Dunderdale, Thomas

BORN ON MAY 6TH, 1887 at Benalla, an agricultural town in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, to English-born parents, Thomas Dunderdale (1858– ) and Elizabeth Day (1861– ). His older English-born brother was named Henry and his younger sisters, both born in Australia, were Daisy, and Nellie who married Harley Gould. [270] Tommy Dunderdale is the only Australian-born player inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame, so why has he been overlooked by Australian hockey? Perhaps because he moved to Canada with his family shortly before the first Australian rinks were built. Yet, it seems likely Tommy Dunderdale contributed to the Australian game in ways which are yet to be understood. His family probably emigrated from Lancashire in England and settled at Benalla, originally a pastoral run taken up in 1838 by the squatter-settler Rev Joseph Docker (1793-1865). Known as Benalta Run, the town was laid out on the site in 1846. Docker was an assistant curate to his brother in Southport, Lancashire, who married a Liverpool girl in 1828, then sailed with her for Sydney.

Tommy's father was an engineer. He moved the family to Australia about 1885–6, briefly returned to Lancashire in England in 1893, then moved on to Ottawa in Ontario, Canada in 1894, when Tommy was just seven years-old. [270] It was the year after the Stanley Cup had first arrived at Rideau Hall, Lord Stanley's Ottawa residence (Government House); the year Robert Reid and (Sir) Simon Fraser visited as Victorian trade ambassadors (see Fraserland). Their arrival at the same place at the same time was probably more than mere coincidence. Dunderdale was two years older than Jim Kendall, and competed in the same leagues as English-born Herbert Blatchly, who had moved to Toronto some thirteen years earlier. Blatchly was in his early twenties when the young Dunderdale arrived and, a little over a decade later, he became the first Canadian to play ice hockey in Australia, as captain of its very first team. Blatchly's twin-brother Harold and his family had moved from Toronto to Ottawa by 1911. According to the official record, Dunderdale first played organized ice hockey with his Waller Street Public School team when he arrived in Ottawa in 1904. However, he had lived in Ontario for over a decade by then. [270] On the corner of Waller and Theodore (now Laurier Avenue) stood the Rideau Skating Rink, one of the first indoor skating rinks in Canada, which had opened in January 1889. It was no doubt there on the Waller Street corner, at the present location of the Arts Hall of the University of Ottawa, that Dunderdale's school team played hockey.

This rink was built to be finer than Montréal's Victoria Skating Rink where Jim Kendall had almost certainly played before 1909. It was sponsored by Lord Stanley of Stanley Cup fame, who took shares in the project and participated in its formal opening festivities on February 1st, 1889 with a fancy dress carnival. The Stanleys were a Lancashire family like the Dockers and Dunderdales. Lord Stanley became Governor General of Canada in 1888 which, ironically, was the year before the Southport Glaciarium near Liverpool in Lancashire closed at a financial loss after ten years of struggle (see Next Wave). By the time he left for Canada, he had been a Lancashire MP for 21 years and was serving in government as president of the Board of Trade. When he returned in July 1893, the same year the Dunderdales also returned there from Australia, he became Lord Mayor of Liverpool. Lady Stanley had founded the Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses on Rideau Street in 1891, the first nursing school in Ottawa, and she had also been an enthusiastic fan of hockey games at the Rideau Rink, no doubt encouraged by her sons and daughters. Organized ice hockey there began with a game on February 14th, 1889, between members of the Ottawa and Rideau social clubs. Ice hockey pioneers, James Creighton and Philip Ross, trustee of the Stanley Cup, captained the Ottawa and Rideau teams, respectively. The first recorded organized women's ice hockey game was played there on March 8th, 1889, and the first Ontario men's ice hockey championship game on March 7th, 1891, in which Ross helped Ottawa win 5-0 over Toronto St George's.

Since 1904, the Rideau Rink had been used by the Minto Skating Club of Ottawa for several Canadian figure skating championships, although officially the first Canadian championship took place in 1914 in Montréal. By 1922, Dunbar Poole, manager of Sydney Glaciarium in Australia, had become the second instructor at Minto Skating Club. It was an association well outside of Poole's earlier interests in Britain and Europe. It had probably been brought about through his association with Herbert Blatchly and Australia's first organised ice hockey team in Melbourne in 1906, in which Poole also played. Robert Reid and Canadian-born (Sir) Simon Fraser also had established links in Montréal, Ottawa and Toronto at the tail-end of Lord Stanley's tenure as Governor General. Reid was one of Australia's foremost commercial magnates at the time, with offices in London and Glasgow, and an uncle of Henry Newman Reid, who commenced development of Australia's first ice rinks less than a decade later, using venture capital in a manner similar to the financing of the Rideau Skating Rink. The Reid's were well-connected to the imperial authorities in England, including prime minister Primrose; so were the Goodalls (see Goodall); and Fraser's family stretched back at least a century to the early 1800s in Nova Scotia. His Lovat ancestors were there before Canada was even proclaimed (see Fraserland).

In 1905, Dunderdale moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba and played the 1905–06 season with the amateur Winnipeg Ramblers, while attending business college. He returned to Ottawa to play for the Cliffsides club in 1906, before returning to Winnipeg and the senior Winnipeg Maple Leafs. He turned professional at the age of nineteen in the 1906–07 season with Winnipeg Strathconas (aka Winnipeg Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Shamrocks), just two years after he was said to have commenced amateur hockey. However, it is more likely he commenced much earlier, anytime after he first arrived in Canada in 1894. He played three seasons for the Winnipeg franchise, scoring on average more than two points per game, with a majority of goals. In 1904, the Manitoba Hockey Association absorbed the Manitoba & Northwestern Hockey Association league, and included the Kenora Thistles (Rat Portage) team from outside the province. This team was important in Australian hockey history (see Russ Carson). In 1909–10, Dunderdale moved east, and played with the Montréal Shamrocks, first with the Canadian Hockey Association, and later with the National Hockey Association (NHA). That season, he appeared in 15 games overall, and scored 21 goals. He played the 1910–11 season for the Quebec Bulldogs of the NHA, finishing second in team scoring with 13 goals, even though he played only nine of sixteen games, and received 25 penalty minutes.

In 1911, Dunderdale still lived with his family at 250 Young Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, midway between the eastern and western leagues. [270] He moved further west to the legendary Patrick brothers for the 1911–12 season, and became captain of Victoria Aristocrats (later Victoria Cougars), one of three foundation teams with Vancouver Millionaires and New Westminster Royals in the Patrick's newly-formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), an innovative Canadian league that introduced numerous changes to the sport, and became the first to expand into the United States. The Patricks long had western ties. Their father Joe was a major lumber entrepreneur in British Columbia, where Jimmy Bendrodt was a lumberjack before immigrating to Australia in 1910, just months after Jim Kendall. Later that year, Lester and Frank Patrick gambled on the formation of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, backed with Patrick lumber money, and Dunderdale spent the rest of his playing career in the west, having played just two seasons east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. He received his first of six First All-Star team selections in the PCHA, scoring 24 goals in 16 games, then 24 goals in each of the next two seasons, again making the First All-Star team in both. It was in August 1912 that a team of Canadian Cadets played a Victorian team at Melbourne Glaciarium [373] and, next month, The Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide announced "The Canadian All-Star Ice Hockey Team are planning to tour Australia in March next." [374]

Meanwhile, the Patricks had negotiated a playoff series for the Stanley Cup between the champions of Canada's east and west leagues. Victoria Arena was sold out in the 1912–13 season for the world series of hockey which Quebec was confident of winning with several top-ranking players of the times. However, Dunderdale's Victoria Aristocrats had plenty of speed, several deadly shooters and a tough defense. They won the first game 7-5; Quebec won the second 6-3; and then Victoria swamped Quebec 6-1 in the third, with Dunderdale and Lester Patrick each scoring two goals. [396, 397] Victoria had won the coast title and then become the first national champions of pro hockey, yet they did not gain possession of the Stanley Cup as the NHA had refused to sanction its use as a world series trophy, despite the Patrick negotiations. In the 1913–14 season Victoria Aristocrats challenged Toronto Arenas (later Blueshirts or just Torontos) for the Stanley Cup. In the best-of-five series Toronto won the opener, the second in overtime, and the third 2-1. [396] Dunderdale scored two goals, and collected 11 penalty minutes from the three games. In the 1914–15 season, he was named in the First All-Star team for the fourth consecutive time, after scoring 17 goals and 10 assists for a total of 27 points from 17 games (see Victoria's Hockey History).

In the 1915–16 season, Dunderdale joined Portland Rosebuds at the same time as Charlie Uksila, the first American-born hockey player to participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Dunderdale's scoring average in his first season with the Rosebuds dropped below a point per game for the first time in his career, but they became the first American team to challenge for the Stanley Cup that year. They lost a best-of-five series 3–2 to Montreal Canadiens with Dunderdale playing all of the five games and scoring just two points. The following season, he scored 22 goals in 24 games, returning to his usual offensive output, however, his season was more notable for penalties, setting a league record of 141 minutes. The 1917–18 season was his last in Portland, and he scored 14 goals in 18 games, departing as their leading penalty minute getter and second-most prolific goal scorer, with 50 goals.

Dunderdale was 29 years-old when America joined the Allied Forces during World War I, on April 6th, 1917. The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but became a self-styled "Associated Power". It had a small army, but it drafted four million men from a total of twenty-four million draft registrations, and by summer 1918 it was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. Dunderdale registered for the draft while at Portland, Oregon, along with Charles and Robert Uksila, but since he played every season, it is unlikely he was called-up. [269] He rejoined the new Victoria Aristocrats in the 1918–19 season, recording only nine points in 20 games in his first season back, but scoring 26 goals in 22 games in the 1919–20 season, en route to his fifth First All-Star team selection. Charles Uksila had joined Vancouver Millionaires. That same year, Jimmy Bendrodt went north to serve in the Canadian Expeditionary Force where Dunderdale and Uksila were playing in his hometowns. Although he had probably come and gone on earlier occasions, he returned to Australia in 1923 with Charles' sister and skating partner, Lena (see Lena Uksila). Dunderdale played three more seasons for Victoria (renamed from Aristocrats to Cougars in the 1921–22 season), playing 75 games in total and scoring 41 points. His scoring averages were a little under a point per game during the 1920–21 and the 1921–22 season. In the 1922–23 season, his last with Victoria, he was limited to only two goals in 27 games. He made the First All-Star Team for the sixth time in 1922. The PCHA folded following the conclusion of the 1922–23 season. Dunderdale played 1923–24 season in the West Coast Hockey League (WCHL), splitting it between the Saskatoon Crescents and the Edmonton Eskimos, and scoring three points in 17 games overall.

Tommy Dunderdale was 5-ft 8-in (1.73 m) and weighed 160 lb (73 kg; 11 st 6 lb). He usually played centre but he was a natural rover, a right-handed player with enough speed to attack and to get back in time to defend. His pro career spanned 1906 until 1924, when he retired at age 36 at the end of the 1923–24 season as the PCHA's leading goal scorer, with 194 goals in total. He was a six-time PCHA First Team All-Star, and league leader for goals in three seasons, and for points in two. In 290 games, Dunderdale scored 225 goals and was noted as an excellent stickhandler and a fast skater. After retiring as a player, he coached and managed teams in Edmonton, Alberta, Los Angeles, and Winnipeg, his hometown. Prior to the Kings' arrival in the Los Angeles area in the 1960s, both the Pacific Coast Hockey League (PCHL) and the Western Hockey League (WHL) had several teams in California, including the PCHL's Los Angeles Monarchs in the 1930s. Charles Miner Goodall lived in LA at the time when its first rink, the Palais de Glace, was built (see Goodall). Charles Uksila performed at the opening.

It is likely Dunderdale maintained an association with the coaching staff of the Blackhawks. One of the NHL Original Six, the Blackhawks were raised in 1926 from Portland Rosebuds. Another future Hall of Famer, Dick Irvin, had been hired as head coach in 1930. Dunderdale and Charles Uksila knew Irvin well. All three were foundation members of the first ever Portland Rosebuds team in 1916. Irvin led the Blackhawks to 24 wins, 17 losses and 3 ties that season, and it is likely he was assisted by Dunderdale. The next year, Winnipeg-born Art Coulter joined the Blackhawks and, the year after, Art's brother Tom returned to Winnipeg from Pittsburg, then signed-up with the Blackhawks in 1933-4, a few seasons before he played for St George in Sydney, Australia (see Tom Coulter). Tom Coulter's sudden appearance in Australian amateur hockey in 1938 was more than chance. The Coulter brothers were born and bred in Dunderdale's hometown, along with another Winnipeg-born player, Hugh Lloyd, who had first captained Victoria in Australia the year before. Dunderdale may have connected Coulter with Bendrodt for the opening of his Ice Palais in Sydney. Bendrodt had been involved with similar arrangements on previous occasions, such as the Uksilas' professional season in Australia in 1923 with Robert Jackson. The Canadian Bears visit that year, from Kenora near Dunderdale's home town, was probably similarly arranged (see Russ Carson).

Even had young Tommy stayed to see it, Australia's fledgling game at the turn of last century could never have developed the artistry he achieved in North American leagues in such short time. Yet, although he was the first of many to leave, a full decade before Australian ice sports had even started, he never really turned his back on his birthplace. He was there behind the scenes in many of Australia's early International relations with North America, from Blatchly's captaincy of the first Australian hockey team in 1906; the Jacksons professional season in New York in 1917-18; the Uksilas in Melbourne in the federation year of Australian ice hockey in 1923; to the opening of the brave new era in Australian ice by the Kenora professionals and Coulter in 1938-9; and possibly even Poole's professional appointment at Minto Skating Club in Ottawa. He was there in the shadows of the coming of age of the Australian game in the 1920s, channeling the new developments which first emerged in the IPHL at Uksila's home town in Houghton, Michigan between 1903 and 1905, then resurfaced later on Canada's West Coast in the Patrick brother's newly-formed PCHA, which Dunderdale and Uksila helped establish.

Australia was abreast of these game innovations due to both these men and, although their parallel contributions to Australian ice hockey are not at all obvious many decades on, they ran very deep indeed (see Ted Molony). Any amateur league in the world would have fallen over themselves to similarly access the knowledge and experience Dunderdale and Uksila had accumulated during those years. Moreover, Australian ice sports had benefited from these exchanges long after the actual events, through players and administrators such as Kenora's Russ Carson, who had made Australia their home. Thomas Dunderdale died in Winnipeg on December 15th, 1960, at the age of 73. He was buried at Brookside Cemetery in Winnipeg, and was made an Honoured Member of the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame, along with Art Coulter. In 1974, Tommy Dunderdale became the only Australian-born player to be inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame.