1904 Team

Calgary, capital of the Canadian province of Alberta, founded in just 1875 as a police outpost, has been Scots indeed Gaelic from almost it first days. It is named for the village on Mull at the suggestion of Skye-born Colonel James Farquharson Macleod, was opened for cattle-ranching in 1881 and reached by the Canadian-Pacific Railway in 1883, when it had a population of perhaps 400. In 1884 it was 506, reached 4,000 by 1900 and then began to expand more rapidly. By 1906 it was almost 12,000, by  today's standards a small town, and in 1911 43,704, so only then what North Americans might call a "city". Today it is 1.3 million.

And throughout the Scots continued to come with their distinctive ways including a passion for the round-ball game, so much so that April  1904, for obvious reasons soccer being a summer game in Canada, saw the foundation a football club for and named for them. It was the Calgary Caledonian Football Club, aka Caledonia FC or the Callies and is still a dominant force in the Albertan and Canadian game. Off the field its first President was Thomas Hamilton, 40 years-old, born in Strathaven, arriving in Canada in 1892 so having caught the virus in the Auld Country. Hugh McLeod, Canadian-born of Scots parents, was Honorary President, recently-arrived R.D. Stark, Robert Donaldson Stark, from Rutherglen, Secretary/Treasurer and equally recently-arrived James Proctor, born in Forteviot, the trainer. We also have that first squad, T. Muckle the Englishman Arthur Park, Robert Logan, Angus MacLennan from Inverness, J. (Jock) A. Ross, George Wright and James McEwan, Scots-born both, W. W. Stewart (Captain), R. Mills, Alex Carr, born in Gateshead, England but of Scottish parents, Robert McEwan, like James also recently arrived, possibly brothers, and J. G. Newall.

And local domination began from inception. At the end of that first season the club was first Champion of North-West Territories (later Saskatchewan and Alberta) as it was again the following year, when the club and team were in flux. On the administrative side Newfondland-born Dr. George Ings was now involved with Hamilton, McLeod and Proctor. Jim McEwan was now trainer, whilst on the field the additions were Rothsay-born Mongomery Cunningham; John McClune from Castle Douglas, H. Walker, possibly Andrew from Cambusnethan, David McKechnie, another born in England, in Droitwich, of Scots parents,  J. Sim(p)son, new arrival, Greenock-born, Joseph Roderick Towill and two brothers, twins, also just arrived with both pedigrees and reputations, Alex and William (Wull) Strang.

In fact this was the Strangs second arrival in the Dominion. In 1881 they, father Alex Snr, a joiner to trade, mother Christina had left their home-town, Dunfermline, perhaps with a Kelty connection, for Ontario. They did it with five children in tow and a sixth, a fourth son, Norman, was born in Canada. But Alex Snr would die in 1884 at the age of just thirty-four and at some point thereafter the decision was taken to return home. They were certainly back 1891 living at 48 Holyrood Place in the town. It meant that all four boys, who might have grown up with or without football in the New World definitely grew up with it in the Old. In fact the twins, the identical twins, Alex Jnr, a plumber to trade,  and William, a printer, would become albeit relatively briefly, professional players and thereby hangs a probably unique tale.

Marginally the more successful in the Scottish game Wull, a "robust" full-back, was a youth player with Dunfermline Athletic in 1899, so twenty-one, before turning out for Orion, one of the three city teams that in 1903 combined to form the present Aberdeen. That same year he was signed by Celtic and Alex was also given a trial by the Parkhead club. Alex would get no further but Wull in 1903-4 actually played twice for the Hoops first team, in the first and last games of the season, having in the interim been out on loan outwith the Scottish League, to Renton.

However, Wull did go on the 1904 Celtic tour of Ireland. He played against Belfast Celtic and in Dublin Bohemians but then matters become opaque, indeed murky. Later that year both he and Alex played in an official match, in which one of the brothers got sent off and one assaulted the referee at half-time. But in either case neither would admit, which of them it had been. The immediate outcome was the Scottish Football Association decided to ban both and the longer term result that both decided to re-emigrate. The following year they returned with their mother and others of the family to Canada and, whilst Norman went initially to Ontario, this time it was to the promise of expanding Calgary, the twins joining the Caledonians in time for all or part of that summer season.

Now there is one Strang brother not yet mentioned. He was the oldest, John, also joiner to trade,  who is actually said to have been the most talented player of them all but he seems to have joined another team, the Brewery XI. However, he would die suddenly in November 1906. He had been working on the roof of a house he was building for the family. Wull also seems at some point after their first 1905 season to have picked up a knee-injury that would rule him out as an outfield player. Certainly in the 1909 Bennett Shield, the Championship of Alberta winning team he is there but in goal.   

The Callies would first take the Bennett Shield in 1908. No team is known. They would then take it for the next four years and lose in the final in the fifth in 1913. And it is perhaps not surprising that Alex Strang was centre-half, Scottish centre-half, in all of the additional wins, even at the age in 1912 of thirty-four. Moreover, in 1907 the team had already taken the People Shield, the unofficial championship of Canada. Having won the Calgary League, winning fourteen, drawing two with no defeats they then beat the Toronto Thistles, that year themselves local champions in defeating Dundas Scots, and Winnipeg Britannia. It was with a team of Jock Ross in goal, Englishman Andy Morgan and Donald, possibly David or Douglas, MacKechnie at full-back, Arthur Park once more, Sandy Strang and Arbroath's James Petrie at half-back and Tom Stewart, Cruikshank, Thomson, possibly John, McLean, perhaps Mitchell, and Alex Carr again up front.   

And they would repeat the win in 1908 and 1909 after which, whilst Alex would remain, Wull would drop out at least of the football picture. He would be replaced in goal by Jimmy Gilhooley from Garscadden by Bearsden via Blantyre and Rutherglen as James Haig, a carpenter again from Rothsay would come in at right-half and forwards would come and go. And it seems that from Calgary in1904 only then did the "Scots Game" spread not only westward but eastward too. In Edmonton the Caledonians Athletic Club, now Edmonton Scottish, was founded in 1907, the first Pacific Coast Football League including Vancouver in 1908 and Toronto Scottish only in 1917. To be fair football was already played on the West Coast in Victoria as early as 1892 and in Ontario in 1876, with the Western Football Association already formed by Scots-born David Forsyth in 1880 but it was the Scots impulse that really took the game to the next, countrywide stage. As the dots, the cities, were joined up by the shared sport, in 1912 the Dominion of Canada Football Association, now known as the Canadian Soccer Association, came into being. 

That was the good news but it was not without sadness. Thousands of Canadian, young men, be it born and bred there or elsewhere, on the outbreak of the Great War were enlisted. All three of the surviving Strang brothers did just that and only one survived. Norman would be killed in June 1917 on Vimy Ridge. His body was never found. By then Wull was already dead. Both he and Alex had joined the Canadian Infantry (Alberta Division). He had been wounded in France, went back to the front was wounded once more this time in the head and fatally. He took a week to die, succumbing on 7th October 1916, and is buried in the St. Sever Cemetery by Rouen, although both men are remembered with a stone in Calgary's Union Cemetery. Meantime Alex had been transferred from the same Canadian Infantry (Alberta Division) to the Royal Army Medical Corp and had married, to Mary Lawrie, from Dunfermline. By 1921 he had returned Calgary, was working as a fireman and he and Mary had two daughters and a son, named Norman. Mary would die in 1949 and Alex outlive her by a decade, he dying, as she had, still in the city and in 1960, unremarked. It seems, whilst the Callies team of 1907 has been inducted into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame, the paucity of recognition in particular of the Strangs, notably Alex, and the more general impulsive contribution of ordinary Scots to the spread of the beautiful game in Canada, as elsewhere worldwide, remains, shall we say, an oversight.