Recently, this space recalled the history of Daylight Saving Time under the heading “Adding an hour”. It noted that Germany had been the first country to adopt it even though the idea was pioneered in England. A correspondent says that, had the year of the first time clock change not been 1916, he might have thought the initiative had come from Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1949-63). Good one! In fact, Londoner William Willet was the first to will it.

As the NHL season ends, this column now remembers a man whose name is widely known while he himself remains relatively unknown. When in 2004 the CBC asked listeners to select

the greatest Canadian”, the vote ranked Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston, sixth Governor General of Canada, 95th. We remember him chiefly for the Stanley Cup, both the original and the travelling facsimile.

Henri Richard, ‘the Pocket Rocket’, who hoisted eleven Stanley Cups, said that to do so was “the greatest feeling in the world”. Former NHL president Clarence Campbell said that “the history of pro hockey is that of the Stanley Cup”. It was, however, intended to be awarded within the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada which was founded in 1886. It is now awarded to professionals and has been expatriated.

The AHAC grew out of the Montreal Winter Carnival hockey tournament that was held at the Victoria Skating Rink just west of the Windsor Hotel. The association was formed “to improve, foster and perpetuate the game of hockey in Canada, to protect it from professionalism and to promote the cultivation of kindly feeling” among the players.

When Lord Stanley became Governor General in 1888 he took a great interest in the game of ice hockey. Members of his family and official household often watched the Ottawa Hockey Club play on the Rideau Hall ice where he particularly approved of

good clean hockey free from roughness or temper”. Hear that, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Before 1890 hockey had not commanded much interest in Toronto where lacrosse, rugby football and curling were popular. It reached the ‘Queen City’ from Montreal and Ottawa, introduced by a team at the University of Toronto which played Queen’s in Kingston and by one at the Granite Club which was a member of the Ontario Hockey Association.

Stanley’s term in office ended in 1893. He returned to England and succeeded as the 16th Earl of Derby. His tenure as Governor General had been uneventful except for the deaths in office of two prime ministers – Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir John Abbot. As a young man he had served in the army for seven years until he resigned to sit in the British House of Commons until created Baron Stanley and soon afterward posted to Canada.

The Stanley forebears had been enthusiastic sportsmen who had both won fame and lost money through their interest in thoroughbred racing.

There was a Stanley cricket XI in Ottawa and fishing cabins in Québec and New Brunswick but it would be as a hockey fan that his Lordship would be remembered here.

At a rather rowdy March, 1892, banquet to celebrate the ninth championship season of the Ottawa Hockey Club a letter was read from the GG. “I have been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion . . . I am willing to give such a cup”.

It has been said that while ice hockey, patterned on oversea field hockey, long remained as raw and undeveloped as 19th Century Canada itself, it was Lord Stanley who took the lead in determining how it should be played and how the national championship was to be decided each year before it was professionalised and commercialised. The chief concerns of Mr Bettman and his New York confreres are now television revenue and team expansion fees.

Captain Charles Colville, a former secretary to the Governor General, was commissioned to choose a suitable trophy. He did so at Collis & Co. in Regent Street, London. The original, now in the Hockey Hall of fame, is a silver bowl with a gold-gilt interior, purchased for 50 guineas

at the time $CDN300). It is valued at about $10,000 today. The first winner, in May, 1893, was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association hockey team.

The old adage “It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game” died with the 19th Century. Was it the 1914-18 Great War that fostered the winat all-costs frame of mind? In any case, hockey teams began paying players who could assure victories. Even before ‘the War’, by 1906, the Stanley Cup rules had been changed by the trustees to award it to the best team in Canada rather than to the top amateur team. As in other situations, the money factor led to violence on the ice.

Lord Stanley had decreed that the names of each year’s winning team and its players be engraved on the silver ring that formed the trophy’s base. When that was full inscriptions were made on the outside of the cup and, later, on the inside. Then more rings were added.

In 1967 a duplicate cup was made and the original was deposited in the Hockey Hall of Fame. A quarter of a million players and fans from around the world come to Toronto annually to see it.

Lady Isobel Stanley, daughter of the sixth Governor General, was on the first women’s hockey team. It played at Government House in Ottawa in 1889. In 2006 the 26th GG, the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson presented the Clarkson Trophy for the Women’s Hockey championship of Canada.

In other news, Lord Stanley dedicated 1000 acres of primeval forest at Vancouver in October, 1889 “to the use and enjoyment of people of all colours, creeds and customs for all time”. Pouring champagne on the ground, he intoned, “I name thee Stanley Park”. His statue stands there today, its arms raised as though he were shouting “He scores”.