In 1924 the Canadiens’ Cup celebration had been complete after a couple of events: a public celebration supported by the Universite de Montreal, followed by a viewing of the Stanley Cup and dinner at Montreal’s Windsor Hotel. There had been a concluding private party for the team at the home of Leo Dandurand that same night, which had produced perhaps the most enduring memory of the festivities that year: The Cup had been temporarily forgotten by the side of the road when the players got out to change a flat tire on the way from the Windsor Hotel to Dandurand’s.
In April 1930, a team party at the Club Canadienne the night after they had beaten the Bruins was barely the start of the battage. La patrie reserved space in its front page coverage of the victory for Morenz particularly:
Il faudrait citer tous les noms. Mais le nom de Morenz l’inimitable, le bel athlete au coeur de lion, le plus grand des joueurs de hockey, l’idole de la foule et l’ame de son equipe, suffit a les symboliser tous. Tous les joueurs, a tour de role, parureut des etoiles. Mais l’eclat semblait leur venir de ce meteore. (La patrie, 4 avril 1930, p.1, c.3 – 4)
On Wednesday, April 7, 1930, the Stanley Cup finally went on display in Montreal, behind glass in the window at Mappin & Webb – the jewelers on St Catherine Street. The players themselves finally had a chance to hold the Cup on Saturday night, April 11 – at a banquet at the St Denis Club, with 300 well-wishers.
There was also some gift giving at the banquet, the highlight of which was Joe Cattarinich’s presentation to the players of platinum tie clips ornamented with a ruby, a diamond, and an amethyst, replicating the Canadiens’ colours. There is a picture of the pieces in Goyens, Chrystian; Turowetz, Allan; Duguay, Jean-Luc; Le Forum de Montreal: La fierte pour toujours, Les editions Effix Inc. (Montreal: 1996), at p.32. The idea of marking a Stanley Cup victory with jewelry paid for by the team didn’t survive. Even in the late 1960s the players were funding their own ring momentos: e.g., Cantin, Phillipe; Serge Savard Forever Canadien, KO Editions, Inc. (Montreal:2020), at pp.97 – 98
After the dinner and gift giving, the Canadiens moved on to the Papineau Club where, just past midnight, they were able to celebrate Bert McCaffrey’s 37th birthday.
Nearly two weeks had passed since the Canadiens had won the Cup, but the public’s appetite for celebration continued. Another team appearance was scheduled for April 15 at the Palace Theatre. The Gazette urged people to come out to see the heroic Canadiens “as they appear in everyday life.†The players were called up to stand on the stage and to absorb the applause of an audience waiting to watch a film while theatre manager George Rotsky presented Cecil Hart with the “George Rotsky Palace Trophy.†(The Gazette, April 16, 1930, p.18, c.6 – 8).
Nick Wasnie and Gus Rivers missed most of that. They had left Montreal by Monday, April 5, Nick to attend to his grain farm in Selkirk, Manitoba, and Gus to get back to work at the family auto mechanic business in Winnipeg.
There had been other summers when Howie Morenz had also gone to work – sometimes part-time at the Dandurand-Cattarinich race tracks, other times on hockey barnstorming tours like he had done as recently as the spring of 1929. This year he had been invited but declined to join the Bruins for a British Columbia exhibition tour, with the excuse that he didn’t want to risk injury.
It had been after the Canadiens’ appearance at the Palace Theatre when Morenz’s real reason for begging off the Bruin tour became clear. The National Hockey League had arranged a two-game exhibition series for the Canadiens against the Ottawa “All-Stars†in Atlantic City, New Jersey. There was a thought that the League might be able to expand there, where the Lincoln G. Dickey Auditorium was (and still could be) capable of seating 41,000 fans for hockey.
The NHL thought that it would be a worthwhile opportunity to showcase the NHL’s championship team against some professional opposition in a two-game series. The NHL wanted their premiere star there, and Howie wanted to play more hockey. So it happened.
The Cup winners returned to Montreal and resumed their celebrations. They feted Sylvio Mantha at the Windsor Hotel on April 24 in advance of his scheduled wedding the following Monday. Throughout that luncheon Howie remembered his own bachelor party at the Reform Club, about 4 years before. His party had also been sponsored by the team, with Art Ross of the Bruins in attendance to give him a silver chest on behalf of the National Hockey League. It was clear to everyone that spring that Howie Morenz was once again the League’s greatest asset.