Kenora Thistles

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1905 - '06 Kenora Thistles (from left: Billy McGimsie, Matt Brown, Roxy Beaudro, Tommy Phillips, Eddie Giroux, Tom Hooper, Si Griffis.)

The Kenora Thistles were an ice hockey team who won the Stanley Cup in 1907. The town of Kenora, Ontario is the smallest town to have ever won the Cup.

The town of Kenora, Ontario was originally known as Rat Portage. In the early 1890s, an amateur senior hockey club was formed. A contest to name the team was held, and the winning entry came from a Scottish carpenter named Bill Dunsmore, who submitted the nickname Thistles along with a drawing of a Thistle for the team logo. By January, 1896, several young boys of the Rat Portage area, most of them between the ages of 11-14, formed a junior ice hockey team, which went on to beat the senior team in an exhibition. Among these boys were future Hockey Hall of Famers Tommy Phillips, Tom Hooper, Billy McGimsie, and Silas Griffis.

Over the next five years, these young players populated the senior team and quickly established themselves as one of the premier amateur hockey clubs of the western Canadian provinces. In 1903 they challenged the Ottawa Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup and lost. In 1905 they again challenged the Ottawa squad with the same disappointing results. That summer, the town of Rat Portage changed its name to the better sounding moniker of Kenora.

In January of 1907 the Thistles again challenged for the Cup, winning it in a two-game, total goals series against the Montreal Wanderers. The games were played Jan. 17 and 21, with Kenora winning 4–2 and 8–6, respectively. Two other future Hockey Hall of Famers, Art Ross and "Bad" Joe Hall were also on the roster. Kenora, with a 1907 population of around 4,000, is the smallest town ever to claim the legendary chalice of hockey supremacy.^[1]

Just two months later, the Thistles were challenged by the Wanderers to a re-match. Despite importing the services of three more future Hockey Hall of Famers (Alf Smith, Harry "Rat" Westwick, and Frederick Whitcroft), the team lost the Stanley Cup and most of its noted players afterward to either free agency or retirement.

On the weekend of January 20, 2007, one hundred years after the Thistles won the Cup, the City of Kenora held celebrations commemorating the team's win over the Montreal Wanderers.