1895 - Grand Athletic Tournament
When the advertisements for the April 26 th , 1895 event to be held at the Grand Opera House first appeared in the Hamilton newspapers, it was clearly advertised as a “Grand Athletic Tournament.” It would not just be another boxing presentation. To make it more respectable, the bill would include an exhibition of bag punching and a “Tug-of-War between crack teams of the Hamilton and Toronto Police.” However, a representative of the Hamilton Police Department’s Tug-of-War was quick to contact the press to say that the team would definitely not participate in the Grand Athletic Tournament. The claim was made that the police were not even informed that such a contest had been arranged and that the men would need some time to prepare for such a contest and should have been informed much earlier. Besides the advertisements in their newspapers, the Times, the Spectator and the Herald strongly promoted the event elsewhere in their editions. An example of that appeared in the April 2...