Normally Friday is reserved for the BC Premier prediction and rosters article but since the BC Premier is still 2 weeks away and the schedule for any rugby in BC is still a week away, on a whim I’ve decided to take the time machine back 100 years ago to the day. What was happening in rugby on January 9th 1926, and on a larger scale what were the sports headlines?
The Armistice, an agreement to end the fighting of the First World War as a prelude to peace negotiations, began at 11am on 11 November 1918. That was the history behind Armistice or Remembrance Day. “At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – we will remember them”. We take a look at how rugby in Victoria was part of the Remembrance Day events in the years after World War II and as recent as 1987.
This article began with research into the competition between the NZ Youth team and the Pacific Pride. I remember attending some of the matches at Centennial Stadium but it was before BCRN started publishing in 2004 so I don’t have any articles in the database. I thought wouldn’t it be great to revive that rivalry and give the Pride, aka Young Canada, aka the Rugby Canada Academy, a high level competition to highlight their season.
The UBCOB Ravens announced they will be re-establishing a women’s team for the 2025-26 season with Jake Thiel as head coach. The media release is below. We also dug into the archives to look at the history of women’s rugby at Jericho with some excerpts from the research of Doug Sturrock and Dave Pearcey. The Jericho Old Girls were one of three Vancouver women’s teams in 1978 and can claim to be the first champions of the West Coast Women’s Rugby Association (WCWRA) which was started in 1981 with 1982 being the first season played. The team coaches were well known UBCOB players Doug Carr, Rick Bourne, and Garth Henrikson. It doesn’t appear the team continued into the 90s and I’m not sure if there were more recent revivals since then, we’ll update the article if we find more information.
May 24th 1987 was Canada’s 1st Rugby World Cup match. The game was against Tonga and Canada won 37-4, it was played in Napier, NZ in front of 7,000 fans. A try was worth 4 points then so Canada scored 7 tries to Tonga’s 1, Canada added 3 conversions and 1 penalty. Scoring for Canada were winger Pat Palmer of UBCOB (2T), centre Paul Vaesen of JBAA (2T), Rowers Ian Stuart at centre (1T), CW’s Flanker Rob Frame (1T) and a penalty try. Converting was CW’s Gareth Rees (1C), and JBAA’s (later Velox) fullback Mark Wyatt (2C). Gareth Rees also added a penalty.
With Sunday’s game between Canada and Japan at BC Place we did some digging on previous matches between the two teams going back to 1932 and the first Canadian rugby tour to Japan.
ESPN Rugby was a great resource for finding historical information on Canadian Rugby. In 2021 they focused their attention on the Tier 1 nations and the historical information on Tier 2 countries like Canada has been getting harder to find.
In March 1954 the NZ All Blacks wrapped up a gruelling 36 match tour of the UK, Ireland, France and North America. By the time they reached BC they had played 31 matches and had 5 more to go, 3 of them in BC and 2 in California. They won the matches in BC handily, 39-3 against Victoria, 42-3 against UBC and 37-11 against the Mainland.
The 1932 tour wasn’t the first Canadian rugby tour but it was the first tour under the auspices of the Rugby Union of Canada, which was formed in 1929. The tour booklet makes mention of the 1902-1903 tour to the UK which was the first Canada tour, it also references the 1930 incoming Japan tour to BC which acted as a foundation for this 1932 tour.
Don Burgess was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, in the Builder category. He was well recognized for his contributions to rugby as a player, coach and inventor but it was his research and writing contributions that are highlighted in this article.