Organizing The West—The AAHA

After Alberta had been proclaimed a province in 1905, the fathers of the hockey scene in the province had problems on their hands. There was no governing body that administered that game at a provincial level.

At the time, intra-city games that took place were all independently arranged between various leagues and teams, and there was no way to prevent teams from bringing in "ringers," players who in some cases did not even live in the province a week, for big games.

Teams and associations from north and central Alberta pushed for a provincial governing body. So, at a November 29, 1907 meeting in Red Deer, the Alberta Amateur Hockey Association (AAHA) was founded, with R.N. Brown elected as the first president of the organization.

The AAHA set out new residency rules for teams, stating that players must meet a minimum Alberta-residency requirement before being allowed to play hockey for an AAHA member team. As well, senior amateur hockey was divided into two tiers; the "A" level saw associations from Edmonton, Strathcona and Battleford, Saskatchewan, which was allowed membership in the AAHA because it was easier for that city’s teams to get to Edmonton than it was to head east to Saskatoon or southeast to Regina. These "A" teams were set apart because trustees knew that they paid their players on an under-the-table basis, and setting them apart from the rest of the province’s amateur clubs would allow the AAHA to avoid a messy scandal.

The rest of the provincial leagues that joined the AAHA would play as "B" level teams. However, no team or association from Calgary or anywhere south of Alberta’s largest city came to the meeting. Calgary wanted no part of the AAHA, claiming that it was stacked to guarantee Edmonton teams success. But, three years later, a new southern Alberta league, featuring Calgary and teams all the way to the American border, was sanctioned by the AAHA.

The next major move by the AAHA would be to support the formation of a new Canadian Hockey Association. In 1914, AAHA member J.W. Ward was present at the meeting, which launched the country’s first true nationally-binding amateur hockey body.

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