Historical Hockey and Sports Memorabilia Auction November 2024
“The Trail of the Stanley Cup" is a definite prerequisite to any important hockey library. Author Charles L. Coleman's complete history of hockey and Lord Stanley's trophy from 1893 to 1967 is contained within these three books. Only 1,000 copies of the special leather-bound editions of the first and second volumes were produced and presented to important hockey figures, while the third was limited to 1,500 copies. We have a three volume matched set of the leather-bound editions, with each originally presented to hockey writer and historian Bill Fitsell. Each numbered "819", stamps with Fitsell's address in Kingston are also found on the first page of Volumes I and II. All three volumes show light handling wear, with each accompanied by their original attractive black slip cases with gilded images of the Stanley Cup (there is some wear to the slip cases). We should also note that there are some handwritten notations in Vol I, and a number of bookmarks and small paper notes inserted into Vol II, and we have left them in place as presented to us.
The founding president of the Society for International Hockey Research in 1991, Bill Fitsell was a columnist for The Kingston Whig-Standard from 1961 to 1993, and was involved with the International Hockey Hall of Fame from 1969 to 2005, serving as its curator and historian. Attending his first National Hockey League game on January 18, 1936, when the Toronto Maple Leafs battled the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens, Fitsell later joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1942, and served aboard HMCS Outremont, where the ship protected the western end of the English Channel from enemy submarines during the Normandy landings in 1944. Publishing five books during his writing career, Fitsell received numerous honours including induction into the Lindsay District Sports Hall of Fame in 1995, and the builder category of the Kingston and District Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. The archives of Queen's University at Kingston keeps fonds of Fitsell's historical collections, research and writing on ice hockey.
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