December 5, 1931: Montreal Wins Its 1st Grey Cup

Warren Stevens

December 5, 1931: The Montreal Football Club, a.k.a. the Winged Wheelers, a football team sponsored by the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, defeats the Regina Roughriders, 22-0 at Percival Molson Memorial Stadium in Montreal, to win the Grey Cup.

This is the 1st time the championship of Canadian football was competed for by a Quebec team. Teasm from Western Canada had reached the Final before, since 1921. But this was the 1st time the Final was played outside the Province of Ontario. And, since the Roughriders were from Saskatchewan, one thing was guaranteed, no matter who won: For the 1st time, the Grey Cup would be won by a team from outside Ontario.

The Canadian Winter had already set in: A snowstorm struck the night before the game. Despite the field being cleared of snow, there were still ice patches on it. It was -9° Celsius at kickoff -- 16° Fahrenheit. Only 5,112 attended.

In a foreshadowing of the 1934 NFL Championship Game, "The Sneaker Game," Regina general manager Fred Wilson organized for pairs of lacrosse shoes to be sent to his team. But the plan backfired, because the shoes somehow found their way into the Montreal dressing room instead, meaning that the visiting team had unintentionally supplied their opponents with excellent footwear for the icy conditions.

Separately, Regina head coach Al Ritchie had employed a Montreal shoemaker to attach leather cleats to the Roughriders' shoes. So it should have been an even game, at least by that standard. But the shoemaker couldn't get to the stadium, due to the weather -- on the campus of McGill University, Molson Stadium is halfway up Mount Royal, and the streets around it are steep -- so the Winged Wheelers, coached by Clary Foran, had a major advantage out of the gate because of their footwear.

It showed. In the 1st quarter, Pete Jotkus picked up a Regina fumble, and returned it into the end zone for a touchdown. Only 7 passes were completed in the game, by both teams combined. One was from Montreal's Warren Stevens to Kenny Grant, for a touchdown in the 3rd quarter. In the 4th quarter, Welch kicked a field goal, and Stevens scored another touchdown. The final score was Montreal 22, Regina 0.

In 1881, 3 sporting clubs merged to form the Montreal AAA: The Montreal Snow Shoe Club, the Montreal Bicycle Club, and the Montreal Lacrosse Club. The AAA founded Montreal's annual Winter Carnival. In 1884, they founded the Montreal Hockey Club. This team won the 1st Stanley Cup, in 1893, and also won it in 1894 and 1902.

Some of the players from the 1902 team founded the Montreal Wanderers, who won the Cup in 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1910, and were charter members of the NHL in the 1917-18 season, but had to fold when the Montreal Arena burned down. The AAA continued to sponsor the Montreal Hockey Club, and won the Allan Cup, for the champions of "senior ice hockey" in Canada, in 1930.

This team's logo was a wheel with wings. A version of it would be adopted by the Montreal Football Club. In 1927, Jack Adams, previously a great hockey player, was named the head coach and general manager of the NHL's Detroit Cougars. Their name was changed to the Detroit Falcons. In 1932, remembering the winged wheel logo of the Montreal AAA, he had a new version of it designed, and had his current team's name changed to match: The Detroit Red Wings. Minor-league baseball already had the Rochester Red Wings in Western New York.

The 1931 Grey Cup was a bit of a last gasp for the Montreal AAA. The Great Depression hit Canada every bit as hard as it hit America, and the club left the professional arena, figuratively and literally, despite the 1931 Grey Cup and the 1930 Allan Cup. The AAA does still exist, and is Canada's oldest active sports club.

For the Roughriders, it was their 4th straight loss in the Grey Cup Final. They would make it 5 the next year. In 1946, without regard to how difficult it was to spell, they switched their locality identifier from their City to their Province, becoming the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

In 1966, they finally won their 1st Grey Cup. They have since won it in 1989, 2007 and 2013. But their 4 titles are still the fewest of any Canadian Football League team, since the Ottawa Redblacks are officially considered a continuation of the defunct Ottawa Rough Riders, and the current version of the Montreal Alouettes are considered a continuation of the previous version.

About whom: The Montreal AAA stopped sponsoring the Winged Wheelers after the 1935 season. The Montreal Alouettes were founded in 1946, and won the Grey Cup in 1949, 1970, 1974 and 1977. A financial meltdown led to them being sold in 1982, and renamed the Montreal Concordes. In 1986, the Alouettes name was restored, but they folded after that season.

In 1995, the Grey Cup was won by the Baltimore Stallions, a U.S.-based team. This embarrassment led the CFL to end their American experiment. However, they offered the Stallions' owners the rights to the Montreal market. The Alouettes were reborn in 1996, and have won the Grey Cup again in 2002, 2009 and 2010. (UPDATE: They won another in 2023.)

After 1931, the Grey Cup would not be played in Montreal again until 1969, at the ill-fated Autostade. It has been played at the 1976 Olympic Stadium in 1977 (the Alouettes winning on their home field, beating Edmonton), 1979 (the Alouettes losing on their home field, to Edmonton), 1981, 1985, 2001 and 2008 (the Alouettes losing on their home field, to Calgary).

Built in 1915, and originally known as McGill Graduates Stadium, Percival Molson Memorial Stadium is still used as the home of McGill University outdoor sports. It was named for an alumnus, a member of the Molson brewing family, who was killed in action in World War I. The Alouettes used it as their home field from 1947 to 1967, and have done so again since 1998, though they use the much larger Olympic Stadium for Playoff games.

*

December 5, 1931 was a Saturday. In American football, the NFL had games the next day. Among the college football games played that day were these:

* The University of Tennessee came north, and played a charity game against New York University at Yankee Stadium. A crowd of 40,684 saw the Volunteers beat the Violets, 13-0.

* Navy beat the University of Pennsylvania, 6-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. Army had the week off. It must have helped, because, the following week, at Yankee Stadium, Army beat Navy, 17-7.

* In an all-Pittsburgh matchup, Duquesne and Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon) played to a 0-0 tie at the University of Pittsburgh's Pitt Stadium.

* And the University of Southern California beat the University of Washington, 44-7 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. This was decades before the current Playoff system went into effect, but, the week before, USC beat Notre Dame, 16-14 in South Bend. The week after this, Georgia came into the Coliseum, and USC beat them, 60-0. If there was any doubt that USC were the best team in the country, it ended in the Rose Bowl, where they beat Tulane, 21-12. (The New Orleans school was a major power at the time.)

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Falcons, 4-0 at the Montreal Forum. The Falcons became the Red Wings the next season. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Maroons, 4-0 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Yorkshire, and beat Sheffield Wednesday, 3-1 at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. Arsenal won the Football League title that season, while Wednesday won the two before that.