Dan Bain

Donald Henderson "Dan" Bain (February 14, 1874 – August 15, 1962) was a Canadian amateur athlete and merchant. Though he competed in and excelled in numerous sports, Bain is most notable for his ice hockey career. While a member of the Winnipeg Victorias hockey team, with whom he played for from 1894 until 1902, Bain helped the team win the Stanley Cup thrice as champions of Canada. A skilled athlete, Bain won championships and medals in several other sports, and was the Canadian trapshooting champion in 1903. In recognition of his play, Bain was inducted into multiple halls of fame, including the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1949, and was also voted Canada's top athlete of the last half of the 19th century.
In his professional life Bain was a prominent Winnipeg businessman and community leader. He became wealthy as a result of operating Donald H. Bain Limited, a grocery brokerage firm. Bain was an active member of numerous community associations, the president of the Winnipeg Winter Club and an avid outdoorsman. The Mallard Lodge, a building on the shores of Lake Manitoba built by Bain as a personal retreat, today serves as a research facility for the University of Manitoba.

The son of Scottish immigrants, Bain was born in Belleville, Ontario and moved with his family to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as a young child. His father, James Henderson Bain, was a horse buyer for the British government and upon his arrival in Canada lived in Montreal before moving west. His mother, Helen Miller, was a seamstress. Bain was the sixth of seven children, having four sisters and two brothers.

Bain's first championship came in 1887 when he captured the Manitoba roller skating championship at the age of 13 by winning the three-mile race. At the age of 17 he won the provincial gymnastics competition, and at 20 he won the first of three consecutive Manitoba cycling championships. In addition Bain was a top lacrosse player in his home province.

The Winnipeg Victorias in 1896. Bain is in the front row, second from the left.

In 1895 Bain first played competitive ice hockey when he answered a classified ad placed in a newspaper by the Winnipeg Victorias, who were looking for new players. Though he played with a broken stick held together by wire, he made the team five minutes into his tryout. Bain quickly became a star centre and leader for the Victorias. This was exemplified during a February 14, 1896 game against the Montreal Victorias for the Stanley Cup, given to the national hockey champion in Canada. It was a 2–0 victory for Winnipeg that gave them the Cup. This victory marked the first time a team outside of Quebec had won the trophy. The team was greeted by a huge crowd at the Canadian Pacific Railway station when their train, decorated with hockey sticks and the Union Jack, returned to Winnipeg. They were led to a feast in their honour in a parade of open sleighs as fans gathered to celebrate the championship.

The Montreal Victorias played Winnipeg in a challenge to reclaim the Cup in December 1896, a game described by the local press as "the greatest sporting event in the history of Winnipeg". Though Bain scored two goals in the game, Montreal recaptured the Cup with a 6–5 victory. Winnipeg was involved in numerous further Stanley Cup challenges with Bain serving as the team's captain and manager. They again lost to their Montreal counterparts in 1898 before a record crowd of over 7,000 fans.

The Winnipeg Victorias posing for a photo with the Stanley Cup in 1901. Bain is in the front row, fourth from the left.

During a 1900 challenge series against the Montreal Shamrocks Bain scored four goals in three games, but Winnipeg again lost the title. The Victorias challenged the Shamrocks again in 1901 in a best-of-three series. Winnipeg won the series in two games after Bain scored the clinching goal in overtime. It was the first time in Stanley Cup history that the winning goal was scored in extra time. Bain did so while playing with a broken nose that required him to wear a wooden face mask, earning the nickname "the masked man" as a result. When the Victorias defended their title in a series against the Toronto Wellingtons in January 1902, Bain did not play in the series. The team lost their next challenge, against the Montreal Hockey Club, in March of that year, which marked the end of Bain's hockey career.

Throughout his sporting career, Bain also earned medals in lacrosse and snowshoeing. He was the Canadian trapshooting champion in 1903. An avid figure skater throughout much of his life, Bain won over a dozen titles, the last of which came at the age of 56, and he continued to skate until the age of 70; he remained a competitive athlete until 1930. On his skill in a variety of sports, Bain once said that "I couldn't see any sense in participating in a game unless I was good. I kept at a sport just long enough to nab a championship, then I'd try something else."

In recognition of his sporting skill, Bain was inducted into several halls of fame. The first came in 1949 when he was elected a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. This was followed in 1971 with his induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in 1981, and the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. He was also voted as Canada's top sportsman of the last half of the 19th century.

Outside of sports, Bain was a well known businessman in Winnipeg. He served as the president of Donald H. Bain Limited, a grocery brokerage firm headquartered in Winnipeg and operated in numerous cities. It was through his firm that he amassed a large fortune. Known as a community leader, he helped found the Winnipeg Winter Club on land that is now the HMCS Chippawa naval reserve division, and after World War II he organized the current Winter Club. Bain also belonged to many community groups and was the life governor of the Winnipeg General Hospital. He was also one of Western Canada's first automobile enthusiasts and owned many British vehicles.

As a result of his trap-shooting career, Bain developed an appreciation for nature. He bought an ownership share of the Portage Country Club, on the Delta Marsh near the south shore of Lake Manitoba, and later donated the land to Ducks Unlimited. Bain built the Mallard Lodge as a personal retreat on land adjacent to the club. He strictly enforced his privacy, even building a road to his lodge that he allowed no one else to use; members of the Portage Country Club were required to take a different route. Bain intended to donate his lodge to the government of Manitoba for preservation, though he died before he could do so. The lodge passed into the control of the government regardless, and was donated to the University of Manitoba as a research facility in 1966 that remains active today. Bain was also a member of the Manitoba Game and Fish Association and the Winnipeg Humane Society.

Bain never married and had no children. He was fond of his pets, in particular his Curly Coated Retriever dogs that he was said to value above human company. On August 15, 1962 Bain died in Winnipeg, aged 88. He left behind an estate in excess of C$1 million, ($7.97 million in 2017 dollars), the majority of which he donated to charity and former employees.