Across The River: Early Baseball In The Outaouais

The Outaouais — a unique region of southwestern Quebec situated along the Ottawa River—lives a double life. Though most of its communities began as administrative centers for the Quebec-based timber industry and the draveurs who worked the Gatineau River, the twenty-first century economy of the region is quite different. As anyone who has walked the halls of the brutalist architecture-clad buildings on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River can tell you, the region today is dependent on the federal government and its workers.

At the same time, Gatineau and its environs (Hull, Gatineau, and several other Quebec-side towns were amalgamated into the city of Gatineau in 2002) in the Outaouais are still very much part of Quebec. Despite its proximity to the nation’s capital, many of the Outaouais’ Francophone residents are Quebeckers first, Canadians second.

That dual influence in the region extends to most walks of life, and baseball is no different. Indeed, baseball has a long and well-documented history on both sides of the Ottawa River. In Quebec, the game is perhaps most principally known for its early games and clubs in Montreal. Beginning with the city’s first organized ballclub in the early 1870s, the Montreal Baseball Club, the game grew quickly there. Students in the city were soon playing games between colleges. Interest in baseball continued to grow, and in 1873 members of the typographers’ union formed the first Francophone-based team, Club Jacques-Cartier.1

At the same time, though to less fanfare and organization, the game was being played in and around Ottawa. The Ottawa Daily Citizen, for instance, noted in its “Miscellaneous” section on August 3, 1872, that “It is considered a curious fact, that whilst sunstroke has occurred almost everywhere else this summer, no case has yet been reported from a base-ball field.”2 The matter-of-fact reporting suggests the game was played regularly across the national capital region even at this early date.

In fact, avid players of the game were soon starting clubs and challenging one another. Throughout the later 1870s, accounts of matches between clubs from settlements like Fitzroy, Metcalfe, Manotick, and others were treated as curious stories in local papers. Newspaper write-ups often included the match’s circumstances, notable players and plays, as well as the activities of the teams before and after matches. Accounts of local baseball games became regular features of the news rundown in Ottawa papers throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

Though stories of baseball played on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River in this period are harder to find, the few we have suggest the game was equally popular in the Outaouais. In August 1882, for example, a rather acrimonious exchange played out between baseball clubs from Aylmer (now part of Gatineau) and “Quio” (likely in reference to the village of Quyon, which today lies roughly a half-hour’s drive from Aylmer). The account comes from the captain of the Aylmer club, a Mr. W.H. Klock, who explained in the Citizen that his club was refusing to play a rematch with the Quio club “who feels its defeat very keenly” from an earlier match between the two clubs. The refusal to replay the Quio club stemmed from a disagreement as to the terms on which the rematch would be played, including the grounds, the players (presumably to avoid Quio from picking up too many hard-hitting, fast-pitching ringers), the umpire, and the stakes for the match (teams in this period routinely played other clubs for sums ranging from $50-$200; sums roughly equal to $1,000-$6,000 today).3

One wonders if the clubs ever managed to arrange another game again, relations between them being what they were: Klock was not content in his letter to the Citizen just to detail the dispute, but also wanted it known that “we consequently stigmatize [Quio’s baseball club] as ‘cowards’ and deem their challenge a ‘canard.’”4 Despite the slander, it’s likely the Quio club would have had some sympathetic readers, as Klock and his 1880s Aylmer outfit appear to have been a finicky lot—earlier in the month the Citizen reported that Aylmer refused to reply to multiple challenges from the Olympiques ballclub of Ottawa.5

While the game was clearly popular for those with the time, energy, and funds to play it, not all were as keen, especially when it was played on the traditional day of rest. This was particularly true in Ottawa, where pious Ottawans complained in letters to the Citizen as early as 1877 about “a large crowd of boys and young men” who “play baseball and carry on other sports” on Sundays, something the writer complained was “anything but becoming a Sabbath day in a Christian land.”6 This sentiment was not new, though it was perhaps the first time it had been publicly associated with baseball in the region. Prohibitions against certain practices on Sundays were a part of English common law, upon which much of the English-speaking Canadian legal tradition was based. These protections did, however, see an increased zeal in Canada during this period. The Lord’s Day Alliance of Canada, founded in 1888, was supported and founded in part by a group of Presbyterian churches who fought what they considered as the loss of the Sabbath’s sanctity in Canadian society. Their lobbying efforts over the decades that followed led to the 1906 passing of the Lord’s Day Act by the government of Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Becoming law in March 1907, it aimed to restrict all forms of commercial and recreational activity on Sunday, though it had varying degrees of success.7

The institution of the Act reinforced a pious sensibility that by the 1890s was already common practice on the Ottawa side of the river. In fact, when Ottawa acquired its first professional ballclub, a troubled Eastern League club from Rochester, New York, midway through the 1898 season, it set up “the best field for baseball in America” at Lansdowne Park, according to one observer. Despite its suitability for games, Ottawa society would not condone play on its surface on Sunday, and the organizers of the team arranged for Sunday games to be played in Hull—just across the river to be sure, but most importantly further from the reach of English Canadian Protestantism.

Though the Sunday games in Hull and the Ottawa ballclub in general were a success, the team did not continue play beyond the 1898 season. Its demise was more a result of circumstances surrounding the team and the Eastern League; it was certainly not a sign of baseball’s declining popularity in the region. The game remained a popular pastime in the villages on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River and accounts from local clubs and those further afield in the nascent major leagues in the United States were popular features in papers across Ottawa and the Outaouais.

A baseball field was even built as part of a Coney Island-style amusement park, Belle Isle Park, which opened in 1912. Built on the Quebec-controlled Belle Isle (today called Kettle Island), its operating company at times provided hourly steamer ferry service to and from Queen’s Wharf in Ottawa. The ballfield, situated alongside a boxing ring, featured seating for hundreds of spectators.8 The first game at the field took place between the home team, Belle Isle (an irregular exhibition team pulled from local players), and a club from Brushton, New York, then part of the Northern New York League. The game was scheduled for Sunday, August 4,9 no doubt positioned to try to draw spectators from Ottawa whose team at that point led the 1912 Canadian League standings, but importantly still couldn’t play home games at Lansdowne Park on the Sabbath. The advertisement for the game earlier in the week in the Ottawa Citizen served not only to draw attention to the game, but also to notify the players Belle Isle had selected as to when they should show up to play. A little surprisingly, the home side won their inaugural contest against the American semipro outfit, 8-7.10

Baseball at the amusement park (Belle Isle Park was renamed Capital Park the following year) remained an exhibition affair during its short existence, which ended at some point during the first World War.

Baseball remained a mainstay pastime in western Quebec in the years that followed. Regardless of the on-again, off-again status of Ottawa’s minor league clubs and semi-regular Sunday games in Hull, baseball was regularly played throughout the Outaouais. Most towns and villages had amateur clubs that played one another in leagues of varying formality. These amateur games generally took place on Saturdays and were also a social affair, with the home club often hosting a dinner and a dance afterward. More genial affairs aside, they played competitively as well: the Cascades Club, for instance, still proudly claims itself as 1922-23 Lower Gatineau Valley hardball champions.11

Baseball’s popularity in the Outaouais grew to the point where it was a viable location for profitable barnstorming efforts. Organized by Montreal businessman Len Forteous, the world champion New York Yankees came to Hull in 1928, with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, among others, playing in front of more than 3,000 people in Dupuis Park,12 as covered elsewhere in this volume.

Suffice it to say, though baseball’s popularity never rivaled hockey, it was arguably the sport of the summer in the Outaouais in the first half of the twentieth century. The Hull Volant, an athletic club which still exists but no longer fields a baseball team, won local championships for three years running in the early 1940s. Their successful streak culminated in a 1944 Quebec provincial championship, according to the club’s own history books, though corroborating records elsewhere of wartime baseball at the provincial level are scant.13

Baseball’s popularity in the Outaouais may have peaked during this period (several clubs who fielded baseball teams in the period before World War II no longer do), though it is hard to say enthusiasm for the sport has fallen in the past half-century. Gatineau has continued to live the double life of the Outaouais region—heavily influenced by its larger, mainly English-speaking neighbor across the Ottawa River while retaining its proudly independent, Québécois attitude. The remaining competitive ballclubs across the region, for example, play in the Ligue Baseball Outaouais, a part of Quebec baseball. These same clubs still commonly have partnerships and ticket nights with whatever minor-league team happens to be inhabiting Ottawa’s minor league baseball stadium off Coventry Road (the Frontier League’s Ottawa Titans, at the time of this writing).

Baseball, like the rest of life in the Outaouais, has a unique history all its own, with one foot in two equally Canadian worlds.

CHRISTOPHER SAILUS is a Michigan-born, Canadian public servant and history instructor. He holds an M.A. in British history from Louisiana State University, and his varied research interests include early colonialism, religion during the Reformation era and, of course, baseball and early sport in general. He is based in Ottawa, Ontario, where he lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their two children.

 

NOTES

1 Mario Robert, “A Brief History of Baseball in Montreal from 1860 to 1960,” Archives de Montreal, April 2, 2015. Accessed June 13, 2024, https://archivesdemontreal.com/2015/04/02/a-brief-history-of-baseball-in-montreal-from-1860-to-1960/.

2 “Miscellaneous,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 3, 1872: 2.

3 Statistics Canada only keeps currency inflationary records from 1914. The figures have been broadened to account for the missing 32-year period, based on the Statistics Canada numbers that do exist ($50-$200 in 1914 being equal to $1,368-$5,474 in 2024).

4 “Correspondence,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 29, 1882: 2.

5 “Local and other notes,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, August 25, 1882: 2.

6 “Sabbath Breakers,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, May 11, 1877: 3.

7 Paul Laverdure, Sunday in Canada: The Rise and Fall of the Lord’s Day (Yorkton, Saskatchewan: Gravelbooks, 2004).

8 Randy Boswell, “A bridge to Ottawa’s past: Kettle Island saga isn’t just a debate – it’s a journey into history,” Ottawa Citizen, October 8, 2020. Accessed June 16, 2024, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/a-bridge-to-ottawas-past-kettle-island-saga-isnt-just-a-debate-its-a-journey-into-history.

9 “Baseball at Belle Isle,” Ottawa Journal, July 31, 1912: 5.

10 “Baseball at Belle Isle,” Ottawa Journal, August 6, 1912: 8.

11 Carol Martin, “The Cascades Club,” Up the Gatineau! Gatineau Valley Historical Society, 2001. Accessed July 21, 2024, https://www.gvhs.ca/publications/utga-cascades-club.html

12 “Capital Facts: That time Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig came to Ottawa,” Ottawa Citizen, May 1, 2017. Accessed June 14, 2024, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/capital-facts-that-time-babe-ruth-and-lou-gehrig-came-to-ottawa.

13 “Historique: Hull-Volant 1932-2017; 85 ans de présence en Outaouais,” Association Hull Volant. Accessed June 13, 2024, https://www.hullvolant.ca/index.php?page=pages&entity=page&action=show&id=20.