around how difficult it was to name a champion. One writer at the time even suggested that this whole "sudden death" system was just not working and we'd need to go back to a scheduled two-game series.

Whither the Perley Trophy?

It is often the case that researching one subject will unexpectedly reveal some tiny detail which propels me onto my next search.

Yesterday, in the midst of writing the post about Ottawa Tech's late 40s/early 50s dominance, I came across the following portion of an article. It was written following Tech being toppled from the high school football throne by Glebe in 1951.

It was?

In a standard search for "Perley Trophy", I found an article by Martin Cleary for the Citizen from March of 2007. Someone else was searching for the trophy 13 years ago, a couple of decades after it was last handed out.

The article directed readers to a website which is no longer operational. It also included the following image.

This search also came up in an article by Rob Brodie for canoe.com in April 2007. It included something of an update on Mr. MacRea's "quest".

The search for the old trophy, which has a history that dates back to the 1930s, has been frustrating. MacRae...says he's "hit dead end after dead end," but isn't giving up yet. 

"I'm hoping," he said. "I don't know what will happen. It's a real nice trophy, almost the size of the Grey Cup, about three feet high." 

MacRae said if his quest comes up empty, "without a doubt" the current championship trophy will be rededicated to honour Graham and Wills. But he clearly hopes it doesn't come to that.

Then come November 2007, at least that much was confirmed in an uncredited story in the Citizen.

St. Mark will face Sir Wilfrid Laurier Lancers in the championship game on the Minto Sports Field at the Nepean Sportsplex. Game time is 7 p.m. It will be a battle of undefeated teams as the Lions and Lancers are 8-0 this year. 

This will be the 80th Ottawa high school senior football championship and the first one to present the inaugural Bob Wills and Ron Graham Cup to the winning team. The championship trophy has undergone a complete makeover, courtesy of an interested alumni group from the former Laurentian High School headed by Bud MacRae, who is a teacher at Bell High School. The new trophy is named after Bob Wills and Ron Graham, who coached at Laurentian for a quarter century and produced many successful teams.

So was the cup ever found? I would think that if it had been, it would have been a bigger part of the story in 2007.

I'm curious as to the Perley Trophy's story now because for as much as I've read about high school football in Ottawa, the name of the trophy didn't ring any bells.

I think that's a matter of the trophy being handed out well after the season, at least in some cases, rather than immediately after the game. This image appeared in the Citizen on December 10th, 1954, a couple of weeks after the championship was actually won.

Complicating matters, searches reveal a trophy of the same name being awarded to local baseball  and hockey teams and even women's curling champions. Also, the awarding of the trophy was not always reported in the sports section. It occasionally made its way into the local news instead. As a result, tracking it becomes quite tricky.

What we do know is that the trophy did come into play in 1931 but the first article above stating that it was intended to be used to recognize the winner of the Riders/Rangers game appears to be the accurate one. The first such game was played on November 11th, 1931.

In an article from the day before the game, Perley is referred to as a "well-known member of the Rough Riders executive". I believe he was later a Central Ward councilman.

I can not seem to locate other instances of the trophy serving to recognize a Riders/Rangers winner, but it pops up in a list of hardware handed out at an event at Ottawa Tech in 1937. Again, this is consistent with what is stated in the first article above.

After that, it is mentioned periodically, mostly in articles relating to a school event in which a number of trophies and awards are handed out. The last picture of it I've come across is from 1969...

...and the last significant mention of it, until Mr. Cleary's 2007 article, is from 1972 when St. Patrick and Fisher Park were forced to "share" the trophy as a result of their championship contest ending in a tie.

And that may be why the trophy went dormant, for lack of a better term. In 1973, for the first time, the city champion was determined by having the respective winners of the Ottawa and Carleton school boards meet. Perhaps a new playoff structure resulted in a new trophy being handed out. This 1978 celebration photo certainly seems to support the theory.

Whatever the case may be, I'm interested in its prior use as a "bragging rights" award between the Rough Riders and Rangers, similar to Pedro for the Panda Game between Ottawa U. and Carleton or the Old Boys Cup between Ashbury and Bishop's years ago. I hope to come across those results at some point.

Bud MacRae, by the way, is responsible for creating a list of high school champions dating back to 1927 that I used first for the Capital Region Football website I ran a few years ago then as the "skeleton" for the high school page on this site.

I've never met him; the list was given to me second-hand, but I've always hoped that he's seen me express my gratitude for that list. It was an invaluable starting point in tracking the history of football at that level in the region.

The Lost High School Championship

I came across something of an oddity while filling gaps in my high school football page earlier today.

In 1971, the Rideau Rams defeated St. Patrick 10-07 for the senior high school football crown. The recap of that game makes reference to the Ottawa High Schools Athletic Association (or OHSAA). So far so good.

Then in 1972, the Carleton school board fielded a competitive football league at the senior level.  A recap of St. Pius' win over Merivale in the final claimed that it was the first such game.

By all accounts at least some of the team (St. Pius for certain, as they were said to be winless the season before) had been playing for some time but I believe that was at the intermediate level (17 and under). They were now working under a junior/senior system so on that basis, this was indeed the first senior championship for the school board. Okay, fair enough, we've got that ironed out.

St. Pius would continue to roll in 1973. They knocked off Merivale again in the Carleton board finals then met the OHSAA champ Hillcrest and defeated them 33-07. This was the first time that champions from both school boards would meet head-to-head to determine a city champion.

St. Pius' Dave Behm, uncredited photo from the Nov. 10th, 1973, Ottawa Journal

All right, so that all makes sense, except...What happened to the OHSAA in 1972? Any record I find of past high school champions names only St. Pius. Why is the first-ever Carleton board champion St. Pius team generally regarded as the city champion if the two boards didn't play head-to-head until 1973? Why is there no OHSAA title recognized?

There was indeed an OHSAA champion. In fact, there were two.

The second was in 1954. Milton is making it sound like it happens every other day but at this point it hadn't happened in nearly 20 years. They first met in 1952 and their last meeting prior to this one was in 1959.

So while St. Pius is generally recognized as the 1972 high school champions, they are actually one of three champions that year. Rather than recognize St. Pat's and Fisher Park as co-champions, it appears as though history has deemed that a true OHSAA champion was never named. That's actually not the case so I'll add that championship for both teams on the High School page above.

Fisher Park would secure another title in 1977. That shared championship in 1972 would be St. Patrick's last so it really should be recognized.