(Posted 6:30 a.m., Dec. 23)
Hockeyville effort in keeping with Navan's long and storied hockey history
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online

Ross Bradley holds up the Bradley Cup which was first awarded to a team from Navan in 1926. Fred Sherwin/Photo

A small group of hockey enthusiasts in Navan are hoping to parlay the game's popularity and long history in the community into fame and fortune as part of the Kraft Hockeyville 2010 contest.

Lyne Proulx is behind the effort to get Navan awarded the title of Hockeyville 2010, which includes a $100,000 grand prize to upgrade the local arena and an NHL pre-season game.

"It's all about getting the community to come together and working on a project for a good cause," says Proulx.

The first arena was built in 1953 using money raised by the local community, but unfortunately it was destroyed by fire a month after it had opened. The community rallied together and rebuilt the arena a year later.

The second building stood for 28 years until it was condemed in 1982 and eventually replaced in by the current arena, which was once again built using money raised by the local community.

Proulx sees taking part in the Hockeyville contest as a way to pay back the community for building the arena in the first place.

"We’re thankful and grateful for what they did, and now it’s our turn to help support the arena," says Proulx.

The village of Navan has a long and storied hockey history dating back to the early 1900s when local farmboys were looking for something to do during the long hard winters.

Teams started popping up in places like Russell, Vars, Navan and Cumberland. The Vars Hockey Club was one of the top teams in Eastern Ontario from 1909 until the start of the First World War, winning the R.C.H.A. championship twice in 1910 and 1912.

It wasn't long after the Great War that hockey had its first real resurgence in Cumberland. By the mid-1920s a major rivalry had developed between Vars and Navan, which by that time had emerged as a hockey powerhouse thanks to the presence of a speedy teenager named Hec Kilrea.

By the time he was 16-years-old, Kilrea had already earned the nickname "Hurricane". He played two winters with the Navan Hockey Club before joining the Ottawa Senators in 1925. He would go on to play 15 seasons in the NHL, winning the Stanley Cup three times, once with the Senators in 1927 and twice with the Detroit Red Wings in 1936 and 1937.

After retiring from hockey in 1940, Kilrea enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and would eventually receive the Distinguished Service Cross, a Purple Heart and the Croix de Guerre. He died in 1969 and is buried in the St. Mary's Anglican Cemetery in Navan.

Kilrea was the third eldest in his family. His older brother Jack never played professional hockey, but he did have a son who would get a sniff in the NHL before becoming the winningest coach in Canadian Junior Hockey history. Of course I'm speaking of Hall of Fame Ottawa 67s coach Brian Kilrea.

Hec Kilrea had two younger brothers, Wally, who was two years his junior, and Ken who was born in 1919. Both brothers also saw action in the NHL. Wally played for eight seasons on a variety of teams including the Detroit Red Wings where he won the Stanley Cup with his brother Hec in 1936 and 1937. Ken played parts of five seasons with the Detroit Red Wings between 1937 and 1944.

One-hundred-and-one-year-old Nelson Kennedy scored the game winning goal in the first ever Bradley Cup in 1926. Fred Sherwin/Photo

Before he joined the NHL, Wally Kilrea followed in the footsteps of his older brother playing for the Navan Hockey Club. In 1926, the owner of J.T. Bradley and Sons, John Thomas Bradley, had a trophy made which was to be offered up as a challenge cup.

The first challenge for the Bradley Cup was sent out to Vars. Under the challenge cup format, a champion is declared based on total goals in a home-and-home series.

In the 1920s, most teams still played with seven members a side including a rover and there were no substitutes. If a player got injured, the team simply played a man short.

The last surviving member of the first Bradley Cup is Nelson Kennedy who is 101 years old. Kennedy played rover on the Navan team which also included Wally Kilrea and was coached by Dr. David Irwin.

Before the series started both teams put up $100, winner take all. The first game was played on an outdoor rink on Trim Road across from where The New Oak Tree Furniture now stands.

Kennedy recalls that the first game ended in a 0-0 tie. When neither team was able to score in regulation during the second game in Vars, they had to go to overtime.

"I scored the winning goal in double overtime," says Kennedy. "The game took 90 minutes to play. Everyone was dog tired."

The players ended up splitting the $100 seven ways.

"It was good money back then. I don't remember what I did with my share," says Kennedy.

The Bradley Cup was offered up twice more before the start of WWII. In 1929 it was won by a team from Cumberland Village. It was recaptured by Navan four years later and sat in J.T. Bradley and Sons store until 1948 when it was dusted off for a rematch between Navan and Cumberland.

The top line on the Navan team was made up of Eric Smith, Haroild Poaps and Shawn Nelson. The second line featured brothers Basil, Bill and Ken McFadden. The third line included Lorne Bradley and Syd Smith, and Mervin Dagg and Lloyd Morrison played on defence. The coach was Eldon Kinsella.

Denis Huneault had to play in net for Navan while their regular goaltender Garret Rivington recovered from Rheumatic fever.

Eric Smith ended up on the team entirely by accident. After returning home from the war, he enrolled at Queen's University in September 1946. He was barely there a month when he decided to "pack it in" and return to Navan where he was immediately recruited to play on the local hockey team.

Smith recalls the Navan team hardly lost any games at all before taking on Cumberland for the Bradley Cup.

The first game was played on the old outdoor rink on Trim Road which would end up getting replaced by the town's first indoor arena a year later.

According to Smith, a couple of hundred people came out to watch the game which Navan ended up winning 8-0 thanks to a five goal effort by Smith himself.

"They were some ticked off, I know that, because it took us forever to play the second game in Cumberland," says Smith.

The second game in the home-and-home series was eventually played in the mid-March in the old Cumberland Arena. To give you an idea of the ice conditions, Smith was given a penalty for splashing an opposing player.

"It was terrible, there was water all over the place. One of their players was trying to get the puck and I thought, 'If you're going to get the puck then you're going to get wet'," says Smith.

Cumberland ended up winning the game 1-0, but Navan won the Cup based on the aggregate score of 8-1.

The last Bradley Cup was won by Navan in 1956. Since then it's sat in J.T. Bradley's Country Convenience Store as a reminder of days gone by.

As you can see, Navan has a long and storied hockey history. Past teams include the Navan Combines, which played one season in 1955-56, and the Navan Flyers, which can count former Ottawa Senators coach Jacques Martin among its alumni.

In the summer of 1974, the residents of Navan pooled their money together and purchased the Eastern Ontario Junior Hockey League's Rockland Boomers and changed the team's name to the Navan Grads.

In 1989 the teams board of directors changed the name to the Cumberland Grads to better reflect the a regional focus. Two years later they were accepted into the Central Junior A Hockey League.

The franchise's most famous alumni is Claude Giroux who currently plays for the Philadelphia Flyers. Matt Bradley (Washington Capitals) and Stephane Yelle (Colorado Avalanche) also played for the Grads, who have had 10 players drafted by the NHL. Another 13 players have seen duty in the OHL and 17 players have received scholarships to play in the United States.

Lynne Proulx is hoping all that history will help Navan win the Kraft Hockeyville title for 2010. The contest, which is run by the CBC in collaboration with the NHL and NHLPA, is open to any community in Canada. Once a community is registered, residents are invited to demonstrate their support by posting stories on the cbc.ca/hockeyville website. The winner will be selected based on community spirit, passion for hockey and originality.

The winning community will receive $100 000 to upgrade their local arena, an NHL pre-season game and a visit by CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. Stories can be submitted up until 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 18.

(This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local business partners.)

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