♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Phil Pritchard: Well, I mean you think back to Captain Sutherland's career as a player, as an administrator, as a historian, and what he did for halls of fame, especially in hockey.

J.W.

Bill Fitsell: He promoted the game wherever he went.

If he wasn't selling shoes, he was selling hockey.

Don Cherry: That's all we heard around was Captain Sutherland, he was hockey.

narrator: On a cold November morning in 1961, a plated spade struck the soil on a small plot of land beside Kingston's Memorial Center.

The ceremony, attended by local dignitaries, including James A. Sutherland, was the groundbreaking for an International Hockey Hall of Fame.

The $135,000 building was the dream of Sutherland's father, the late Captain James T. Sutherland.

Bill: He was part of that--the group of young boys that roamed the waterfront in both winter and summer, swimming and boating and playing games along the shore, and those are in the days after the British soldiers had been discharged and some of them stayed in Kingston and told the stories about the early games of hockey.

narrator: It was three years after Confederation.

British soldiers had been mustered out of Kingston and a Canadian force established.

In October of that year, 1870, James Thomas Sutherland was born.

He was the youngest son of a prize-winning cobbler with Scots-Irish roots who made prize-winning footwear for troops at Old Fort Henry and eventually Royal Military College.

Brock Dew: There's a--we have a platter from my grandparents that's-- it's kind of interesting.

It's the oldest thing.

It's--on the back of it, my grandmother wrote, it's a soup terrine from the Glasgow and Calcutta packet line.

And it says this was brought back by Sergeant Alexander Sutherland.

And I think sometime around 1798, returning with the regiment from India.

And I'm most confused, but I think he later emigrated to Canada.

Or his son did, it's a little confusing just when, and that's how and more or less came to Kingston, and that's how the Sutherlands got here.

Bill: I think he had a normal childhood, and took part in all the activities around the waterfront.

The Sutherlands lived in, what, Lower Princess Street and in the Saint Paul's Church area.

narrator: At 15, and the son of a military father, young Jimmy Sutherland volunteered for service with the Midland Regiment to see action in the Real Rebellion.

Turned away because he was too young, two years later he would successfully join Kingston's 14th Princess of Wales's Own Rifles.

Meanwhile, something else was about to occupy his attention.

Bill Oliver: What he would have seen was a bunch of enthusiastic, keen cadets from RMC equally as keen and equally as enthusiastic from Queens and, as far as I can understand, like they are today, they probably, population wise or enrollment figures at the college, I think was called Queen's College in those days, and RMC came up with the sticks and supplied them to Queens.

They shared them, and the first game was a 1-0 game in the basin in the Kingston Harbor.

narrator: After seeing these early matches between RMC and Queens, young Jimmy Sutherland was mad for the new game played on the frozen basin, as were other youth in Kingston.

James Sutherland: "When school was out after 4 o'clock and on Saturdays, Kingston Harbor was covered for miles in every direction with crowds of eager players divided into various groups.

A considerable amount of real old fashioned shinny was played, but not by the military chaps," James Sutherland.

J.W.

Bill Fitsell: When the first, the first games were played in--on Kingston Harbor ice between Queens and RMC, he would have been about, let's see, 16.

So he was in his mid teens when they played those first games, and when the first--by the time the first league was formed around 1890, he was--he was one of the sterling defensemen for the Kingston Athletics.

So he just grew up with the game in Kingston.

Well, it was a very rudimentary game.

It was an onside game.

In other words, there was no forward passing.

And there was a lot of lifting that puck down the ice and mostly it was played outdoors and in various conditions of ice and weather and snow and so it was a really--it was in its formative years and-- narrator: In 1890 Sutherland stepped into adulthood, leaving his teens behind.

Hockey took a step forward in Kingston during that year as well.

The Richardson family helped a community group build a covered skating and curling rink on Queen's University's campus.

Curlers and skaters gave hockey clubs permission to use the new rink, and the game took a leap forward.

Jimmy Sutherland was now James and sporting a mustache from a role in the operetta, "Leo the Cadet."

He also debuted as a point player or defenseman for the Athletics, Kingston's first non-college hockey team.

The Athletics would end up part of the city's first organized league.

The Kingston league would become part of the Ontario Hockey Association, and they would dominate play early on.

These were early days for organized hockey in Ontario, and nobody knew that better than WAH Kerr, who called out the OHA in his article, "The Dominion Illustrated Monthly" in the 1890s.

WAH Kerr: "The game as yet has not received proper treatment at the hands of the rink authorities.

To begin with, the rinks are nearly all too small.

The lighting is only moderate.

Practice hours are scant and inconvenient.

However, it is hoped that in the future it will draw so well that a strong club will be able to demand good terms for its players.

Given a proper chance, hockey is sure to maintain its position as our foremost winter sport in its particular line, and in a few years, teams from this part of Canada will be able to hold their own against our instructors in the game in the province of Quebec."

narrator: Sutherland's hockey career came to a sudden, if temporary stop in 1892 when his father Alexander died.

The youngest of eight children, James, a graduate of a Kingston business school, had been working as a bookkeeper at a local hardware store.

With his father gone, he joined the family business and seemed to put aside his hockey days.

The same year, he cast a ballot in his first election.

He proudly told anybody who would listen in years to come, that ballot was for Sir John A. MacDonald.

While his work was shoes and his dreams were hockey, Queen's dominated the OHA, capturing the Cosby Cup.

In 1894, Sutherland became a married man, exchanging vows with the love of his life, Ethel Mary Metcalfe.

Brock: The Metcalfes were all united and are loyalists from New York or Aunt Jenny who had the cottage, they were from Staten Island, the Metcalfe, and Aunt Jenny, who had the cottage next door, the big house at the end of the point, she was a cousin of my grandmother.

And the Metcalfe end of it was from that area.

My--our grandmother's father, Metcalfe, Donald?

Yeah, he was--had been appointed member of parliament for Kingston.

We have a writing desk that belonged to him, but he lost out in the election.

He was later awarded, or he was appointed head of the prison in Portsmouth.

In fact, within the last six months, I have a copy of the appointment paper, my mother had.

I was looking through some stuff and it says 19--1892, you know?

And there's a story that kind of goes with that because my grandparents were living with them and, like, after Anita was born, some, you know, like, 1896 or something like that, and also one of my grandmother's brothers was there.

In the middle of the night, my grandfather wakes up and he hears something and he gets his brother-in-law.

And they go down and they catch this guy that has just broken out of the penitentiary across the street.

And they capture him and take him back to the pen.

narrator: By 1897, Sutherland was back on the ice, splitting his time between selling shoes and coaching hockey.

A new team had formed in Kingston, the Frontenacs, and James had been tapped as the team's manager and coach.

Pulling together some of the best talent from across the city, Sutherland's Frontenacs battled their way to the OHA finals before losing to Kitchener, known then as Berlin.

Two years later, Sutherland's Frontenacs would crush all in their way before soundly defeating the Guelph Nationals in the OHA final, capturing the John Ross Robertson Trophy.

It seemed there was nothing James Sutherland couldn't accomplish if he set his mind to it, but as the new century dawned, greater challenges were waiting.

narrator: At the dawn of the 20th century, the winds of war were starting to blow, and James Sutherland would find himself in the middle of two battles soon enough.

One was the very real, very bloody First World War.

The second was a more bizarre, more protracted war over the origins of the game he loved so dearly, the game of hockey.

As the Boer War came to an end and Canadian vets were welcomed home, Jim Sutherland took inspiration from the sacrifice made by a corporal who hailed from Amherst Island.

Sutherland penned a short poem that was reprinted in the Kingston paper: "He would go.

They could not stop him, for he came of fighting stock.

Though his widow mother pleaded, he was firm as any rock."

The very real consequences of the Boer War would stay with Sutherland his entire life.

By age 30, he had joined the Army Service Corps as a reserve officer.

When not reading military manuals, he stumbled across a book by Arthur Farrell, claiming to be a handbook on hockey.

It also gave a brief history of the sport and origin, including Montreal's contributions, ignoring any role Kingston might have played.

This irked Sutherland.

Success on the ice came to Sutherland as he coached the Frontenacs to dominating seasons.

He also toured with them stateside from Cleveland to Boston.

The OHA soon took notice.

Bill: Well, he was a great administrator, and he gave me the impression that he was thinking hockey all the time, that, you know, how can we improve the game?

He thought that junior players should have shorter periods.

The game started with 2 30-minute periods, and he recommended 3 20-minute periods, and eventually that came about.

narrator: When not coaching, he was selling shoes and selling the game of hockey to Americans.

Bill: Well, he was an evangelist.

He had such a passion for the sport, and I think maybe it might have overridden his passion for selling shoes at times, but I think it was a natural to talk about the game, and because there are hockey fans everywhere as there are today, it would lead into his--lead into the actual selling of shoes.

He also had a habit of dropping off a pair of shoes to his favorite sports writers and who were very good outlets for his campaign to have a hockey Hall of Fame.

Brock: My mother says that they lived in Washington, DC, for a while, the family, when she was young.

He had lived in Savannah when they were first married, but I guess they lived in Washington too, or at least the family was in Washington, because my mother says she remembers seeing Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade as a girl sitting on the curb.

narrator: In Kingston, his ability to turn a phrase with the press, along with a winning record had made him a local legend.

He was soon trumpeted as a father of hockey by the "British Whig," the same paper which was quick to publish a report of Kingston as the birthplace of hockey.

The title "Father of hockey" would be bestowed on him by other publications and officials.

"The birthplace of hockey was Kingston," read the "Whig's" story in 1903, pitching Sutherland as a source without ever quoting him.

Kingston not only produced many of the brightest lights among the public men of Canada, for example, Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald, but it also produced the game today that is conceded to be the national winter game of Canada.

"The Toronto Star" ran the story with Sutherland's name as originator, and the first shot in the war over hockey's origins had been fired.

"The Kingston Daily News" fired back that the game had been introduced by cadets from Halifax, citing an article in the "Dominion Illustrated Monthly."

The debate would rage on before going silent for a few years, only to be kicked up again in 1908 in Toronto.

The sports editor of "The Toronto News" gave credit to Montreal and a team from McGill in 1881.

Ed Grenda: With regard to the origins of the game, it should be pointed out that there was an earlier game played in Montreal in 1876, and there was another game, earlier game, played in Ottawa shortly thereafter in Montreal.

So consequently, Kingston is not the first place.

I would consider Kingston to be the cradle of hockey because significant developments in the game took place under the guidance of Captain Sutherland and others who are associated with the game in Kingston.

So I would essentially say it's a cradle of the game rather than the origin of the game of hockey.

It should also be pointed out that, when the game was played in Kingston, one of the captains of the RMC team came with a set of rules.

But where did the set of rules came from?

It came from the eastern part of the country at that time.

narrator: As the decade wound down, Sutherland was silent on the subject of the birthplace of hockey.

His attention would soon be taken up with a bloodier conflict.

In 1916, the war in Europe two years old, Sutherland enlisted for active service with the 149th Battalion in Kingston.

As a newly elected OHA president, he called for a great army of hockey players and officials to come forward from across Canada.

James: "There should be only one conclusion, and that should be to exchange the stick and puck for a Ross rifle and bayonet.

With every man doing his bit, Canada will raise an army of brains and brawn from our hockey enthusiasts, the like of which the world has never seen.

The whistle has sounded.

Let every man play the greatest game of his life," Captain James Sutherland.

narrator: The appeal worked.

Close to 800 former players and officials enlisted within weeks of hearing Sutherland's words.

As the 149th was shipped overseas and absorbed into the 95th Battalion, the OHA held its annual general meeting in Toronto, where an absent Sutherland received unanimous re-election as president.

By the time he had settled into his posting in England, Sutherland was, as a soldier, a man past his prime.

A fact not lost on the 47-year-old quartermaster reduced to posing for a picture on a dispatcher's motorcycle.

James: "War is war, and no man with good healthy red blood in his veins wishes to avoid the responsibility that the phrase 'on active service' entails.

But when one looks around and sees the net result of one of these raids, the slaughter of innocent girls and women, a feeling of intense indignation that one cannot jump into a waiting airplane and go up after the swine.

Who can stoop to desecrate the holy Sabbath with such contemptible deeds?"

Captain James Sutherland.

narrator: George Richardson and Scottie Davidson had come from the Sutherland hockey system in Kingston.

They were two of his favorite players.

When war was declared, the two legendary players were in Quebec City together.

"England is at war with Germany," shouted the headline in "The Quebec Chronicle."

"That means me," said Richardson as he turned to his friend Davidson.

Corporal Davidson was the first professional hockey player to enlist for service.

He would be killed in action in France, June 15, 1915.

Captain Richardson was on assignment in no man's land in France on a cold February night when he was gunned down by German rifles.

He died the next day, February 10, 1916, from his wounds.

He was buried at Bailleul.

The loss of his two favorite players in war hit Sutherland particularly hard.

When the war ended, November 11th, 1918, Captain Sutherland was in Paris.

He took time to visit the grave of his friend Richardson.

There he was struck with the idea of a memorial trophy in honor of the players who gave their lives in the war.

A memorial cup to be played for at the highest junior level in hockey.

Don: He was the guy and, as everybody knows, the Memorial Cup he had the--he was so powerful, he named the Memorial Cup after our veterans in the wars and that, and it was him that came back from the First World War and said, "We're going to have a Memorial Cup."

And today we play for the Memorial Cup, so that's how powerful he was.

narrator: As the 1920s took hold, so too did a hockey myth, thanks in large part to the work of Sutherland.

He claimed the right to retain the rank of captain after his army days and would be called "captain" the rest of his life.

Hockey and mythmaking would take up much of his time now along with selling shoes.

Bill: I wondered about his life and, of course, in those days there was a lot of travel by train, salesmen traveled from town to town by train.

They would book into the best hotel in town, and in his correspondence there's the letterheads from all the famous hotels across Canada where he stayed and where inevitably he would contact the press and talk about his dream of having a sort of hockey castle to honor and commemorate the greats of the game.

He must have been a very good salesman because he covered the eastern seaboard and into the central states, Saint Louis, and so he was certainly respected by his bosses.

And in fact, the company that he last worked for made a good donation to the Hall of Fame.

narrator: In a sleepy upstate New York village, myth-making of another sort was taking hold as another ball and stick game searched for its creation tale.

Tom Heitz: Well, you have to go back to the 19th century when Albert Spalding, a founder of the National Association of Baseball Clubs, the first professional league in this country, and later a co-founder of the National League, Spalding, of course, was a eminent ballplayer, a pitcher in his own playing time, but he later became a team owner and as he got older and his career went on in baseball, he became the owner and operator of a huge sporting goods enterprise in this country, selling all sorts of athletic equipment.

He was curious about the origins of baseball.

And he had arguments with various people about where baseball came from.

As a lad, he had--a boy growing up in Illinois, he was taught to play baseball by a returning Civil War veteran, but he never understood the early history of the game.

And he was very curious about that.

One of his friends, a man who worked for him, actually, a sports writer named Henry Chadwick, who was known as one of the fathers of baseball because he created the box score.

He was a British journalist who settled in America in the 1850s and began to publicize baseball and to publish annual guides and reports.

Spalding later employed Chadwick, and he and Chadwick often debated the origins of the game.

Chadwick felt that it was a British game similar to British rounders.

Spalding disagreed.

He felt it was a uniquely American game, and he longed to know who the inventor of the game or who played the first game.

Spalding wanted a creation story, and early in the 20th century, Spalding used his influence with other baseball executives to create what became known as the Mills Commission, taking its name after AG Mills, a friend of Spalding's, and other members of the Mills Commission, all baseball executives and elder statesmen, if you will, like Spalding.

And for four years they solicited evidence from any source they could find as to who might have invented this game that had become the national pastime or known as the national pastime.

The Mills Commission received letters from a man named Abner Graves who had grown up here in Cooperstown in the 1830s.

As a young man, he later left Cooperstown in the 1840s and went west, became a mining engineer, and had a long career.

By 1904-'05, Graves was in Denver, Colorado, plying his trade as a mining engineer, and he wrote to the Mills Commission with a story of how he had been present when baseball was played for the first time here in Cooperstown and that they had been taught to play the game the modern way by Abner Doubleday, who he thought was the Civil War general, a hero of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Now that General Doubleday had died in 1894.

The Doubleday that Graves probably was referring to was another young boy, a cousin of the Major General's also named Abner, a member of another branch of the Doubleday family that lived here in Cooperstown.

So I call this the story of the three Abners, Abner Doubleday, the general; Abner Doubleday, the cousin; and Abner Graves, the informant of the Mills Commission.

But in any case, whatever the confusion may have been, Graves's story made a lot of sense to Spalding.

And this came in an era in American life when inventions were the order of the day.

Thomas Edison was perhaps the most famous American, an inventor.

Other things were being invented.

The motor car was starting to take over the roads and crowd out the horse.

Modern life in the progressive era in the early 20th century was an exciting time.

And Spalding played into this, and he wanted desperately to find a creation story for baseball.

And so the Mills Commission was divided on the question.

Some felt that it was that baseball was simply derived from English stick and ball games and so on.

Others were ready to adopt the Abner Graves story, and in 1908, the Commission issued its report.

There was a minority report, but the findings essentially were what Graves had told them, that the game had been invented here in 1839 or 1840, they said.

1839 eventually became the date that Abner Doubleday, the general, had taught boys here in Cooperstown how to play the game the modern way in 1839, and that became baseball's official creation story at that time.

The people in Cooperstown learned of this on March 29th, 1908, when a story to that effect was published in "The Freeman's Journal," our local weekly paper.

That paper is still published here, by the way.

narrator: In 1939, baseball celebrated its centennial with the opening of a Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.

Captain Sutherland was in the village shortly after it opened.

It was here that Sutherland was struck with the greatest idea: to build a shrine to hockey's greats, a Cooperstown of hockey.

Tom: Well, it was a solid brick structure, it was architect designed.

It was a relatively modest amount of money that put it together.

Part of that money was borrowed from a bank, part of it funded by private contributions, as I recall.

It contained the best of the memorabilia collection that had been assembled up to that point.

They had been collecting things from major league players and organizations and people, individuals, since about 1935 in preparation for the 1939 celebration.

Bill: And that certainly sparked a fire in Captain Sutherland because he thought that the Americans honor their game and their great players.

Canada certainly should have a shrine for the great sport of hockey, and so he's--he quietly started to mention that, and then by 1942 he introduced a motion to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association to investigate the origins of the game.

And there wasn't really any talk about a Hall of Fame at first, but he felt that if he got people talking about where the game started, and he certainly believed at that time that the game originated in Kingston, that he would be well on the way and that they would--the two would be combined.

Whatever city or community was chosen as the origin of the game, that would automatically be the site for the Hall of Fame.

narrator: Opening the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown also reopened the debate over hockey's origins in Canada.

"Old-time hockey, like baseball, suffers from a lack of authoritative history," wrote Baz O'Meara.

"There is so much obscurity about its beginnings, too little known of its early history, its great games, great personalities of the past."

Bill: After all, he'd been a historian and collector of memorabilia and artifacts, some of the sticks used in the early game, and so he was really ahead of his time and I think he--it was a difficult time because it was in--and when Canadians were marching off to war.

Nearly every house and every street in the city had someone either going to war or working in--on the war effort, so it was a--I think it was a difficult sell, but he did, he sold it to the CHA that they should--that they should look into the history of the game and, of course, he had already been collecting information on the--on the stories of the various players and the games, so he had his own version of how the hockey started in Kingston.

narrator: In 1941, with Montreal pushing hard to be named birthplace of hockey, Captain Sutherland was tasked with writing a report on the origins of the game for the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

In his report, he was also to discuss an appropriate location for a hockey Hall of Fame.

News of this report was cheered in Montreal.

"Surely somewhere somehow records can be found to prove how and when the game started," commented a writer for "The Gazette."

"If such a memorial is to be put on such an enduring foundation, it should be built in Montreal," declared Baz O'Meara of "The Montreal Star."

He wrote that Kingston and Ottawa would lay claim as well as Toronto.

"Toronto isn't considered for a number of reasons," were the words that ended his column.

narrator: As spring 1942 approached, Sutherland and his committee finalized their report.

The time had come to present to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

By 1943, a civil war of sorts had broken out in Canada's hockey community over the origins of the game.

This war of words almost distracted from Sutherland's next salvo to get Kingston the recognition he felt it deserved as a hockey pioneer, to land it the honor of playing host to a newly constructed hockey Hall of Fame.

Bill: 1941-'42 was really the start of the Hall of Fame movement in Kingston, and then it wouldn't have happened without the zeal and the passion of Captain Sutherland.

Don: Well, he was the guy, and if we hadn't had--to be truthful, we would have never had a chance, if he hadn't have been the head of it.

narrator: When Sutherland presented his idea to the CAHA for a hockey Hall of Fame, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

In April 1943, Kingston invited the CAHA to establish a hockey shrine along the lines of Cooperstown.

And by September that year, both the National Hockey League and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association sanctioned Kingston as the most central site to erect a Hall of Fame as a memorial dedicated to perpetuate the memories of the men who have done so much to develop nationally and internationally Canada's winter sport, hockey.

Mark Potter: It's the way we tell the story.

The focus is on history.

The focus is on the evolution of the game, and I think for that reason, most other halls of fame today are really focused on the current era and some of the more recently retired players.

Our focus is on the origins, the roots of the game, and how hockey evolved, and I think we're really a museum, and that makes us different than most other halls of fame.

narrator: "Throughout the 1930s, Captain James T. Sutherland of Kingston, Ontario, a man who had devoted his life to the furtherance of amateur hockey, campaigned for the erection of a hockey Hall of Fame.

He suggested Kingston as a proper place for such an edifice, claiming hockey had originated there.

Halifax and Montreal frequently challenged these claims, but neither community had a drumbeater to match Sutherland's enthusiasm.

They lost by default."

Frank J. Selky.

Debate over the birth of hockey was far from settled, but it seemed Kingston was destined for a greater prize.

It was now aiming to become the Cooperstown of hockey.

Joan Rippell: I would go in after school, which would be about 4:30, 5:00, and I'd often stay for supper, you know, so I was there in the early evening.

The phone would ring and there'd be long discussions about who was going to donate what, you know, and where the funding was going to come from and all the pre-business of the Hall, and then he would say--someone would say, "Well, we'll bring this into you and we can go over it," you know, like a plan, the early plans.

I remember seeing him with the early plans, architect's plans for the Hall, and he was showing me and other people in the family and saying, "Oh, you know, it's gonna be like this and it's gonna be here."

And I don't think they had picked the site yet then, and-- but they had the plans for the building itself, you know.

narrator: In April 1944 when the CAHA met for its 27th AGM, Sutherland, a past president of the organization, had the chance for one last push for support.

He got it and more.

George Panter, a delegate from Gravenhurst, offered, "After 55 years of devotion to the game, Captain Sutherland should be the CAHA's nomination for membership in this new Hall."

"This memorial is not for Sutherland," responded the captain.

"Once I am snuffed out, my name will continue to be emblazoned on a stone at a very nice place.

For Mr.

Panter's edification, I will be lying within 50 feet of Sir John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada."

"I have heard the name," replied Panter.

"But I submit, Mr.

Chairman, that Sir John A. MacDonald would probably consider it a greater honor to be lying within 50 feet of James T.

Sutherland."

Kingston had the Hall.

Captain Sutherland had the vision to create a Cooperstown of Hockey, a campus with a museum, and a Hall of Fame on a grand parcel of land.

Stumbling blocks remained, not the least of which was money.

Bill: In the '40s after Kingston was awarded the Hall of Fame by the NHL and CHA, the City of Kingston was a great supporter of the Hall and put up several thousand dollars to start it off, and Mayor Stuart Crawford was a strong supporter of the Hall.

There were a number of people, keen supporters, like Wally Elmer and James D. Saint Remy, who devoted their lives, Magistrate Garvin, worked tirelessly for the Hall and tried to, you know, raise the sufficient funds at a most difficult time when the building costs were rising and other more important projects were on the table.

Don: I remember we used to go to the Jock Harty Arena and they used to bring the NHL teams in.

They were raising money for the Hall and we were all excited.

I used to be in a place called the bullpen, and it was at the end of the arena, and it was screened, and we had to stand, and we paid 50 cents to get in.

We were so happy.

Bill: Yes, and they raised thousands of dollars, you know, all paid by the fans and then the various national hockey organizations, American Hockey Associations, contributed funds and, you know, right down to a fan from Brooklyn sent in $5.

narrator: "Dear Captain Sutherland, the governors of the National Hockey League take great pleasure in forwarding the enclosed check in the amount of $7,500 as a donation to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

With kind regards, I am yours sincerely, Norman Alexander Red Dutton.

June 18, 1945."

As money came in, the NHL had pledged not just support but financial support to the sum of $30,000 for the project as well.

The committee in Kingston was gaining support from across Canada, and hockey artifacts started to arrive.

Joan: My grandmother had to find a place to store all this stuff.

I remember when Syl Apps came in with some hockey--a special hockey stick.

I can't remember who it was from now, but it was some very special hockey stick, I guess it had made a winning goal or something for whoever it belonged to.

And a couple of shirts and my grandmother was standing there shaking her head, you know, where we gonna put this?

Where we gonna-- narrator: As the collection of hockey memorabilia grew, so did the first cracks in the hall's foundation.

The committee struggled with City Hall to find a suitable place to build the planned shrine.

Bill: Yeah, they had a difficult time locating a site.

The--one of the early sites was near the courthouse.

And they even got the Frontenac County Council to lay aside a person--a site to the west of the main courthouse and that was opposed by certain people in town, and so that project was dropped and they also bought an old church on Brock Street that became the fire hall.

And that was shot down by the NHL.

It was rather ironic because the NHL located their Hall in an old--in a bank building in downtown Toronto.

narrator: Kingston's winning bid for the Hall wasn't without controversy.

In Montreal, the city that believed it saw the first hockey game, the decision was met with outrage.

"No statements can be strong enough to condemn the hoax which the Kingston claimants have perpetrated on the sports-loving public of Canada.

No amount of eyewash, backwash, or whitewash can convince any individual who has seen the evidence in my possession that Kingston has even the slightest shred of an historical claim either to the origin of ice hockey or to the proposed Hall of Fame," Professor EM Orlick, "The McGill News."

narrator: Orlick would continue to blast away at Kingston's claim as the birthplace of hockey as well as its suitability as host for a Hall of Fame.

He argued that evidence pointed to Halifax as the seat of ice hockey.

From Kingston came the voices of defense.

"The idea of the Hall is to perpetuate the memory of the great stars and leaders of the game, not to honor any special place as the scene of the first game.

Museums are established not where relics are found, but in places where they may be seen, studied, or respected by the greatest numbers," William J. Walsh, sports editor, "Kingston Week Standard."

narrator: Kingston's Hall had two key NHL supporters, Clarence Campbell and Frank Selke.

Selke had been collecting sticks and photos in hopes of seeing them be part of a hockey shrine.

Campbell rooted for Sutherland, at least early on.

Bill: Well, I think they were two great lovers of the game.

And both were old soldiers, and I think they highly respected each other.

Frank J. Selke: "For a few years, things looked rosy for the future of the Hall in Kingston.

Everything was going along fine.

I was not on any committee, but like others, I did all I could to speed up the aims of those in charge.

Jim Sutherland told us the City of Kingston would grant a suitable site, and the president of the National Hockey League was authorized by the governors to give the Kingston people all the assistance possible," Frank J. Selke.

narrator: A Hall of Fame in name only.

A committee was struck early on, and the first class of inductees was named.

Each year another class added, and soon these first inductees became known as the Kingston 40.

Captain Sutherland, over his own objections, was an early inductee as a builder of the game.

Frank: "One rather pleasing feature was the method of honoring those elected before sellout hockey crowds in the home city of the men so honored.

Boston had a big night when Dit Clapper made the grade.

In Montreal, the fans honored Aurele Joliat, Newsy Lalonde, and others with special presentations over and above their Hall of Fame citation," Frank J. Selke.

James: What can I say further than to tell you that we are expecting to have the hockey hall of fame building erected not later, we hope, than next spring.

We have in the vicinity of $100,000 established towards this building.

And we're expecting to have it; in fact, we have been guaranteed a site on the courthouse grounds in Kingston, Ontario, and singularly enough, these courthouse grounds are strictly and solely in the County of Frontenac.

Jim Bastable: "The International Hockey Hall of Fame, a shrine born of curiosity 10 years ago as a memorial to the game's greats and founders, is on the rocks of neglect.

It exists only in the imagination of those who created it and the select few who were elevated to its ranks.

The ground for this edifice hasn't been broken yet, and its bankroll is only $65,000.

Organized hockey apparently is doing little about it," Jim Bastable.

narrator: As the 1950s dawned, much of the optimism that greeted the hall's early days faded away.

The harsh reality of fundraising and seeking a location had settled on Sutherland and the Kingston Committee.

Hometown support was slipping, and everywhere he looked, Sutherland faced attacks in the press.

As Christmas 1950 approached, discouraging words came from NHL President Clarence Campbell.

The NHL had yet to hand over the remainder of the money pledged.

In his letter, Campbell advised against immediate construction in view of world conditions and the priority of materials.

He added that "nobody builds anything today that is not essential.

No one could describe the Hall of Fame as an essential structure at this time, and I think we would alienate the support of a great many people whose support is necessary if the project is to be a real success," concluded Campbell.

In 1951, some members of the Kingston Hall Committee wanted to push on with building at the courthouse location.

But another Kingston project captured the community's imagination: the building of a hockey arena.

The Kingston Community Memorial Center, the first new arena built in the city in 25 years.

When it opened in fall of '51, a crowd of 3100 was on hand to see the Belleville Redman whip the home side 12-4.

A visit from Clarence Campbell to see the newly constructed arena and drop the puck for one of the hockey games helped assure the Kingston Group, even if they had only pulled together a little over $60,000 in bonds and cash, far from the $150,000 needed.

Clarence Campbell: "NHL governors are not interested in any project except Kingston.

Outside of that, even if the NHL governors were interested in another project, it is out of their power to change the site agreed upon by all the governing bodies of hockey," Clarence Campbell.

James: When our International Hockey Hall of Fame is built next spring or earlier, I wish to extend a very hearty welcome to all who are listening to me at any time to visit Kingston and see the honor in which these different players have been attributed to.

It is a fact that we are perhaps a little overzealous in talking about hockey, but just as the United States of America believes in its baseball superiority, we in Canada feel that hockey is a game we are entitled to feel very happy about.

I thank you for listening to this tedious talk.

narrator: Despite Sutherland's optimistic radio address, a blow came in 1952 when the approved site for the Hall near the county courthouse caused so much public outcry, the hall's supporters were forced to look elsewhere.

James A. Roy: "Even in this commercial age, many Kingstonians would rather do without the tourist money than allow the amenities in this city to be tampered with."

James A. Roy.

Joan: Well, I--he seemed to take it in stride, you know.

He would often say, "Well, we're gonna get this funding eventually and we're gonna-- this and that's gonna be done," and I think he always hoped to see it built and open, you know, but he said everything's getting all prepared, it's well prepared, and he said as we just have to get some more funding from here or there and they'll get the building started.

I think he was very confident about it.

I don't think he ever had any doubts that they wouldn't get it, you know.

Bill: There was just a wave of support for it and, of course, former hockey players like Bill Cook and Bun Cook and Gus Marker, and Wally Elmer was a prime mover, and he was a great community supporter and he devoted many years to it and was the last surviving member before his death, so there were a keen number of people.

I think though they, when Stuart Crawford, the mayor, died, they lost the impetus as far as city council and city hall was concerned, but over the years the city has contributed, and major--not major funds but money and effort and support.

Brock: Well, I don't know exactly.

I didn't know if it was a question of funding.

Joan brings it up and she remembers she was closer to the whole thing.

I do remember the original plan.

There was talk of building this rather elegant structure right near the courthouse, across from the cricket field there.

And that sort of fell through, and I don't know if that was they couldn't get the--see, I had an idea they couldn't get the site, but whether it was funding or some combination, and then that was probably '48 or sometime around in there in the mid-'40s, you know, or middle-late '40s, and then it kind of lay fallow and then I hear, "Well, they're looking at this and that," and then it came to fruition.

narrator: In 1954, Captain Sutherland and his wife Ethel celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.

That same year, Montreal writer Dink Carroll wrote that Kingston's Hall appears to have fallen flat on its face.

Sutherland's patience with chasing local money for the Hall seemed to have already worn thin, complaining that "there was obviously a competition in Kingston to see who could be the wealthiest resident in Cataraqui Cemetery."

Mark: There were a lot of delays.

There were a lot of challenges.

There was a lot of infighting about the location of this Hall of Fame, and the National Hockey League and Clarence Campbell were certainly very much a part of that conversation or involved in that conversation.

They wanted to see this Hall of Fame in a prominent location in Kingston, and during that time, you're right.

I mean, whether it was municipal politicians or the people involved with the Hall of Fame, there was a lot of infighting about what is the best location, and going hand in hand with that was the fundraising challenges.

The reality was is that we weren't finding the money we needed to build a proper facility and the price tag kept going up.

There had been some promises of more money from the National Hockey League.

Their one and only donation was $7500 which was not nearly enough.

narrator: In 1955 came news from Toronto that Canada's Sports Hall of Fame would be built at the Canadian National Exhibition.

The development was met with contempt in Kingston.

Mike Rodden: "The CNE office would be an entity of no historical local value.

It will be visited by millions, but it could have a hollow sound.

Moreover, it and its builders will be held up to scorn if by accident the actual birthplace of hockey is ever discovered, and that is something that isn't likely to happen," Mike Rodden.

narrator: On September 16, 1955, just shy of his 85th birthday, Captain James Sutherland died.

His health had been in decline for the last two years.

Sutherland was buried in Cataraqui Cemetery a short distance from Sir John A. MacDonald just as he had always wished.

A granite obelisk marks his grave with markings from the original crest of the Hockey Hall of Fame planned for Kingston.

Brock: I came down for my grandfather's funeral and not my grandmother's.

I was in--I was going into my senior in college, so I was 21 that summer.

We had come down during the summer.

That was the last time I saw my grandparents.

Well, I saw my grandmother alive after my grandfather died, but the last time I saw them in '88, he came down for a long weekend.

narrator: "The late Jim Sutherland never realized his ambition of having the Hall built in Kingston," wrote "The Star's" Baz O'Meara.

"It is probable that the illness that resulted in his death was emphasized when other auspices decided to admit hockey players into their athletic Hall of Fame.

For example, Toronto."

While Sutherland's passing made headlines in sports pages across Canada, the Sutherland family would be rocked again when his wife died nine days later.

Joan: I was down from Toronto from work.

I was going back to Toronto that night.

I stopped in at the hospital and she had this Irish nurse, and she said, she said, "You go kiss your grandma goodbye," she said, you know, she held back the oxygen tent thing.

She said, "Just kiss her goodbye."

She said, "She won't be here in the morning."

So, and then the family told me after she died, they called me and said, "Well, don't come back for the funeral," because I'd just been down for Grandpa's the weekend before, you know?

I always felt I should have gone, but in a way it was--I had said goodbye to her, so it wasn't too bad.

Phil: No fault of Kingston's, I guess no fault of Toronto's, it just--the steamroller effect started coming and Toronto had the hockey team, they had the support, they had the money behind it.

And as Conn Smythe started word out, he obviously worked toward the other five governors at the time of the NHL and which they all pushed for Toronto as well.

narrator: As the Kingston bid for a Hall of Fame floundered after Sutherland's death, a movement to resurrect the Hall in an NHL market was growing.

The charge to bring the Hall to Toronto was led by Frank Selke, the same man who had been quietly rooting for the Hall to succeed in Kingston.

Frank: "Unfortunately, Jim Sutherland died.

After a few feeble flurries, enthusiasm for the Kingston Hall seemed to have died with him.

The first official rebuff came when we were told that the plot of land selected by the committee was not available.

Apparently some considered it hallowed ground, no place for a building honoring professional athletes.

After some years of inaction, I feared the idea would wither completely.

At a later meeting with the NHL, I pleaded with the owners of the National League teams to revive interest in the Hall of Fame.

I feared that if they didn't do so in our time, the Hall would never be built."

Frank J. Selke.

narrator: Selke was renowned and respected as one of the best hockey minds in the NHL, and he could count Conn Smythe as a supporter as well.

Kelly McParland: Well, it was a very complicated relationship.

You had probably two of the smartest hockey minds in Canada, maybe the two smartest minds in Canada, but completely contrasting personalities, you know, Conn Smythe was aggressive, confident, cocky, brittle, could be very hard to get along with, had to always be the boss, was never wrong.

And Selke was diplomatic, self-effacing.

He liked to cooperate.

He was the kind of guy who smoothed over waves.

Smythe always had to be number one, and Selke was quite happy-- he would have been quite happy to be number two to Conn Smythe for his whole life if Smythe hadn't driven him away from the leagues.

So it was a very difficult relationship, and Smythe never understood how Selke could be happy being a deputy.

He was a deputy, that was fine with him.

Smythe could never understand that.

As far as he was concerned, you wanted to be number one, you wanted to be at the top of the hill, you know, you wanted to be the boss, and he didn't--he never gave Selke the credit he deserved.

He never appreciated how smart a hockey mind Selke had.

That changed over the years, obviously, once Selke left Toronto, went to Montreal and started winning Stanley Cups of his own, obviously Smythe saw what was there.

Frank: "Conn Smythe of Toronto, who always enjoyed ribbing me, asked, 'Are you expecting to follow Jim Sutherland, or do you infer that some of the rest of us are about to pass away?'

Naturally, he got his laugh, but when President Clarence Campbell supported my plea, the owner suggested I form a committee.

We were to locate new Hall of Fame enthusiasts and try to revive interest at Kingston.

We made a few inquiries but got nowhere," Frank J. Selke.

Phil: I mean, obviously, the original plans were gonna be in Kingston, and Captain Sutherland was behind a lot of that.

And back in the '50s, it wasn't really going a lot of places.

No faults of anyone, I guess.

I guess it was just part of the times.

Conn Smythe, who was also a visionary of the game that was in administration and a historian, thought the Hall should be in one of the original six cities.

Bill: People like Connie Smythe who was--who I really respected greatly, he never really felt that the Hall could sustain itself and be long lasting and productive in a small community, and so he was really, of course, Toronto oriented and he was the leader along with Frank Selke in seeing that the site was located at the Canadian National Exhibition Grounds in Toronto.

Kelly: Selke realized that the guy who--to get this to happen once it was approved, the man who would make it happen would be Conn Smythe, because Smythe would bully people, you know, bulldoze them, he'd get the money, he would just make sure that it happened, so he asked Smythe to run the building committee.

Smyth said, fine, he'll do that.

Once he could give orders to people, he was quite happy.

And he also said he'd be in charge of raising the money.

Him and Jim Norris did that.

Jim Norris was with the Red Wings, and the Norris family had money coming out of their ears, far more money than Conn Smythe ever had.

narrator: As the Toronto project proceeded, the Kingston Group stubbornly protected their claim to their name, International Hockey Hall of Fame.

They also were forced to take care of house cleaning issues when legal counsel advised them they hadn't had a board meeting in some time.

In Toronto, the "Globe and Mail" was reporting a new Hall of Fame would be ready on the CNE grounds by 1960.

Clarence Campbell sounded more cautious.

"Considerable work has to be done by the CNE or the City of Toronto to put the proposal into shape so that it can be dealt with," said Campbell.

For Selke, the project pushed forward and his friendship with Smythe was a great help.

Kelly: Smythe and Selke met each other in 1915 when they were playing on opposing hockey teams.

Smythe played for a varsity hockey team at the U of T and Selke played for a team in Kitchener.

And they were--they played in Toronto for, oh, I forget the trophy they were playing for, but it was for--it was for a championship game.

They played two years in a row actually, and Smythe's team won both times.

It was an OHA championship of some kind.

And on Smythe's team was a guy named Roper Gouinlock who went on, he fought in World War I and started an architectural firm.

He built Conn Smythe's home in Baby Point in Toronto, and when, 40 years later, it came time to build the Hockey Hall of Fame, Smythe got Gouinlock's architectural firm to design it, which gave him an opportunity to fight with Gouinlock constantly about what kind of building to put up and to get involved in every detail of the situation.

So, he got in.

He did, he was, you know, he was a mania about detail.

He was the kind of guy who wanted to control everything about a project, and so once the building started, he was deeply involved in it.

narrator: By 1961, Conn Smythe had micromanaged the project to completion.

He had even pushed for certain inductees.

Toronto had a Hockey Hall of Fame, and while the city celebrated the hall's grand opening, Kingston appeared to have nothing.

Phil: Well, when the Hall opened in 1961, obviously location was one of the places.

They were moving in the Canadian National Exhibition Grounds, which was a Canadian institution at the time.

It was their national exhibition.

So we got the location through the city.

It was--the economy was great for us.

It was great for the counselors and that.

narrator: June 1960, Kingston City Council passed a motion to appoint three council members to the Hockey Hall of Fame Committee in an effort to kickstart the project.

That same year, the OHA and CAHA, both early supporters and donors to the cause, came searching for answers.

The CAHA simply wanted their money back.

"It is the feeling," wrote the CAHA president Jack Roxborough, "that more than ample time has been taken by your committee to do this work, and it is only fair that this money be now returned to the CAHA."

A site was quickly chosen and agreed upon: a corner plot of land near the Memorial Center.

The first floor was to be a public auditorium.

The Hall would operate out of the second floor.

The building would be managed by the Community Memorial Center Board.

The decision did not meet with universal approval.

Jack Roxborough: "Jim Sutherland originated the idea of a hockey Hall of Fame, and it is a tragedy that nothing has been done about it in Kingston before he died.

The Kingston people made no effort to build a Hall until the Toronto site was proposed.

Now it's too late," Jack Roxborough, president, Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

narrator: Others weighed in on the debate over the need for a second Hall of Fame, including Canadian press sports editor Jack Sullivan, who called Sutherland a disillusioned 85-year-old man.

When NHL President Clarence Campbell spoke out, the longtime Sutherland supporter made his thoughts quite clear: "It is obvious that Kingston Hall will be very limited in scope, and I don't know what the significance of being elected to it will be."

On November 16, 1961, Captain Sutherland's son James A. Sutherland helped turn the soil for the building that would become the Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston.

A CP story ran in Toronto's "Globe and Mail": "Construction is set to start at once, ending 135 years of planning by local hockey enthusiasts," it read.

"But there is one catch: A Hockey Hall of Fame, which opened last summer in Toronto is the one which officials now recognize."

Mark: It was a real struggle to find a location for this Hall of Fame, and ultimately that led to the Hall of Fame moving to Toronto.

It was awarded to Kingston in 1943.

A fundraising campaign began, but it was the war years.

It was the Second World War.

Even after the war, construction costs escalated.

There was very little financial support from the National Hockey League, an initial donation of $7,500.

Each of the six teams in the National Hockey League was to have given us $5,000 each.

That never happened.

So it was a very long journey to try to raise the money that was required to build this, and eventually by 1958, some 15 years later, Captain Sutherland had passed away.

The Hall of Fame was still not built and as a result, it was moved to Toronto.

narrator: Four years later, on July 29, 1965, after countless hours of fundraising and construction, Kingston's Hall opened to the public.

The opening ceremony was modest in comparison to Toronto's in the summer of 1961, but the Hall was open.

On hand for the ceremony was a Conn Smythe favorite, Syl Apps.

Kelly: Some people thought it was a bit strange he would compare--he did compare Apps to one of the thoroughbreds.

Smyth loved the ponies.

He was involved in horses his whole life.

He owned a stable, very successful racing stable.

He believed in bloodlines and that people were born with certain strengths, and that they showed that in their character, in the way they carry themselves, in the way they behaved, how they reacted under pressure.

And Syl Apps was exactly the kind of person that he admired so much.

You know, he was devastated when Apps retired.

He begged him to reconsider and I think at one point Apps did reconsider, but there was a bit of a problem because the captaincy had already been given to Ted Kennedy at that point, and I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think either Apps didn't want to take it away from Kennedy or Kennedy didn't-- Smythe didn't want to ask for it.

I'm not sure, but in any case that was a bit of a problem.

But Smythe would have loved to have him back, you know.

He felt Apps retired way too early, which he did, you know, he easily could have--he could have gone four or five more years scoring goals, and he would have just--Smythe would have loved to have him there.

He was a great admirer of him.

narrator: Long retired from hockey, Apps was on hand as MPP for Kingston and the Islands.

When it came time for him to comment on the new Hall, he said, "I think it will go over big with tourists."

Mark: Really what happened was the Kingston Memorial Center, which was the primary ice surface in Kingston, had opened its doors in the early 1950s.

I believe a lot of people felt at that time there was a synergy.

Build the Hall of Fame beside Kingston's most prominent hockey arena, and there's going to be a spillover effect that people that are attending hockey games will come visit the Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that synergy ever existed and it was probably built ultimately in the wrong location.

It's primarily a residential neighborhood and certainly the tourists in today's world that visit Kingston are mainly centered and focused in the downtown core.

Phil: We got a building, but it wasn't museum quality.

I mean, it was a building, it was on the Canadian National Exhibition Grounds.

Right behind us was the food building.

Beside it was the horse building, so we're in a tourist area exhibition place.

And I mean, parking wasn't the best.

Getting there from downtown Toronto was very, very difficult by public transit and that.

You had to drive.

But the biggest thing, we didn't have the daily traffic that went by, and that's what we needed and that's what anybody in business will tell you, location, location, location.

narrator: By the late 1960s, both Kingston and Toronto had halls of fame up and running.

Toronto drew crowds and press attention with every class of inductees.

Kingston struggled in the shadow, a Hall in half a building in a residential neighborhood.

Bill: The--Kingston was awarded the Canadian Midget Tournament.

And I was involved with the committee on the program end of that.

There were ten teams from the provinces and the territories that came here and the first Midget Championship was held here and the Hall of Fame was the center point of it and at that time it was a one-story operation, second story over a public hall below.

And it was a very quiet operation run through the Memorial Center Board.

And so I was--I had joined the "Wig Standard" as district editor and I was just surprised and shocked at how the Hall was just sort of lying dormant.

I wrote a story called "Hockey Hall of Fame or Hockey Hall of Shame," which really provoked a lot of people, but I did make some proposal for revitalizing it.

narrator: With an aggressive fundraising drive which ultimately led to the newly acquired space and improved exhibits, in 1978 an official reopening of the Hall was held with Clarence Campbell and Frank Selke on hand.

Don: Well, it was very special.

It wasn't far from me.

They opened it up very--I think about a block from where I lived.

So, it was very, very--and I thought of Captain Sutherland very, you know, and I thought, wouldn't it have been nice and he wasn't there.

And one day I thought of all the guys not to be here is him and how proud he would have been for the opening, so.

narrator: From here, the Hall enjoyed a brief renaissance during the late '70s and '80s.

Mark: I think having Gordie Howe come here and present the sweaters worn by himself and his three sons was a distinct highlight.

Yeah, one of the other highlights was to have Bobby Hall present his collection or display his collection to the Hall and, of course he was--he was and still is big in the game's memory.

Mark: Probably the best years would have been in the 1980s and there's a--there's a few reasons for that.

One would be at that time, we had three retired gentlemen who basically lived here.

I mean, they were here all the time as volunteers, Doug Nichols, Fred Harkness, and Amy Lalonde and, as a result of that, the doors were open here pretty much 52 weeks a year and if people just happened to stop by, the place was actually open and you had one of those three gentlemen here to provide a tour and that sort of thing.

So, our highest attendance numbers certainly happened during the 1980s.

We also had the 100 Years of Hockey which happened in 1986, and that was really a year-long celebration and it was really focused on the first game of hockey that was played here between Queens and RMC in 1886, and there was many, many events that happened over the course of that year to really make it a special year.

And I think that was a pinnacle for this Hall of Fame.

narrator: Despite some brief success the Hall enjoyed during the decade, it couldn't break free from the terrible burden of a poor location, far from tourist traffic.

As a result, the Kingston Hall would never be the Cooperstown of Hockey.

Mark: This has never worked, since it opened in 1965, we've never really had success in terms of drawing people into the International Hockey Hall of Fame, and it is--it is really doomed to fail, and it never has succeeded in its location and it's been a tremendous hurdle to overcome over the years that we've never been able to overcome.

Tom: Well, the Hall of Fame to some is a great blessing and to others a curse.

For those who are looking for a parking spot in the middle of the summer, Hall of Fame visitors are seen as an annoyance.

The Hall of Fame doesn't offer a parking lot.

For the people who visit it, the entire village in a sense becomes a parking lot.

But apart from parking problems and congestion in a small village with one stop light, the Hall of Fame has largely been a blessing.

It's brought a great deal of income and prosperity to the village.

It pays the bills, so to speak, for a lot of things around here.

narrator: If Kingston was enjoying success, the Toronto Hall was faced with a different fiscal reality at the same time.

Located far from the main streets of Toronto at a fairground that saw traffic for only a couple weeks a year, the Hall was starting to struggle.

Phil: Well, by 1986, Scotty Morrison and our board at the time realized it was time to move.

They--we go back to location, location, location with real estate people tell you that.

Where do we move to?

We want to move to a place that is--that has daily traffic, that can be a jack of all trades.

By that I mean it can be used around the clock whether for public or private events, and bids went out.

Whether New York put a bid in, I think Peterborough put a bid in, Montreal put a bid in, but this building which was formerly the Bank of Montreal, and they were a bank from the 1860s all the way through to 1980 came available, so we made the pitch.

So this bank became available and it was formerly a Bank of Montreal.

It was around for 120-plus years, but Bank of Montreal moved on to bigger and better places, and a lot of organizations and charities put a bid into city council, but when you walk through here today and you think back to the late '80s, and we go back to Captain Sutherland and his vision, what Scotty Morrison and the clan had for that vision, I mean, you can see it all come to life now.

I mean, it was the perfect location, the perfect spot to honor those that are--have done well in our sport in Canada, but we go back to location, location, location.

We're at the corner of Front and Young and hundreds of thousands of people walk by every day and it's, I mean, it shows by the attendance, it shows by the after-hour special events, the press conference, the public events and, for downtown Toronto, I think the unique thing about it was the Leafs were at Maple Leaf Gardens at the time.

No idea that they were gonna come across the street.

So our location, location, location, just added a fourth location and it's the Air Canada Center right across the street.

So, I mean, it's a perfect place now, and when people come to Southern Ontario for hockey, this has got to be one of the main cores because you've got the Leafs, which is Canada's team, and you've got the Hockey Hall of Fame, which is all about our sport.

Phil: Although the Hockey Hall of Fame, I guess, is probably the largest of all Hockey Hall of Fames out there, there's one in Minnesota, there's the Bobby Orr one, there's one in Kirkland Lake, the Kingston one, a lot of the teams are having it now.

We partner with a lot of them.

I mean, we're all preserving and telling the same story about the history of the game.

And if we can work with them all to promote the game of hockey, I mean, it's--it is Canada's national sport.

That is why we're here.

So if there's a way we can preserve hockey in Kingston, Toronto, Long Pond, Parry Sound, wherever, we're open to promoting it.

At the end, you're only as good as the last game you were, so that's what we try and look at and move forward that.

narrator: Each year the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto draws crowds.

Families linger to take a photo with the Stanley Cup in the Great Hall.

Little do they know that the Hall they visited was destined to be a shrine in Kingston.

Justly or not, the perception of the Toronto Hall is that it is an NHL Hall.

This goes back to its founding.

Phil: I guess we look at it two ways.

First of all, the National Hockey League is the best league in the world.

Bar none.

So it stands to reason that the greatest players in the world play in the greatest league in the world, and the Hockey Hall of Fame induct the greatest players in the world, so the majority of them are gonna come from the National Hockey League.

There's no question about that.

The thing is that, as you mentioned, we are not the National Hockey League Hockey Hall of Fame, though, we're the Hockey Hall of Fame.

We preserve hockey at every level, regardless of sex, race, what have you.

Not only from Canada, hockey's played in 70 countries around the world now, and we have a good working relationship with every one of those federation.

On our board and selection committee, we do have NHL attendance on there.

They are a valued partner of ours.

We're very fortunate in the Esso Great Hall here to have all the NHL trophies, but we also have the American Hockey League trophies, the Ontario Hockey League trophies, the OHA trophies, the Allan Cup Hockey Canada's trophies.

So, but when people come here, and rightfully so, they're coming to see the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Pittsburgh Penguins.

When they come here, they want to see Pittsburgh Penguins stuff.

If they come during the World Cup of Hockey or World Championship, and they're coming from Russia, they wanna see players from Russia, but they're obviously in the National Hockey League, they want to see Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, and Ilya Kovalchuk, things like that, all play in the NHL.

So, rightfully or wrongfully so, we're not the National Hockey League Hockey Hall of Fame, but as I go back to the beginning, the NHL is the greatest league in the world that attracts the greatest players in the world, and we induct the greatest players in the world.

Bill: The Hall, I think it's great for the young people today and the ones that honor the great teams and the great players.

It's--I think it's probably one of the best sports Hall of fames in North America.

It's certainly built for the television age and people with short attention spans, but as a resource center it's unbeatable.

I think they have the facilities now that I don't-- unfortunately, we've never been able to reach despite the fact that all the collection of photographs and that are held by Queen's University archives.

That they had a--they had an angel that put up the funds for their resource center in Etobicoke and it's just something that could not-- could never have been, I think, matched here in Kingston.

So, I'm of two minds.

Disappointed that the Kingston Hall never reached the heights that some people dreamed of.

But it's now--it's now serving a great community, great city.

Don: Well, I think that they have in Toronto, it's downtown Toronto, they have a lot of games and it's a great Hall of Fame.

There's no doubt about it.

They have different gimmicks and stuff like that.

Mark: There's been a lot of conversations over the years about whether we should continue on with this journey and whether this place can survive, and it's been 70 years almost.

It goes back to 1943 and we're still here.

But there's been a lot of those kind of conversations that have gone on.

Phil: Captain Sutherland's vision became a reality right here.

I mean, it wasn't a 100% reality because it wasn't where he wanted to.

Brock: So this is part of his legacy.

I think it's unfortunate, it is not the place, you know.

I think that's--I don't know how he felt about it, maybe he did too, but that's how I think it's--he put so much energy and so much love into it, and he really got it kind of going, the idea kind of going, I think, and I think it's unfortunate that it didn't, you know.

narrator: In August 2012, the International Hockey Hall of Fame held its last event at its location near the Memorial Center.

After failing to convince Kingston City Council to fully fund their moving costs, council further complicated matters by evicting the Hall from the only building it had called home, citing the costs for repair and maintaining safety.

A soon-to-be-homeless Hockey Hall of Fame accepted a check from a local foundation to help kickstart their fundraising drive to move into a new location downtown Kingston, closer to the valuable tourist trade.

The search was on for a new home for Captain Sutherland's hockey shrine.

For Captain Sutherland, his dream of a Cooperstown of Hockey in his hometown of Kingston died with him.

In an era where community museums struggle to justify their existence and fight for scraps of government funding, an ambitious move to a downtown storefront could yet save Kingston's Hockey Hall of Fame.

Don: Everybody talks about Cooperstown, and I believe if we get it downtown, the way we have always said, if it had have been downtown, we would jam the people in there because they know it's downtown.

They park downtown.

There's all the restaurants are downtown.

It'll mean an awful lot to Kingston, and you watch, we'll get good publicity out of it.

I hope the city gets behind it and gives us a hand, and it'll-- you watch how it'll grow.

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