David was so excited after Mr. Kennedy gave him the news that he couldn’t see himself sitting on a streetcar. So he part ran, part walked the two miles or so from the Athletic Club back to the Home. It was a little after four o’clock when he got there. At that time of day J-P was in the kitchen helping to get things ready for dinner. It was so obvious from the expression on David’s face that the boy didn’t have to tell him anything.
“Dey’re going to take you!” J-P said.
David nodded excitedly.
“That’s great!”
David couldn’t remember if he’d ever hugged his father. Probably, when he was really little. But even when his father had left for the army, all they’d done was shake hands. Now David threw his arms around his friend.
“Thanks, J-P. Thank you so much. For everything.”
“Ahh,” J-P said, mussing up David’s hair the way hockey players did when someone scored a goal, “I didn’t do so much. You did it yourself. Now get outta here so I can get my work done!”
The next day was Sunday. Sundays were always restless days around the Home. Most of the kids were usually there, but a lot of the staff wasn’t. Sundays were J-P’s only day off, and since David had never become close to any of the other boys, he didn’t want to just hang around. So he went outside and started walking. He didn’t really know the best way to go, but he knew once he got to Saint Joseph Boulevard that if he kept walking he’d eventually hit Papineau Avenue. After that it would be like his old walk through the neighbourhood coming home from school.
David passed the blacksmith shop and the fire station and all the stores where his mother used to shop. After about an hour of walking, he finally reached Chabot. He stopped in front of the family’s old building and glanced up at the flat on the third floor. David couldn’t see anyone there, but he spotted other people’s things on the landing. Still, standing there on the street, it was hard to believe that if he climbed those winding stairs his mother wouldn’t be there waiting for him. But, of course, she wouldn’t be. And yet he had gone there to talk to her.
“I’m going to Seattle,” he said quietly. “I’m going to find Uncle Danny.”
On Monday morning David told Mrs. Freedman the news. She made quick arrangements for the people who donated clothes to the Home to provide him with a new pair of pants, a few new shirts, and a suitcase. Mrs. Wolfe altered a man’s suit jacket to fit him so that he’d have something nice to wear, as well.
Mrs. Freedman stayed late at the Home that night, and when it was time for David to go to the station, she took him there in a taxi. Then she handed him an envelope with a sheet of paper inside that had all the addresses from Seattle typed on it.
“Good luck,” she said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug.
There was a tear in David’s eye when he said, “Thank you.”
Windsor Station looked like a castle on the southeast corner of Dominion Square in downtown Montreal. BETTER THAN ANYTHING EVER BUILT, a sign had said when the Canadian Pacific Railway station first opened back in 1889. Since then it had been made even bigger and better. Its main office tower now soared fifteen storeys above the street.
The Canadiens left Windsor Station for Vancouver on Train No. 1 of the Canadian Pacific’s Transcontinental Line at 10:15 on Monday night, March 10, 1919. David hadn’t had much time to get ready. Then again, there wasn’t too much he needed to do.
A big crowd was at the station to cheer the Canadiens as they left to go after the Stanley Cup. Including David, there were twelve people travelling west with the team. Mr. Kennedy was going, of course, and Al was, too, but only nine of the team’s ten players were making the trip. Joe Malone had decided not to go. With hockey salaries so low, Malone had decided to put the new job he had in his hometown of Quebec City ahead of the game. Except for the playoff trips to Ottawa, Malone had already skipped most of the Canadiens’ road trips during the season, and he wasn’t about to take a whole month off for this western trip … even to play for the Stanley Cup.
Mr. Kennedy had arranged with the railway for the Canadiens to travel west in their own private sleeping car. It was first-class all the way and very snazzy! The twelve sets of double-sided bench seats were upholstered much more comfortably than in the regular sleeping cars. During the day, a table could be placed between the seats, and at night they pulled out into large beds with thick curtains for privacy. Above these lower berths were the upper berths. By day the upper berths were tucked closed and out of the way with metal bottoms so shiny they reflected the light coming through the windows as if they were mirrors. At night they folded down into smaller “top bunks” with a ladder for climbing up.
Veteran players always got the lower berths when teams travelled by train. Younger players slept up top. David got an upper berth near the back. That was the space closest to the washrooms, which was convenient in some ways, but also meant that people were always passing by when they had to go.
Since the train left Windsor Station at 10:15 at night, the private car was already set up for sleeping when the Canadiens got onboard. Most of the players dropped off their bags and headed for the parlour car where they could sit up and talk or play cards until later in the night. But David climbed up into his berth, got into his pajamas, and tried to sleep. It was hard to get comfortable at first, because the train made so many stops and starts along the way, but when the locomotive finally opened up for a long run after midnight, the gentle rocking helped put David to sleep.
A little after seven o’clock in the morning two porters came through the car and quietly announced it was time to get up. There was a parade of people back and forth to the washrooms for the next little while as the players cleaned up and shaved, then went back to their berths to get dressed. David waited until everyone else was done before he got cleaned up. Then he dressed and made his way to the dining car to get some breakfast. It was pretty crowded when David got there, but he heard someone calling him.
“Over here. I saved you a seat.”
It was Joe Hall. The defenceman nodded at one of the porters, who went to get David some breakfast. “Sit down,” Joe said, patting the seat beside him. “I ordered you some bacon and eggs. Hope you don’t mind. My oldest boy — Joe Junior — is about your age and that’s what he likes in the morning.”
David loved bacon, and he hadn’t had any for a long time. There was only kosher food at the Home. “Thanks,” he mumbled as the porter brought him his plate of food.
Except for J-P, David had never been very good around new people, and he just couldn’t get used to the idea of being so close to Bad Joe Hall — even if the man really didn’t seem very bad at all. So while David was glad to have the tasty breakfast, he mostly just stared out the window as he ate. It was fascinating to watch the scenery flying by.
“Ever been on a train before?” Joe asked.
David shook his head. “Been on the streetcar a lot, but this is better!”
Joe smiled as David turned to gaze out the window again. “Do you know where we are?” David asked after a while.
Joe looked out the window, too. He’d been back and forth on the train between Brandon and Quebec so many times over the years that he knew the route well. “Can’t say I really pay that much attention anymore, but it looks like we’re still running alongside the Ottawa River, which means we haven’t reached Mattawa yet.” He checked his wristwatch. It was a little after 8:30. “We’ll get there about nine o’clock and hit North Bay an hour later. They’ll hook us up to a new locomotive there.”
The big train engines had to be switched every 150 miles or so during the 2,886-mile trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Different locomotives were assigned to various sections along the route. The sturdiest ones were needed to pull the trains over the mountains. Railway workers also had to load on new coal and fresh water at many of the stops along the way to feed the fires that created the steam that powered the engines.
“You know,” Joe said to David after the boy finished eating his breakfast. “I lost my father when I was only eight years old. Of course, I still had my mother, but she had seven of us to look after. She turned our place into a rooming house so she could work and still take care of us. Even so, I had to quit school when I was your age.
Got a job in a cigar factory. I still work for them when the season’s over, but not in the factory anymore. When I started getting famous as a hockey player, they figured I’d be more valuable as a salesman. Pay’s pretty good, but it keeps me on the road an awful lot. Between that and hockey, I’m hardly ever at home with my wife and kids.”
This was a private side of Joe Hall few people knew about. David wondered if Joe’s frustration at the long times he had to spend away from his family was part of the reason his anger boiled over so often when he was on the ice. It was hard to believe a guy who could be so mean could be so nice.
It was going to take the Canadiens six and a half days to get to Vancouver from Montreal. Even for David, every day on the train quickly became pretty much the same. People had to find something to do to occupy their time. All of the players had their routines.
David wasn’t surprised to see Georges Vézina enjoying most of his time alone. In fact, he spent a lot of his days on the train sleeping. The goalie had brought some French magazines with him, but he only read them for a few minutes a few times each day.
“He worries about the strain on his eyes,” Joe explained. “You can’t stop the puck if you can’t see it!”
As a forward, Jack McDonald had no such worries. Jack had been a big goal scorer in his early days, but now he was a trusted substitute coming off the bench when someone needed a rest. He had brought a couple of books with him and occupied most of his time with reading. Some of the players teased him about that. Most of them passed the time playing cards.
Billy Couture and Louis Berlinquette were substitutes, too. They stuck together and loved to play gin. Didier Pitre and Newsy Lalonde were the team’s star players and had been on the club the longest, going all the way back to when the NHA was organized in 1909. They played poker with Al and Mr. Kennedy. Just small stakes, though. Their boss was a lot richer than they were.
Bert Corbeau also liked to play cards, but he was something of a loner. He figured the best way to be alone in a crowded railway car was to play solitaire. Odie Cleghorn, on the other hand, was the restless type. He liked to keep moving around the car in an effort to stay busy. Cleghorn would tease McDonald about his book reading and was always trying to get Couture and Berlinquette arguing about something. He kept tabs on the other card players, too.
“You can move that row under the red ten onto the black jack,” he said, sliding into the seat next to Corbeau. “Oh, look at that!” he said excitedly as the removal of the ten turned up a red queen. “Now you can shift the whole thing back over onto the queen and then move up that black king you’ve got. Then you slide the pile over there.”
Corbeau slammed down the cards in his hand. “I know how to play the game,” he growled. “They call it solitaire for a reason, you know.”
“Sorry, Bert,” Cleghorn said. He got up to go, but his mischievous grin made it clear he wasn’t sorry at all.
One of the ways everyone, except Georges Vézina, liked to pass the time was by reading the newspaper. The porters always brought several copies of the local papers onboard when they hit some of the bigger cities.
“Hey, George!” Newsy called out to Mr. Kennedy from behind a copy of the Winnipeg newspaper they’d picked up in a small town across the border in Manitoba. “Maybe the next time we make this trip you can rent us a couple of airplanes.”
“What are you talking about, Lalonde?”
“Says here they’re gonna fly those planes clear across the ocean pretty soon. Says Billy Bishop might make the first flight. If they can fly a plane across the ocean, it’s gotta be easier to fly one across the country.”
“You’ll never get me up in one of those rickety crates,” Mr. Kennedy said. “If the man upstairs wanted us to fly, he’d have given us wings.”
The others laughed.
Sports was the usual topic of conversation when the players were reading stories out of their newspapers. Spring training was about to get started, and there was lots of news about baseball.
“Looks like Babe Ruth’s gonna be a holdout,” Newsy said.
“How much does he want?” Joe asked.
“A three-year deal for thirty thousand bucks. But he’ll agree to take fifteen thousand for one year.”
“Whew! That’s a lotta dough! What do the Boston Red Sox say?”
Newsy squinted at the paper. “Owner’s offering him eighty-five hundred for one year.”
“Boy, imagine turning down that kind of money!”
“Story says he doesn’t even want to pitch anymore.
Just play the outfield.”
Joe whistled. “But the guy’s a twenty-game winner.”
“I know, but he hit eleven home runs last year playing part-time in the outfield. Tied him for the American League lead.”
“That’s like Georges leading the league in scoring! Still, is he worth ten thousand bucks a year?”
“Says he’ll quit baseball and take up boxing if he doesn’t get it.”
Joe grinned. “Big money in that.”
“If you don’t mind getting beat up for a living.”
“Oh, like we don’t get beat up?”
“But imagine if a guy as big as Babe Ruth was hitting you …”
“Knock you right out of the park!”
“He’d have to catch me first.”
“Hah!”