Kenora Thistles
The Kenora Thistles were a Canadian ice hockey team based in Kenora, Ontario. Founded in 1894, the team competed for the Stanley Cup, the ice hockey championship of Canada, five times between 1903 and 1907. The team was unable to cope with the advent of professionalism in ice hockey during the early 1900s, and was disbanded in 1908. The name ‘Thistles’ has been used for several senior, minor, and junior Kenora teams since the club’s demise.
About Kenora Thistles in brief
The Kenora Thistles were a Canadian ice hockey team based in Kenora, Ontario. Founded in 1894, the team competed for the Stanley Cup, the ice hockey championship of Canada, five times between 1903 and 1907. The team was unable to cope with the advent of professionalism in ice hockey during the early 1900s, and was disbanded in 1908. Nine players have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the team’s Stanley Cup champion team was inducted to the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of fame. The name ‘Thistles’ has been used for several senior, minor, and junior Kenora teams since the club’s demise. The town of Kenora was originally known as Rat Portage, a translation of the Ojibwe-language name for the region: Waszush Onigum, which literally means ‘the road to the country of the muskrat’ Around 1850 gold was discovered in the region and the Canadian Pacific Railway reached it in 1877. A sawmill was established in 1880 and the town was incorporated in 1882, originally within the province of Manitoba. With the railroad, the town grew to support several industries, mainly lumber, mining, and fishing but also milling, power development and tourism. An ice rink called the Princess Rink was built in 1886. It was replaced in 1897 by the Victoria Rink which had more seats and a larger ice surface. In 1894 the team was admitted to the Manitoba Hockey Association and entered the second-tier intermediate level. In their first season they won their first twelve games, showing they were geographically closer to its teams, showing that they could compete with them.
The club had no owner or financial backer and would be financially strained throughout their existence. In March 1894 they successfully hosted a concert to raise money for the club, but the following year did not bring as much money as the previous year. In May 1905 the town’s name was changed on May 11, 1905, to Kenora which was derived from the first letters of the three neighbouring municipalities: Keewatin, Norman, and Rat Portages. The change occurred due to the establishment of a new flour mill in town; it has been suggested that local businessmen felt the name RatPortage would not encourage sales of flour. Though Kenora is in Ontario, the club competed in Manitoba-based leagues throughout its existence, owing to the city’s proximity to that province. In 1902 the team won the league championship in three of their six seasons. They were idealized as a team of hometown boys who used to play shinny together on the streets of Rat Portaging. The next year they joined the Manitoba league and won the first 12 games of the season. They did not win the championship again until 1903, when they won the championship in the second season of the Manitoba and Northwest Hockey Association. In 1907, they defended the Cup in January and defended it once before losing it that March in a challenge series. They are the least populated city to have won the Cup.
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This page is based on the article Kenora Thistles published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
