Joe Boyle didn’t do anything in a small way. Born to a wealthy Toronto family in 1867 he had love for adventure and, like many men of his generation, found himself in the middle of the Yukon Gold Rush. Prospering by thinking big, he secured the rights to huge tracts of land and sluiced thousands of cubic feet of soil daily, extracting a fortune that he consolidated by investing in other business concerns, quickly becoming the territory’s main mover and shaker, constantly shuttling between the gold fields and the nation’s capital.

A sports enthusiast Boyle was a rabid hockey fan, and decided that he could put together a squad that would challenge for and return home with the Stanley Cup, the trophy inaugurated a decade earlier and awarded to the top hockey team in Canada. On one of his frequent trips east, he challenged the Ottawa Silver Seven and they accepted. A best of three series would ensue.

With no doubt in his mind that his team would bring home the silverware, Boyle set about building his squad. It grew to include eight men, seven of whom would play at any one time, leaving a single sub on the bench. Mostly miners, the team also included an ex-Mountie, a doctor and a civil servant. Seventeen-year-old Albert Forrest, a Trois-Rivieres, Quebec native, was the netminder.

Hockey fans know that the road to the Stanley Cup is the toughest path to any sporting championship. For the Dawson Nuggets, it was a literal truth. Their 4000-mile trek from the Yukon to Ottawa took over three weeks and everything that could possibly go wrong en route, did. Leaving Dawson City on December 18th, 1904, their first mode of transportation was that Arctic standby, the dogsled, but progress was hampered by a lack of snow and the dogs gave way to pedal power.

Bicycles were abandoned, as they couldn’t handle what little snow there was, and most of the 300 miles to Whitehorse was finally covered on foot. The train from Whitehorse to Skagway was delayed when avalanches blocked the tracks. As a result the team arrived in the Alaska seaport after the boat they had planned to take to Vancouver had set sail.

Three days were wasted in Skagway as the team enjoyed a largely liquid diet and finally, with legs already rubbery, boarded another steamer, only to have it sail right past their destination and make port in Seattle. After losing another day getting back to Vancouver, Boyle’s boys finally climbed on board the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s transcontinental and headed for Ottawa.

A series of exhibition matches, planned in towns across Canada in the hopes of paying some of the expedition’s expenses, had to be cancelled since the many delays barely allowed the northern challengers time to get to Ottawa for the Stanley Cup matches.

By the time they arrived in the Canadian capital, the Nuggets were out of shape and had been off the ice for over a month. With the first game scheduled for two days hence, there was no time to practice on the unfamiliar surface of Dey’s Arena although there was time to paint the town red, arrange for new uniforms and take in a Silver Sevens practice.

The boomtown skaters were unimpressed with their adversaries and weren’t shy about saying so, their social skills shaped by the rough life of the frontier, even though two future Hall of Famers suited up for the champs.

When the first game got underway on January 11th, 1905, the visitors seemed to give a good accounting of themselves, only to fall apart in the second half as Ottawa rolled to an easy 9-2 victory.

Rather than rest and recover from their exhausting journey, the Dawson delegation spent much of the three days between the games sampling the nightlife available to big city dwellers, appreciating every moment of the adventure and appearing somewhat the worse for wear for the next match-up.

One-Eyed Frank McGee, generally regarded as the best player of his day and the star forward for Ottawa, had been held to a single goal in the opening game, a fact remarked upon in less than complementary terms by the out of town hopefuls. His performance in game two has stood unrivalled for over a century. McGee picked up 14 goals as the Silver Seven made the game into a laugher, beating the youthful goaltender 23 times while allowing the Nuggets only two goals.

In dispatches home Boyle blamed the defeat on less than competent officiating and the poor shape his team was in as a result of their gruelling travel misadventures but the media wasn’t of the same mind. One Toronto newspaper, referred to the challengers as “the worst consignment of hockey junk to come over the metals of the CPR”.

As was the sporting custom in the days before folks admitted to earning a living playing games, the victors hosted a banquet, inviting the vanquished to share the meal and fellowship. At the evening’s conclusion of a number of Ottawa players, probably over-served, left the party with the coveted trophy in tow. While they all arrived safely at their destinations, the silver sup somehow managed to get itself kicked into the Rideau Canal buy one of the revellers.

When dawn brought with it dim memories of the previous night’s malfeasance, steps were retraced and the Stanley Cup was retrieved from the canal, a task much easier in January that in June, given that the Rideau spends most of the winter months frozen over.

The Nuggets set off an a two-month exhibition tour that took them to Nova Scotia, through Quebec and Ontario, down to Pittsburgh and ended in Brandon, Manitoba, where, with the $6000 expense of their Quixotic attempt at hockey supremacy recouped the team disbanded, each man going their own way with a few dollars and a lot of memories.

Joe Boyle spent the next years adding to his fortune, controlling thousands of acres of prime mineral bearing claims. When WWI broke out in 1914 he financed, established and led a machine gun brigade, seeing action in several European battles. He died in 1923 at the age of 56.