Nasujak: This Week in History: 1933 — A brouhaha at a wrestling match and a prodigious drinker sobers up

The Vancouver Sun decries a wrestling villain for his "unseemly row."

Author of the article:

John Mackie

The Vancouver Sun archives don't have any photos of 1930s wrestler Howard Cantonwine. But he would have gotten along with Mean Gene Kiniski, right, who is shown battling Moose Morowski at the PNE Gardens on Dec. 26, 1980. Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost/Province /PNG

Hell hath no fury like the 1933 Vancouver Sun editorial writer who thought that professional wrestling was real, not showbiz.

In this case, the anonymous writer was upset about the antics of the villainous Howard Cantonwine, whose nickname was The Hangman.

“Reports of a wrestling exhibition held in Vancouver Thursday night tell of a near riot when one of the husky contestants entangled the neck of the other and nearly strangled him to death,” said an editorial in the Aug. 26, 1933, Sun. “Women screamed, pop bottles were hurled, the crowd milled into the ring, and the referee was knocked unconscious.”

The Sun editorial writer believed “the stain of a disgraceful and unseemly row” like this “would shame any waterfront barroom, and leaves an ugly blot on the civilization of the whole city.”

Well.

Presumably the writer didn’t see a photo of Cantonwine promoting the match in the newspaper on Aug. 24, under the headline: “He Hangs ’Em!”

“(Cantonwine’s) appearance on the local mats tonight may see him trying to apply his rope-strangle just below the thickened ears of Jack Forsgren,” read the cutline.

Mind you, lots of fans at the Denman Arena did seem to think that when Cantonwine wrapped Forsgren in his “famous Cantonwine noose,” it was real.

“Did the customers get hostile?” wrote a Sun sportswriter Aug. 25. “As (referee) Draper chased Cantonwine into a corner to warn him that such goings-on were not permitted, about 20 or more (fans) got into the ring. One or two were armed with chairs.”

Cantonwine was mad that the ref wouldn’t let him finish off his opponent, so he slugged him in the jaw. Mayhem ensued, he was disqualified, and Cantonwine “had to beat his way through a furious mob to the dressing room.”

It was all in a day’s work for the Iowa native, who left college football to become what sportswriters of the day called a “squirmer.” The newspaper said Cantonwine’s fee was being held for his misdeeds, and that he was going to be banned from Vancouver. But it was all an act — he fought here again a couple of months later.

Vancouver Sun writer Bob Bouchette feeding robins at the Charles E. Jones’ Birds’ Paradise, 1934. PNG

The Sun’s most popular writer at the time probably had a good chuckle at the naiveté of the editorial. Bob Bouchette had a folksy, humorous column called Lend Me Your Ears, and also wrote many of the newspaper’s big features.

Known as a prodigious drinker, Bouchette had gone on the wagon in 1933, and lampooned himself, sports editor Andy Lytle and everyone else who had given up booze.

“The gallant sand castles of alcoholic achievement have been levelled by the advancing waters of individual reform,” he wrote Aug. 24.

This led to a tongue-in-cheek retort in The Province by James Butterfield, and a retort to the retort by Bouchette in the Aug. 26 Sun.

“Senator Butterfield is so unutterably moved by the picture of The Sun staff dissipating their vital energies in sobriety and continence that he lurches into print with a sort of appeal to the higher rollers of the community to stop this thing before it gets out of control,” Bouchette wrote.

Bouchette didn’t seem to regret his drinking days. He recounted a day when he was assigned to mentor a young reporter.

“What do we have to do?” asked the young man.

“Just three things,” I said. “Scoop The Province once a day at least, avoid contact with editors, and drink.

“You will find the first obligation easy to fulfil, in fact it’s almost impossible to do otherwise, even by design. The second duty may tax your ingenuity until you become expert with practice.

“But the third and most important trust confided to your keeping requires a strong head, an unbending spirit and an elastic purse.”

Bouchette wrote that by 9:30 a.m. he had his story and by 10:30 “we had cleared away most of the loose ends of the day’s routine (and) repaired to a beer parlour for the day’s boozing.”

Alas, Bouchette wrote, boozing proved hard on the body and pocketbook, so he quit.

“For the soul’s sake it was better to remain drunk,” he wrote. “Trouble is our creditors won’t tolerate it, and neither will our stomach linings.”

jmackie@postmedia.com