Dan Bain

Lore & Background

Bain, also known as Dan or DH, was born in Belleville, Ontario, to Scottish immigrants. His father was a horse buyer for the British government; his mother was a seamstress. When Bain was a young child, the family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba. He attended school in Winnipeg and earned a bachelor's degree from Manitoba College. His first championship came in 1887 when he won the Manitoba roller skating title. At age 17, he won the Manitoba provincial gymnastics competition; at age 20, he won the first of three consecutive Manitoba cycling championships. Bain was also a top lacrosse player in his home province.

In 1895, Bain answered a classified ad placed in a newspaper by the Winnipeg Victorias, an ice hockey team looking for new players. Though he played with a broken stick held together by wire, Bain was selected for the team five minutes into the tryout. He became a star centre and leader of the Victorias. On February 14, 1896, the team played against the Montreal Victorias for the Stanley Cup; Bain scored a goal in a 2–0 win for Winnipeg. In a rematch for the Cup in December 1896, Bain scored two goals but Montreal recaptured the Cup with a 6–5 victory. 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 in 1901 in a best-of-three series. Bain played in the series with a broken nose that required him to wear a wooden face mask, earning him the nickname 'the masked man'. Winnipeg won the series in two games after Bain scored the clinching goal in overtime, the first time in Stanley Cup history that the winning goal was scored in extra time. The team lost a challenge for the Cup against the Montreal Hockey Club in March 1902, which marked the end of Bain's hockey-playing career.

Reader's Guide

Bain's significance lies in his multifaceted amateur athletic career and his role in early Stanley Cup history. He helped the Winnipeg Victorias win the Stanley Cup twice, and his overtime goal in 1901 was the first such winning goal in Cup history. Beyond hockey, he won the Canadian trapshooting championship in 1903, earned medals in lacrosse and snowshoeing, and won over a dozen figure skating titles, the last at age 56. He was voted Canada's top athlete of the last half of the 19th century. In professional life, Bain was a prominent Winnipeg businessman and community leader. He became wealthy by operating Donald H. Bain Limited, a grocery brokerage firm. He was an active member of numerous community associations and president of the Winnipeg Winter Club. The Mallard Lodge, a building on the shores of Lake Manitoba built by Bain as a personal retreat, serves as a research facility for the University of Manitoba. Bain never married and had no children. He died in Winnipeg on August 15, 1962, aged 88, leaving an estate in excess of C$1 million, the majority of which he donated to charity and to former employees. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1949, and later into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.

Did You Know?

• Bain scored the first overtime winning goal in Stanley Cup history in 1901.
• He played a Stanley Cup game with a broken stick held together by wire.
• He wore a wooden face mask after breaking his nose, earning the nickname 'the masked man'.