Outside Contact
While affiliation with the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association didn't come until 1966, the 1892 crash of Newfoundland banks caused the first hockey contact with mainland Canada. Several Canadian banks came into Newfoundland immediately after the local bank crash and many of their employees were young men with varying degrees of hockey experience. The arrival in St. John's, during the 1890s, of the Reid Newfoundland Company to build a trans-island railway across the island had a beneficial influence on hockey. Exhibition games between St. John's teams and teams from the Maritime provinces began at the turn of the century while Corner Brook, Grand Falls and Buchans also engaged in exhibition games with visiting teams. In fact, it was while playing for a visiting team that Hugh Wadden impressed Buchans' officials enough to have him invited to move to the community. It was at the February 8, 1949 annual general meeting that Buchans was denied permission to add Kirkland Lake, Ontario players Frank Bowman, "Scotty" MacPhail, "Red" Croteau, "Humby" Smith and "Bun" Smith to their roster, and Grand Falls was prevented from adding former NHLer Gordie Drillon. But those rulings marked the introduction of "imports" to provincial senior hockey. The 1950 AGM, held March 13 in Grand Falls, tabled correspondence between Mr. Dudey of the CAHA and NAHA president R.S. Furlong. There was a motion that the NAHA accept the CAHA invitation to join and Fred Thistle of St. John's was made a committee of one to study the financial setup of union.