Though it might not be apparent at first glance, Queen’s University as an institution is 183 years old, having been founded in 1841. With its age, naturally comes decades of tradition and history.
Part of its history are the sports programs that have dominated in the school’s facilities, filling stands in Kingston and around the country. Both at the ARC and at Richardson Stadium, you can see banners of previous champions fill the air, but with some dating back over a century ago it becomes hard to understand the magnitude of their achievement.
This series aims to highlight some of the golden moments here at Queen’s and help give some sense to why some cherish the Gaels so deeply.
On the south side of Richardson, if you look up towards the press box you can see every championship winning team. Look even closer and you’ll notice something a bit odd, for three consecutive years from 1922 to 1924, the Gaels were winners of the Grey Cup.
Today, the Grey Cup is presented to the winners of the Canadian Football League (CFL), a professional sports league that Queen’s doesn’t compete in.
However, back in the early 1900s, football was governed under a completely different landscape. With the sport’s roots drawing back to rugby, football was governed by the Canadian Rugby Union (CRU) and the Grey Cup was its national trophy open to all , and its western Canada equivalent.
For the first decade of its existence, the Queen’s program struggled in the way of success, while other rival universities were thriving, such as the Varsity Blues winning the Grey Cup from 1909 to 1911, and 1920
. The 1920 Varsity Blue championship must have particularly stung because the school quickly moved to make the team more competitive. With a donation of $50,000 from the Richardson family for a new stadium, they built Richardson Stadium on the same land where the modern iteration currently sits.
They would also build a new practice field near where Tindall field currently stands, hire a new full-time director, and trainer, while also recruiting new players heavily.
These moves spurred on a revolution for the team, immediately finding success in the following 1921 season. But it wasn’t until the 1922 season and beyond where the team would really find their strides.
From 1922 to 1925, they would win 23 out of 25 games and take home three Grey Cups.
Their first in 1922 was a close match between them and the Edmonton Eskimos. Down 1-0 at half, they rallied to find 13 unanswered points to win their first Grey Cup, 13-1. It was part of a season the found them squeak through tough games, including a 12-11 win against the Toronto Argonauts to even make it to the championship.
Hosted at the newly built Richardson, the stands were filled with an attendance, and people were overflowing into the grounds around the stadium. With the win, the town would celebrate, hosting a banquet in the players’ honour.
What they didn’t know was two would quickly follow in dominate fashion. The next year they would steam roll their way to a Grey Cup matchup against the Regina Rugby Club who wouldn’t get in the way of an undefeated Gaels team, losing the matchup 54-0.
Queen’s would cap of a historic run with a final Grey Cup win against the Toronto Balmy Beach Beachers with a final score of 11-3.
They would come close to making it back to the Grey Cup in subsequent years, but they were never quite able to make it past the Eastern Canadian Championship.
In 1933, university teams would withdraw from the CRU, marking the end of the Grey Cup era, however Queen’s forever left their mark on Canadian football with their three consecutive wins.
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Reliving Queen's golden moments
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