HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-05-05, Page 8PAGE 8. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005.
Sports
Ernie Phillips: A Stanley Cup engraver
By Eugen Bannerman
Special to the Citizen
The Stanley Cup has been called “the most important
non-religious artifact in Canada.” It’s not just a silver
trophy; it’s the sports holy grail.
And a resident of Blyth, Ontario, has carved NHL
history into the Cup.
Between 1949 and 1978, Ernie Phillips was one of
only a handful of Montreal engravers entrusted with
engraving names on the oldest sports trophy in North
America.
The original trophy was a sterling silver bowl donated
in 1892 by Canada’s Governor-General, Lord Stanley of
Preston. There were a number of additions and changes
over the years. The Cup didn’t take its present form until
1958.
Lord Stanley’s Cup has an interesting history, not all of
it illustrious or sports related.
In 1905, the Cup was drop-kicked by players of the
Ottawa Silver Seven into the Rideau C? lai. It landed on
target and was retrieved the following dav.
In 1907, it was used as a flower pot by the mother of
the photographer. On the way to a victory party in 1924,
the Montreal Canadiens left the Cup lying forgotten on a
snowbank.
It was almost heisted from a huge glass case in
Chicago during the 1962 playoffs.
In 1996, a Colorado player used the bowl for the
christening ceremony of his child.
And as recently as 2004, the 35-pound Cup was
inadvertently left in the luggage department at the
Vancouver Airport because it was “too heavy to fly.”
When the Cup is brought to the official shop in
Montreal for engraving, it is disassembled from the top
down. The silver bowl is separated first, then the tiered
collar, and finally, the silver bands are removed from the
barrel for engraving.
At least two people used to work on the engraving.
One person engraved the name and year of the winning
team on the collar; the other stamped the names of all the
players, coaches and owners into the bands. The former
takes about thirty minutes; the latter two or three weeks.
For more than 25 years, Ernie Phillips engraved the
names of the winning teams onto the tiered collar of
hockey’s most prestigious trophy.
Since 1948, there have been only four official
engravers of the players names on the silver bands: two
generations of the Carl Petersen family, Doug Boffey
and Louise St. Jacques.
The cup you see paraded on the ice after the NHL
championships each season is not the original trophy.
What you see is a replica cup.
In 1969, NHL officials realized the 78-year-old trophy
was getting brittle, and they retired the original Stanley
Cup bowl to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
They commissioned Petersen to make an exact copy in
his shop.
Fred Light and Phillips were hired to engrave the new
bowl to look identical to the original, complete with
scratch marks and the players names on the bottom
inside of the bowl.
“Half the things on the original bowl were not
engraved but scratched in by the players, often while
sitting in taverns,” Phillips recalled. “Some were done
with an ice pick, or a pen knife. It was a battered old
thing. There were about a dozen years when people
would scratch things on it.”
The duplicate cup is now the travelling Stanley Cup.
Each winning player celebrates his team’s win by taking
the Cup home for 24 hours.
Consequently, the Cup has been on display in
Parliament, the White House, and the Kremlin.
In addition, each player gets to keep a miniature
Stanley Cup. It stands about 15 inches tall and is made
of silver plate. Phillips took these mini-cups home for
engraving.
“Every summer we had these Stanley Cups under our
bed,” Phillips remembered.
“It’s so repetitious to carve all the names on all the
cups. I hated them.”
No wonder. There were more than 1200 names to be
engraved annually on 40 cups.
When a new award category was created by the NHL,
a new trophy would be commissioned. There are now 18
NHL trophies, and Phillips engraved the winner’s shield
for all of them.
“I did an awful lot of Bobby Orr,” Phillips told me.
“He won just about every trophy possible. He was only
a kid when he started playing with the Boston Bruins.
His name on the shields when he started was Robert Orr.
Five years later, all his trophies were brought back to
have the name changed. I removed the old shields and
replaced them with new ones which said, Bobby Orr.
How fame changes your name,” Phillips quipped.
One other trophy in particular stands out, the Conn
Smythe Trophy for the Most Valuable Player. It was
made by Petersen in the shape of the Maple Leaf
Gardens.
“It is one of the most beautiful trophies,” says Phillips.
He had carved the lettering on the plaque, highlighted
the windows of the Gardens, and engraved the first and
subsequent shields. The first person to win the MVP was
Jean Beliveau, captain of the Montreal Canadians.
Phillips joined Fred Light in Montreal as an apprentice
engraver in 1949. He worked for Light for 19 years, and
then bought the business from Light and ran it for
another 10 years.
Players and trainers would often come into the shop
for their own engraving, or just to chat. Light was an ex
boxing champion, and sports people would drop in to say
hello. “You met just about everybody in those days,”
Phillips recalled.
He married Emily Smith in 1968, and they had two
children, Karen and Leslie. In 1978, after 29 years in
Montreal, Phillips sold his business and moved his
family to Blyth, where his wife, Emily, had found an
obstetrical nursing position at the Wingham hospital.
Phillip’s last engraving on the famous trophy was in
1979 after the Stanley Cup playoffs in Detroit. Arno
Petersen brought the middle section of the Stanley Cup
by hand to Blyth. He asked Phillips to engrave the name
of the winning team, the Montreal Canadiens.
Phillips vividly remembers that day and the phone call
from Petersen. When neighbours heard he had part of the
Stanley Cup in his house, they came over to see it. “It
took about 30 minutes to engrave, but Petersen never let
it out of his sight.” After supper, they returned to
Montreal.
On being an engraver of the Stanley Cup, Phillips
says, “It’s a big deal to other people. I’ve engraved
hundreds of trophies for 29 years. I’ve done the Grey
Cup, the Brier Trophy, and others. After you’ve done so
many trophies, it’s a job. You make sure you do the job
well.”
“People will say, ‘You did the Stanley Cup?”
“‘Yup. So what.’ The novelty wears off after a while.”
The novelty may wear off, but not the fact that it was
the iconic Stanley Cup. And that the engraving was
superb.
Emily Phillips has had her own moment with
professional sports. As president of the Registered
Nurses Association of Ontario, and to celebrate Nurses
Week, she was invited to throw the ceremonial first pitch
at the Blue Jays Opening Game at SkyDome in 1992.
“It wasn’t easy to throw the ball. It’s a long way from
pitcher’s mound to the home plate. The only guy who
came out of t’-e dugout to catch the ball was Rob Ducey.”
After the
throw, Emily
was taken to the
dugout and
presented with
the baseball
signed by Ducey.
It remains a
treasured
possession.
Engraved Cup
Ernie Phillips spent 25 years engraving names onto the
Stanley Cup. (Jim Brown photo)
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Teams in the Brussels Minor Soccer Association begin the regular season
the week of May 9.
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