1894, THE STANLEY CUP PLAYS ITS FIRST PLAYOFF GAME

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has been reading about the StanleyCup, the championship trophy awarded annually to the NHL playoff winner whose first playoff game for the Stanley Cup started on a day like today in 1894.

The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff winner.

It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the IIHF considers it to be one of the most important championships available to the sport.

The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. The entire Stanley family supported the sport, the sons and daughters all playing and promoting the game.

The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. Professional teams first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906.

In 1915, the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), the two main professional ice hockey organizations, reached a gentlemen's agreement in which their respective champions would face each other annually for the Stanley Cup. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947.

There are actually three Stanley Cups: the original bowl of the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, the authenticated Presentation Cup, and the spelling-corrected Permanent Cup on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

While the NHL has maintained control over the trophy itself and its associated trademarks, the NHL does not actually own the trophy but uses it by agreement with the two Canadian trustees of the cup.

The NHL has registered trademarks associated with the name and likeness of the Stanley Cup, although there has been dispute whether the league has the right to own trademarks associated with a trophy that it does not own.

The original bowl was made of silver and is 18.5 centimetres high and 29 centimetres wide. The current Stanley Cup is topped with a copy of the original bowl, made of a silver and nickel alloy. It has a height of 89.54 centimetres and weighs 15.5 kilograms. A new Stanley Cup is not made each year, unlike the trophies awarded by the other major professional sports leagues of North America. The winners originally kept it until a new champion was crowned, but winning teams currently get the Stanley Cup during the summer and a limited number of days during the season.

More information: NHL

Every year since 1924, a select portion of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff names are engraved on its bands, which is unusual among trophies. However, there is not enough room to include all the players and non-players, so some names must be omitted. Between 1924 and 1940, a new band was added almost every year that the trophy was awarded, earning the nickname Stovepipe Cup due to the unnatural height of all the bands. In 1947, the cup size was reduced, but not all the large rings were the same size.

In 1958, the modern one-piece Cup was designed with a five-band barrel which could contain 13 winning teams per band. The oldest band is removed when the bottom band is full and preserved in the Hockey Hall of Fame in order to prevent the Stanley Cup from growing, and a new blank band added to the bottom. The first winning team engraved on the newest band is thus, in theory, displayed on the trophy for the next 65 years. It has been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley's Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley's Mug.

The Stanley Cup is surrounded by numerous legends and traditions, the oldest of which is the winning team drinking champagne from it.

Since the 1914–15 season, the Cup has been won a combined 103 times by 20 current NHL teams and 5 defunct teams. It was not awarded in 1919 because of the Spanish flu epidemic and in 2005 because of the 2004–05 NHL lockout. It was held by nine different teams between 1893 and 1914.

The Montreal Canadiens have won it a record 24 times and are the most recent Canadian-based team to win it, doing so in 1993; the Detroit Red Wings have won it 11 times, the most of any United States-based NHL team, most recently in 2008. More than three thousand different names, including the names of over thirteen hundred players, had been engraved on it by 2017.

More information: NHL

After the Lord Stanley of Preston was appointed by Queen Victoria as Governor General of Canada on June 11, 1888, he and his family became highly enthusiastic about ice hockey. Stanley was first exposed to the game at Montreal's 1889 Winter Carnival, where he saw the Montreal Victorias play the Montreal Hockey Club. The Montreal Gazette reported that he expressed his great delight with the game of hockey and the expertise of the players. During that time, organized ice hockey in Canada was still in its infancy and only Montreal and Ottawa had anything resembling leagues.

Soon afterwards, Stanley purchased what is frequently described as a decorative punch bowl, but which silver expert John Culme identified as a rose bowl, made in Sheffield, England, and sold by London silversmith G. R. Collis and Company, for ten guineas, equal to ten and a half pounds sterling, US$48.67, which is equal to $1,385 in 2019 dollars. He had the words Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup engraved on one side of the outside rim, and From Stanley of Preston on the other side. The name Stanley Cup was given to it as early as May 1, 1893, when an Ottawa Journal article used the name as a title.

The Cup trustees issued more specific rules on how the trophy should be defended and awarded:

-The Cup is automatically awarded to the team that wins the title of the previous Cup champion's league, without the need for any other special extra contest.

-Challengers for the Cup must be from senior hockey associations, and must have won their league championship. Challengers will be recognized in the order in which their request is received.

-The challenge games (where the Cup could change leagues) are to be decided either in a one-game affair, a two-game total goals' affair, or the best of three series, to the benefit of both teams involved. All matches are to take place on the home ice of the champions, although specific dates and times have to be approved by the trustees.

-Ticket receipts from the challenge games are to be split equally between both teams.

-If the two competing clubs cannot agree to a referee, the trustees will appoint one, and the two teams shall cover the expenses equally.

-A league could not challenge for the Cup twice in one season.

Stanley never saw a Stanley Cup championship game, nor did he ever present the Cup. Although his term as Governor General ended in September 1893, he was forced to return to England on July 15.

More information: Everything Hockey

Growing up in Canada,
most kids from Canada dream of playing in the NHL,
and they also hope one day to be on a Stanley Cup team.
That was a big goal.

Bobby Orr

RAYMOND BURR: PERRY MASON, IRONSIDE AND ORCHIDS

Raymond William Stacy Burr

Raymond William Stacy Burr (May 21, 1917–September 12, 1993) was a Canadian-American actor, primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. He was prominently involved in multiple charitable endeavors, such as working on behalf of the United Service Organizations.

His portrayal of the suspected murderer in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rear Window (1954) is regarded as his best-known film role. He won two Emmy Awards, in 1959 and 1961, for the role of Perry Mason, which he played for nine seasons (1957–1966) and reprised in a series of 26 television films (1985–1993). His second hit TV series, Ironside, earned him six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.

Raymond William Stacy Burr was born May 21, 1917, in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Growing up during the Great Depression, Burr hoped to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, a renowned community theater and school in Pasadena, California, but he was unable to afford the tuition. 

More information: Perry Mason TV Series

Burr appeared in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957, creating an array of villains that established him as an icon of film noir: Desperate (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948), Raw Deal (1948), Pitfall (1948), Abandoned (1949), Red Light (1950), M (1951), His Kind of Woman (1951), The Blue Gardenia (1953) and Crime of Passion (1957).

Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale in Perry Mason

In 1956, Burr auditioned for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason, a new CBS-TV courtroom drama based on the highly successful novels by Erle Stanley Gardner. 

Impressed with his courtroom performance in the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson told Burr he was perfect for Perry Mason. Also starring were Barbara Hale as Della Street, Mason's secretary; William Talman as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who loses nearly every case to Mason; and Ray Collins as homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg.

The series ran from 1957 to 1966. Burr received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations and won the award in 1959 and 1961 for his performance as Perry Mason. 

More information: Pinterest

Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he played the title role in the television drama Ironside, which ran on NBC from 1967 to 1975. In the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside is wounded by a sniper during an attempt on his life and, after his recovery, uses a wheelchair for mobility. 

Raymond Burr aka Robert T. Ironside

This role gave Burr another hit series, the first crime drama show ever to star a police officer with a disability. The show earned Burr six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.

In 1985, Burr was approached by producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman to star in a made-for-TV movie, Perry Mason Returns. He agreed to do the Mason movie if Barbara Hale returned to reprise her role as Della Street. Hale agreed, and when Perry Mason Returns aired in December 1985, her character became the defendant. The rest of the principal cast had died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt played the role of Paul Drake, Jr. The movie was so successful that Burr made a total of 26 Perry Mason television films before his death. 

 More information: MeTV

As he had with the Perry Mason TV movies, Burr decided to do an Ironside reunion movie. The Return of Ironside aired in May 1993, reuniting the entire original cast of the 1967–75 series.

Burr and Hale in Perry Mason Returns

He developed his interest in cultivating and hybridizing orchids into a business with Robert Benevides, his partner. 

Over 20 years, their company, Sea God Nurseries, had nurseries in Fiji, Hawaii, the Azores, and California, and was responsible for adding more than 1,500 new orchids to the worldwide catalog. Burr named one of them the Barbara Hale Orchid after his Perry Mason costar. 

Burr and Benevides cultivated Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and grapes for Port wine, as well as orchids, at Burr's farmland holdings in Sonoma County, California.

More information: Touring & Tasting

Raymond Burr died on September 12, 1993, at his Sonoma County ranch near Healdsburg.

Try and live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs. 

Raymond Burr

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN FOUNDED LE VILLE DE QUÉBEC

The Grandma visiting le Ville de Québec

The Grandma is spending some days in Quebec. She wants to improve her French and she has decided to travel to this wonderful place to share her time with these kind and nice inhabitants. 

As all the families know, The Grandma is a great defender of learning or improving French language which is considered by her an important tool for the closer future.

Ville de Québec, Quebec City, officially Québec, is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. 

The narrowing of the Saint Lawrence River proximate to the city's promontory, Cape Diamond, and Lévis, on the opposite bank, provided the name given to the city, Kébec, an Algonquin word meaning where the river narrows.

More information: Quebec City

Quebec City is one of the oldest cities in North America. The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec, Vieux-Québec, are the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico, and were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 as the Historic District of Old Québec.

The Grandma visiting le Ville de Québec

The city's landmarks include the Château Frontenac, a hotel which dominates the skyline, and La Citadelle, an intact fortress that forms the centrepiece of the ramparts surrounding the old city. 

According to the Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec, the Commission de toponymie du Québec, and the Geographical Names Board of Canada, the names of Canadian cities and towns have only one official form. Thus, Québec is officially spelled with an accented é in both Canadian English and French, although the accent is often not used in common English usage. In English, the city and the province are formally distinguished by the fact that the province does not have an accented é while the city does, while informally the form Quebec City is frequently, although unofficially, used to distinguish the city from the province.

More information: Quebec Region

Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer and diplomat on 3 July 1608, and at the site of a long abandoned St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement called Stadacona. Champlain, also called The Father of New France, served as its administrator for the rest of his life.

The name Canada refers to this settlement. Although the Acadian settlement at Port-Royal was established three years earlier, Quebec came to be known as the cradle of the Francophone population of North America. 

  

My quality of life here in Quebec City is extraordinary. 

Patrick Roy