Sponsoring the Senior AA Amateur Hockey trophy for British Columbia might have been the most honourable thing William Henry Coy ever did, in this province.
He arrived in Victoria sometime in the early part of the 20th century, about 1913 or so. He was reportedly a successful real estate speculator, formerly a railway telegrapher, from New Brunswick. But he came with controversial past baggage and he opened it up and sprang it upon the relatively new colony.
Court records show Coy was wrapped in a 1911 land scam in Saskatchewan, for example, which reached the Supreme Court of Canada.
Wearing the issue was famed Major-General Sir Arthur Currie, just before he rose to heroic repute thanks to his consensus brilliant leadership during the First World War.
But when Coy and Currie met, the situation was pre-war. Currie was involved in small military forces on Vancouver Island, in keeping with upper-crust society of the day, and had been approached to take inaugural command of the brand new 5oth Regiment, Gordon Highlanders of Canada (authorized on Aug. 15, 1913). They would help comprise the 16th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War.
“A Canadian militia regiment was much more than a disciplined military organization. It was also an expensive private club for its officers and sometimes even for the men in the ranks,” wrote historians Desmond Morton and R. Craig Brown in their essay The Embarrassing Apotheosis of a ‘Great Canadian’: Sir Arthur Currie’s Personal Crisis in 1917.
“Government grants met only part of the cost of even such obvious necessities as uniforms, equipment, and accommodation. Officers were not only expected to purchase their own uniforms, but they were also expected to hand over their pay and a substantial annual subscription to regimental funds. In return, a militia commission conferred high social status. To become colonel of such a regiment demanded business ability and a personal fortune as well as military proficiency: a scattering of militia-regiment scandals indicated that commanding officers would be removed by their subordinates if they showed a lack of commercial acumen, private funds, or both. Arthur Curtie knew perfectly well what was involved.”
Nonetheless, Currie became embroiled in a scandal that threatened his name’s place in history. It was all over money. He used a military cheque to the militia to cover personal debts. It was discovered when his attempts at paying it back fell well short.
“One participant in the crisis, Sir George Perley, minister of overseas military forces of Canada, is said to have ‘panicked’ when he learned the nature of Currie’s debts. Well he might. The documents in Perley’s hands suggested that the brand new commander of the Canadian Corps had committed an offence which might properly send him to the penitentiary,” said the Brown-Morton history.
Their hindsight assessment was, “Currie’s debts became a threat to his career only because he was more honourable than his enemies.”
And more honourable than the governments of either Canada and Great Britain, who both lauded Currie for military brilliance, saving unfathomable numbers of soldiers, while at the same time winning key battles towards victory, but wouldn’t deign to understand a debt rooted in his personal underwriting of the original militia company, and someone else entirely who balked in a much bigger way, financially.
It all traces to Coy. Why? Because at the start of the 50th Highlanders, Coy stepped forward, newly arrived to Victoria, and pledged $35,000 to the upstart regiment. That, in today’s equivalent values, would be about $1-million. For that pledge, he was instantly made an honourary colonel.
It is mentioned in Victoria’s Heritage Registry that William H. Coy resided at a very well to do home named Rappahonnock, located at 1595 Rockland Avenue during the years 1915-17.
What wasn’t instant, or in fact ever to occur, was actually handing the money over. It was a pledge, not a cheque. When the first big bill needed to be paid, the uniform costs to Moore Taggart of Glasgow for 506 regimental outfits, plus the costs of outfitting the regiment’s mess hall and other startup needs, the amounts were large but well within the amount Coy had promised, but not delivered.
“We all had to toady to him always to get him to do anything. For weeks he would not come near us,” Currie wrote in a letter at the time.
Currie and others were paying the regiment’s bills out of pocket. So when government money came to the regiment, he, knowing it was illegal, put that money into the personal debts he was incurring.
The fortunes of all players in this drama took a sharp turn when, less than a year after the startup of the 50th Highlanders, the First World War was declared quite suddenly. Coinciding with the outbreak of war was the collapse of the real estate industry in British Columbia. Coy and Currie were both, separately, deeply involved in both.
Currie owed $11,000 at the time (about $330,000 in today’s money). Wealthy friends, legal wrangling, political machinations, and Currie’s own pay-back investments on the debt finally came to a head in 1919 and all was accounted for. Coy paid next to nothing and disappeared from the government’s aggressive efforts to obtain the missing money.
What Coy did apparently make good on was the purchase of a hockey trophy. While William Henry Coy’s name has mostly disappeared from the historic record and what is mentioned is none to flattering, the trophy has lived a splendid life of high praise.
It was first donated by Coy to the British Columbia Amateur Hockey Association for the equivalent of the province’s Senior-AA amateur championship.
“The Vancouver Rowing Club were the first champions of the Coy Cup in 1913,” said Jack Drysdale, assistant director of the Canadian Scottish Regimental Museum in Victoria. The uniforms Coy donated (but actually didn’t) were for the 50th Regiment Gordon Highlanders, which in 1919, upon war’s end, was reorganized into the Princess Mary’s Canadian Scottish Regiment. The uniforms themselves were passed on into this new unit, according to Drysdale’s research.
This regiment, the largest in B.C., still exists today, with various bases on Vancouver Island.
What also took some time to gell was the Coy Cup championship. The trophy was awarded intermittently but became a formalized tournament in 1923, with the Enderby Hockey Club as the first winner under that banner.
The cup has not been awarded every year since then, but the tournament’s concept has stayed alive all these 100 years.
The first team from this area to win it was the Prince George Hockey Club for the 1926-27 season.
A Vernon dynasty ensued, winning seven times between 1928 and 1935, then three times in a row between 1943 and ‘46 (one year in that span had no tournament).
The Trail All-Stars / Smoke Eaters were the next team to establish a dynasty, winning five out of six between 1950 and 1955, then again in 1961 as the Trail Oilers.
Quesnel got on the board in the 1965-66 season, and again in ‘67-‘68, breaking up the dynasty run of the Powell River Regals, on the cusp of the dynasty run of the Prince George Mohawks (five cups between 1971 and 1978).
Then, it was the Kangaroos turn to wear the dynasty crown, and it was a natural dynasty as well, with no other team breaking up the cup’s longest streak to date. The Roos won it in 1982 and took it seven in a row, all the way to 1988, missed a year, then won another in 1990. In 1998, the Kangaroos won it for the eleventh time overall, to that point.
Since then there have been some back-to-back winners and some more common names on the trophy, but no true dynasty has been established, unless you count the Dawson Creek Canucks. They won it in 2018, 2019, there were two cancelled years due to the COVID pandemic, then won it in a modified tournament in 2022. They are also back in the tournament this year trying to make it four out of six, but four in a row in the sense of awarding the honour. That would be an irrefutible dynasty for modern times.
The host Quesnel Kangaroos will look to start a streak of their own, after winning both the regular season and the playoffs of the Central Interior Hockey League, while their CIHL’s Terrace River Kings will be here trying to upset their league rivals. Organizers would also like to recognize that the Penticton Silver Bullets earned the position to try for their second-ever Coy Cup title but had to withdraw at the last minute due to the sudden passing of player and beloved Penticton hockey personality Morton Johnston and the Silver Bullets will alwys be considered a part of the 2023 event even though they could not attend in person.
“This year will mark 100 years since the first Coy Cup was awarded, so it is a special event,” said Trevor Bast, BC Hockey’s Adult Male division coordinator. “BC Hockey appreciates the work done by the Quesnel Kangaroos to host the Senior-AA Championship. The Coy Cup event has traditionally experienced excellent competition from the teams, and we look forward to seeing a four-team tournament for the first time since 2019.”
All the action is on now, new history in the making, at West Fraser Centre.
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