Scotty Davidson has been gone for over a hundred years, the World War One hero and former hockey great remains one of the most dynamic figures in Kingston history.

Davidson, who scored a Stanley Cup winning goal for Toronto and won two Ontario championships for the Kingston Frontenacs, died in battle during WWI.

Thanks to Craig Boals, General Manager at Cataraqui Cemetery, the family plot of Lance Corporal Allan (Scotty) Davidson has been restored. Late last spring, former CKWS TV reporter and Curator at the Original Hockey Hall of Fame, Mike Postovit, let us know the monument at the Davidson family grave site had collapsed and toppled to the ground.

Through the work of Boals and Cataraqui Cemetery, the monument has been repaired, professionally refurbished and reinstalled on a new, secure base.

Good for another 100 plus years.

Davidson, was a fearless soldier and athlete, a hockey star from Portsmouth Village, who died at age 24 in the Battle of Givenchy, France on June 16, 1915.

Hundreds of Canadians were lost in the two day battle on the Western Front in Northern France. Davidson is commemorated on the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

Davidson’s remains were buried at the back of a trench where he and three fellow soldiers were killed by artillery shell just fifty yards from enemy lines. His fellow soldiers cited Davidson as one of the bravest men they had seen.

Considered to be one of the best hockey players of his era, sportswriters of the day said Davidson, “could skate faster backwards, than other players could skate forward”, while starring in the National Hockey Association (NHA) – the forerunner to today’s National Hockey League.

Davidson learned to skate at Portsmouth Harbour beside Kingston Penitentiary. His father was a keeper at the Rockwood Asylum and they lived on the property fronting on to what is now King Street W., adjacent to Lake Ontario Park.

Twice he led the Kingston Frontenacs to Ontario junior hockey championships in 1910 and 1911. After a brief stint playing Senior hockey out west, he turned pro with the Toronto Blueshirts.

In 1914, Davidson scored Toronto’s first Stanley Cup winning goal, against legendary Montreal goaltender Georges Vezina.

A Stanley Cup hero Davidson came back home to Portsmouth and to his job at the Kingston Foundry. That summer Davidson was the first pro hockey player to enlist in the Canadian war effort of WWI, the following June, just past his 24th birthday, he died in the trenches in France.

Davidson was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950, along with George Richardson, another Kingston hockey star who died in WWI in 1916. The Memorial Cup was founded in Kingston by Capt James Sutherland in memory of Davidson and Richardson.

Sutherland had discovered and coached both these young men when they were kids playing shinny on the Kingston waterfront, their loss hit Sutherland hard.

The Original Hockey Hall of Fame plans to have a permanent military marker laid at the Davidson family plot at Cataraqui to honour Davidson’s military service and sacrifice.

A new biography of Davidson has just been published by Ottawa based author Matthew Walthert, and is now available on Amazon.

Today, over a century later with a rebuilt monument at Cataraqui, Allan (Scotty) Davidson is remembered as a great Kingstonian who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Mark Potter is the Past President of the Original Hockey Hall of Fame and like Davidson – grew up in Portsmouth Village.