Pulford, Ernest Harvey

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Paul Kitchen, “PULFORD, ERNEST HARVEY,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pulford_ernest_harvey_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Athlete and salesman; b. 22 April 1875 in Toronto, younger son of Ernest George Pulford and Mary Emma (Minnie) Dennis; grandson of John Stoughton Dennis; nephew of John Stoughton Dennis; m. first 13 April 1901 Annis May Field (d. 7 Dec. 1904) in Brockville, Ont., and they had one son; m. secondly 7 June 1906 Jennie Moore, née Davison, a divorcee (d. 29 April 1947), in Ottawa; they had no children; d. there 31 Oct. 1940.
    • Ernest George Pulford, his wife, Minnie, and their infant son, Dennis, immigrated to Canada from England in May 1874. The family first settled in Toronto; Ernest found work (the city directory for 1877 would describe him as an accountant), and Harvey was born there the following spring. In 1878 Ernest took a position with the Department of the Secretary of State and the Pulfords moved to Ottawa, where during the next decade they lived in a succession of lodgings. Though the two brothers bounced from one school to another as a result, one constant in Harvey’s life was his athletic prowess. In 1889 he got his first taste of being in the limelight when the local press reported that he had won several competitions in track and field at the city’s Model School.
    • Around 1891 Pulford began his working life as a clerk with John M. Garland, a wholesale dry-goods firm for which he later became a salesman. He would thereafter combine a career in business with success in a remarkable variety of sports. Pulford would become best known in Canada for his ability as a hockey player. He started out with the young Ottawas, the junior squad of the Ottawa Hockey Club, and graduated to the senior team in 1894. Pulford was tall and sturdily built, and owing to his robust playing style, which included delivering punishing body-checks on attacking forwards, he was nicknamed the Bytown Slugger.
    • After 1902, when Pulford joined Gault Brothers’ Company Limited as a commercial traveller in wholesale dry goods, he had to maintain an extremely tight schedule to balance business and sport. He was a regular for the Ottawa Hockey Club, which came to be known as the Silver Seven. In March 1903 the team beat the Montreal Victorias to win the Stanley Cup, which they then held against all challengers until they lost to the Montreal Wanderers three years later. Considered an elite defenceman, Pulford was essential during this successful run, even though a two-game championship series, played in January 1905, took place just six weeks after his wife, Annis May, died in childbirth, leaving their only child, Harvey Field. Pulford retired in 1908, but he worked as a referee from 1912 to 1919 for the National Hockey Association and its successor, the National Hockey League.
    • As captain and stroke of the Ottawa club’s senior eights, Pulford won the 1910 Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in St Catharines, as well as the American national championship in Washington, D.C. The following year his crew travelled to England to compete for the ultimate prize in rowing, the Grand Challenge Cup of the world-famous Henley Royal Regatta. They lost narrowly in the semi-final to the crew from the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College in what was considered to be one of the fastest races in years. Pulford later expressed his opinion that participating in this regatta was his greatest athletic achievement.
    • Pulford was among the 13 original inductees into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945, and he was also honoured with a place in the Greater Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame upon its establishment 21 years later. Harvey Pulford’s remarkable athletic stature and versatility received full recognition in 2015, when he was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
  • Second Great Grandson of Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=2175
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7272796/harvey-pulford