If you want to get an idea of what the winter climate was like in Coquitlam a century ago, gander at the photos in a new display at the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex.
This month, the Coquitlam Heritage Society assembled a small exhibit in the centre’s lobby about winter sports, with images and artifacts from the 1920s and 1930s.
The pictures show five feet of snow up at the Coquitlam Dam, in 1912, as well as men playing ice hockey on a frozen Fraser River, in 1920.
The show also includes an Archibald Moir & Co. map from 1807, highlighting the best streets for tobogganing in Coquitlam.
Indeed, sledding was a popular recreation when the cold snap hit, with Marmont and Blue Mountain streets and North Road being popular destinations for the kids.
The exhibit showcases a vintage Can Am Flyer sled, John McPherson lightening hitch hockey shoes, downhill skis and poles with Kandahar bindings and the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic torch that passed through Coquitlam in a relay in the lead up to the event.
Curated by the society’s Jasmine Moore and Tannis Koskela, the display also has a curious connection to the NHL’s Stanley Cup: Koskela sourced a photo from hockeygods.com of the Fraser Mills Hockey Club — made up of esidents and workers in the municipality of Fraser Mills — who, in 1914, won the second annual Savage Cup as the best seniors ice hockey team in B.C.
Printed with permission from hockeygods.com
It is believed one of its team members, Joseph Boileau, went on to win the Stanley Cup against the Ottawa Senators the following year as a Vancouver Millionaires player.
The society’s winter sports exhibit is up at the Poirier rec centre (633 Poirier St.) until next spring.
