The Stanley Cup, the ultimate symbol of hockey in Canada and the United States, is named after the governor general of Canada, Frederick Arthur STANLEY, 1st Baron Stanley:
“Stanley’s lasting gift to the nation was the large silver cup he donated in March 1892 for the best team in Canadian amateur ice hockey. A number of his sons, notably Arthur, delighted in the game, and with the Nova Scotian law clerk of the Senate, James George Aylwin Creighton*, as moving spirit, a junior team was formed in 1889 with the improbable name of the Rideau Hall Rebels. In 1890 Arthur was a founder of the Ontario Hockey Association. Doubtless his sons’ interest helped prompt the sports-minded governor general – he had provided a trophy and medal for curling – to present a cup for hockey. The Dominion Challenge Trophy was first awarded in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, which won the first contest for the trophy, against Ottawa, the following year. Eventually known as the Stanley Cup, it was won in 1909 by a professional team, the Ottawa Senators, and is the oldest trophy competed for by professional athletes in North America.”
Within 20 years another governor general, Albert Henry George GREY, 4th Earl Grey, had also commissioned a trophy that bears his name and has become a symbol of Canadian sports:
“Grey donated trophies to the Montreal Horse Show and for figure skating, but his best known contribution to the promotion of Canadian amateur sport is the Grey Cup. Donated in 1909 for the encouragement of football at the behest of Philip Dansken Ross*, editor and owner of the Ottawa Evening Journal, this challenge cup was first won, on 4 Dec. 1909, by the varsity team of the University of Toronto.”
The biographies that appear in the following lists provide additional information about individuals who donated trophies for a sport, the artists who created these trophies, and people in whose memory certain trophies were created:
