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Writer's pictureGreg Nesteroff

The evolution of Trail hockey uniforms

Updated: 5 days ago

In 2000, one of the strangest sports controversies in local history erupted when the Trail Smoke Eaters unveiled a new logo that — horrors! — did not show smoke belching from its smokestacks.


Some of the indignation was based on the notion the logo had been unchanged since the Mesozoic Era and therefore its alteration was a grave and inexcusable affront to tradition. Others argued the new logo represented capitulation to industry or sanitizing something for the sake of political correctness.  


Fondness for the logo was and is understandable. In 2015, the Hockey News ranked the team’s jersey as the sport’s eighth-best of all time, describing it as an “amazing orange sweater, complete with a crest that says it all for the working class town.”


But the rationale used to justify outrage over the new logo was at least partly misplaced, for both the team’s crest and uniforms had changed numerous times over the years, often paying homage to a version introduced in the 1930s, but sometimes deviating greatly from it or doing away with it entirely. The logo the team used immediately prior to 2000 was one of those modified versions.


In fact, a review of photo evidence suggests Trail’s senior men’s hockey team wore at least 11 different uniform styles over the decades, plus many subtler sub-variations. The 1935 logo also changed at least seven times since its introduction, and other versions existed exclusively on team programs. If you throw in the junior teams, there were more variations still.


What follows is an attempt to enumerate those changes and explain the history of Trail’s uniforms. Some guesswork is required. If a player or team is shown wearing a certain sweater design at one point in the season, is it safe to assume the same design was worn the entire season? Not sure.


And it’s not always easy to tell if the photos included in any given program (a major source of information) were taken that season or a previous one. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that whatever logo/crest appeared in the program matched the one on the uniforms that season. In fact, the opposite was sometimes true.


The photo record also reveals the Smoke Eaters occasionally reverted to earlier designs after experimenting with new ones, making it harder still to guess what they might have worn in any given year where we have no photos.


Today hockey teams wear at least two sets of sweaters: dark ones and white ones, for home and away, and since the mid-1990s it’s become increasingly common to wear a third set a few times per year, often with a retro design. But at hockey’s dawn, just one sweater was used for all games. In the NHL, the Boston Bruins of the 1930s reportedly became the first team to wear white jerseys at home. Others followed suit. The league has gone back and forth a few times on this; today the road team wears white. I’m not sure to what extent other leagues followed this pattern.


In this post, we’ll look at each of Trail’s uniform designs and reveal some of their origins. A season-by-season chart appears at bottom, although lots of information remains to be added.


The T

Although Trail iced its first organized hockey team in 1902, the earliest photo we have is from 1913-14. That season Trail won the Sibbald Shield (championship of the West Kootenay), Daily News Cup (championship of the Kootenay-Boundary), and McBride Cup (championship of the BC interior). A series of team photos reveal the club wore dark two-toned sweaters with a serif T inside a lighter circle.

We don’t know how long the team had been wearing The T, nor how much longer they used it. The next photo of a Trail hockey team from 1915-16 shows only headshots of the players wearing lighter coloured turtleneck sweaters, with no obvious crest.


The Shield

Trail won the Daily News Cup and McBride Cup again in 1921-22, this time wearing dark sweaters bearing a lighter shield that had a large T in the middle, with A’s on either side and a third A above it. TAAA stood for Trail Amateur Athletic Association. They were still wearing these uniforms as of 1926-27, when they won the Savage Cup (the provincial senior title) for the first time.


The Wordmark

1927-28 saw a significant redesign of the team’s uniform. The word “Trail” gently sloped down the upper torso with two straight black lines beneath it. By now the team was wearing orange and black, as revealed by a mention in the Nelson Daily News of Dec. 21, 1927. (The colour scheme was also adopted elsewhere in the city. In 1929, the new Maple Leaf band performed “clad in the Trail colors, black and orange.”)

In 1928-29, the uniforms were the same except the wordmark was straightened out. By 1932-33, the wordmark was adjusted again so that it appeared on a curve, the letters rising and falling. (All except for manager/captain Carl Kendall, who appears to have kept his old sweater. But possibly his photo came from an earlier season.) They wore the same sweater design in 1933-34.  


The Cursive Wordmark

While the team was called the Smoke Eaters informally starting in the early 1920s, we don’t know when they adopted the name formally. However, it is first mentioned on the team photo in 1930-31, so we can conclude they had embraced it by then, even if it wasn’t on their uniforms.  


(This ambiguity has confused attempts to date the team’s birth: 1926 and 1929 have both been cited. The latter was based on a mistaken belief the name was coined that year; the former was a critical year in Trail’s hockey development, but there was an unbroken line of senior men’s teams dating back to 1902. So it depends how important you feel the name’s adoption was.)


The first time “Smoke Eaters” showed up on a uniform, it was in a cursive typeface, written diagonally across the sweater, on top of a black sash. I wouldn’t even know about this sweater design except that the Trail Museum has one on display! It belonged to goaltender Alf Dupuis, who played for Trail from 1931-36 and probably dates to one of his last two seasons.

White Smoke

The first appearance of what we’d call the classic Smoke Eaters logo is on the 1935-36 program, the earliest one known to exist. The orange ring has a texture suggesting it was created in felt, although oddly, the team didn’t wear it on their uniforms for another two years. Perhaps it appeared on team jackets in the meantime.

The 1935-36 program. A copy sold for $68 US on eBay in 2012 and two others went for $71.50 US and $68 US in 2020.


While I have been unable to find any discussion about the logo at the time of its creation, Mickey Brennen, who was a player back then, revealed in the Trail Daily Times of May 10, 1978 that it was the handiwork of Cominco office employee Jimmie Rood. “As I recall, he was just a hockey fan with a flair for that sort of thing,” Brennen said.  


Rood (pictured in 1922, in a detail from Trail Historical Society photo SP00107) has not received his due for creating the iconic image. A St. Louis native, he came to Trail in 1917 and held the title of “ore settlement clerk” at the smelter, which I gather means he paid mine owners for their shipments. He was “well known as a friend of the children” and “interested himself in almost all branches of sport.” At some point prior to 1932, he was the Smoke Eaters manager.


The Smoke Eaters used the logo on their sweaters for the first time on Dec. 9, 1937. Two days prior, the Nelson Daily News described them thusly:

The new torso covers are of an exceptionally bright orange with a broad black stripe across the shoulders and down the arms to the wrists. There are thin black lines around the chest, waist, and arms. A huge circular crest, 10 inches in diameter, of similar design to the booster program front cover, adorns the chest. The name “Trail Smoke Eaters” in black letters, form a circle on the orange border of the crest, the centre having a white background, the smelter stacks and buildings being worked in black.

To this I would add that the smokestacks and the smoke they emitted were both white, a key detail that would change in subsequent versions. Also, one of the smelter buildings now had three little windows, the rooflines were better defined, and dots separated “Trail” from “Smoke Eaters,” details not part of the 1935 version. Manager Charles Rommerdahl and coach Elmer Piper agreed the sweaters looked “very smart.”


Sadly, while Jimmie Rood saw his logo on the program, he never got to see the team wear it, for he died on Sept. 6, 1936, age 51. He suffered a heart ailment around 1932 and at the time of his death was recovering from a minor operation following a heart attack a couple of months earlier. He lived in the Tadanac staff house and left no immediate survivors. His obituary mentioned his involvement in sports generally and the Smoke Eaters specifically but said nothing about the crest.


The logo was like a magic amulet, for the Smoke Eaters went on to win the 1938 Allan Cup, the national amateur title. When they went to the 1939 World Championship representing Canada, they didn’t wear special uniforms. Instead, as J.W. Buckna wrote in the West Kootenay Hockey Review, they stuck with “their decidedly original club uniforms, [which] stirred the imagination of British fans wherever they played.”

Sports writers all over the country were intrigued by the symbol of the Smoke Eaters name — the big stacks belching out a stream of smoke high above the smelting plants. Said a Scottish reporter: “Something new in badges is displayed on the jerseys of the Smoke Eaters. The crest is inspired by the fact that Trail is a busy industrial town. Lead smelting is a big job there.”

Lou DeRosa told me: “My mother, Iolanda DeRosa, knit the sweaters and socks that the 1939 Smoke Eaters wore. She married in Italy in 1934 and arrived in Trail later in the year, bringing along a German-made knitting machine.”


One player on the ’39 team, Dick Kowcinak, thought the crest was “sort of an odd design.” As he recalled in the Vancouver Province in 2009: “In one small town, Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, the locals took our jersey literally and thought we actually ate smoke.” Each player only had one sweater, so they required constant repairs, because their equipment poked holes in them.


Spoiler alert: the Smoke Eaters won the world championship that year.

The fame the uniform earned in Europe was best epitomized by something incredible that happened to the team’s stick boy, Steve Saprunoff, a few years after Mickey Brennen gave him his sweater.


“It became my most prized possession,” Saprunoff told Murray Greig in a story published in the Society for International Hockey Research Journal in 2003. “I wore it everywhere.”


As a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Saprunoff was wearing it under his flight jacket when he was shot down in 1944 over Berlin. He survived with a few broken ribs but was captured and taken prisoner. He wasn’t given anything to eat for the first few days.

Then on the third or fourth day, an old guard came to the cell and told me to take off my flight jacket. When he saw my Smoke Eater sweater he got all excited and started going on and on in German about how he’d seen Trail play in Berlin in 1938 and how he was a big hockey fan and loved all the Canadian players … Later the same day he came back to my cell with a package of bread and sausage. He actually smuggled it in for me. It was the first food I’d seen in days, so I was very grateful for that. He’d come to my cell, all smiles and talking in German about the Smoke Eaters, and then he’d give me a little bundle of food.

A week later, before Saprunoff was to be moved to a prisoner of war camp, the guard came again to his cell with more food. Saprunoff made it back to Trail with his sweater, and wore it until it fell apart. He cut off the crest and gave it to Jimmy Morris, another member of the ’39 team.


If you happen to come across an early sweater that’s still intact, it could mean a windfall. Scoop Bentley’s 1941-42 sweater sold at auction in 2014 for $9,300 US, the equivalent today of $13,200 Cdn.

1939 world championship goaltender Duke Scodellaro’s sweater in the Trail Museum.


Black Smoke

Senior hockey in the West Kootenay took a three-year hiatus due to the Second World War. When it resumed in 1945, the Smoke Eaters’ crest saw its first revision. Now the smoke was black, the buildings in the background were simplified, the typeface had changed from sans-serif to serif, and the dots separating “Trail” from “Smoke Eaters” were gone. The whole thing was circled by a thick black ring.

The 1945-46 team. (Courtesy Ken Dimock)


The original black smoke version lasted but one season. In 1946-47, the team reverted to the white smoke logo. The only difference was that the ring around the smelter image was now either white or a much lighter orange. The team wore the same uniforms in 1948-49, but I am not sure about 1947-48.


No crest

In 1949-50, the team dispensed with its crest entirely. Now they just wore their numbers on the front of their sweaters, like football players. There is a dearth of team photos from the 1950s, so it’s unclear how long this continued, but as of 1953-54, a “Trail” wordmark had been added above the number.

Moe Young receives the Howard Anderson Memorial Trophy as WIHL most valuable player from James Buchanan. (Cominco Magazine, April 1954)


Star sweater

Sometime after 1954, the team brought back the white smoke logo and adopted a sweater that was mostly black, with light trim and four stars around the shoulders. (Norm Lenardon is seen wearing one here.) Although this design may have been used for a few years, the only team photo we have showing it is from 1956-57. No photos are known to exist from 1954-56. (Curiously, unlicensed Chinese versions of this sweater are sold online, although they use the present smokeless stacks logo.)


In 1957-58, there were no longer thin black stripes above and below the crest. Instead there were thick white stripes on the arms, offset with thinner black stripes. Players wore the same uniforms in 1959-60, although back-up goalie Billy Margoreeth was shown wearing one of the old star sweaters in the team photo. I assume they had the same uniforms in 1958-59 but can’t find a photo of that team.


The S

The biggest Smoke Eaters uniform changes happened to coincide with their biggest on-ice successes. In 1960-61, the team adopted a radically stylized new logo, with an S that looked more like a 5 set on top of a pair of highly stylized smoke stacks. Its design has been attributed to goaltender Seth Martin (something I only learned from a recent Instagram post, showing his daughter wearing a sweater with that logo).

I haven’t found anything about how it was received at the time, but I always thought it looked like a curling rock or a Spy vs. Spy bomb, with the trail of smoke resembling a wick. The team only wore these uniforms through 1962, but modified versions would reappear later. If the colour in the postcard below is accurate, these uniforms were blood orange, if not flat-out red.

The 1960-61 team. (Greg Nesteroff collection)


Team Canada

Unlike the 1939 Smoke Eaters, the 1961 team that went to the World Championship traded their usual orange and black for national team uniforms. These were red with blue sleeves, with “Canada” across the front in white, a blue maple leaf below, and blue and white stripes on the sleeves and stomach. One of them is seen below right in the Trail Museum. Jackie McLeod’s 1961 sweater sold at auction in 2011 for $8,249 US, which is $11,700 Cdn today.

After winning the Allan Cup in 1962, the team went back to the World Championship in 1963 and this time wore red uniforms with “Canada” across the front in black, a maple leaf in black and red below it, black and white stripes on the stomach and sleeves, plus arm patches that said “Trail, Canada.”

The 1963 team in national uniforms. (Greg Nesteroff collection)


When a 1961 reunion team was put together to play exhibition games in Canada, the US, and Europe off and on from at least 1974 through 1980, they wore neither replicas of their old Smoke Eaters uniforms nor the Team Canada jerseys, but rather white sweaters with red maple leaves that said “1961 Trail World Champions.” Later they wore jerseys that just said “Trail” in white letters on a coloured background.

The 1961 Trail World Champions in the mid-1970s and in 1980 in Sweden. (Courtesy Wayne McIntyre)


The S (first modification)

As dramatic a departure as the S logo represented, there is no denying its appeal. However, by 1966-67, the team wore a modified version that must rank as the gaudiest in Smoke Eaters history. It put a more rounded S over one of the smokestacks, making it look like a dollar sign. The smoke coming from the stack, meanwhile, looked like a piece of wilted lettuce.


A photo caption in the Trail Daily Times of Feb. 29, 1968 said “nice is the only word” to describe the uniforms. I can think of some other choice adjectives. Curiously, the caption showed Booster Club president Mickey Caputo turning over a sweater to Harold Jones, explaining that Trail would wear a new set of sweaters in its final home game of the regular season. But if the sweaters were new, the design wasn’t. At least it didn’t look much different than what they had already been wearing.


There are no known surviving examples of this sweater. This design was in use at least through 1971. It’s not known what the team wore in 1971-72 or 1972-73.

1970-71 Smoke Eaters (Courtesy Wayne McIntyre)


The S (second modification)

The 1973-74 team wore a less cartoonish version of the S logo. It used the original S that looked like a 5, but inverted the colours so the S was black instead of white and the background was white instead of black. The logo was then placed on a black circle and encircled with an orange band that said “Trail Smoke Eaters” in the same style as the original white smoke logo. This is also the first team photo I can find where the sweaters use a white base, so presumably by now, the team had different coloured home and away uniforms.

1973-74 Smoke Eaters (Courtesy Wayne Florko)


The 1975-76 team went back to the original S with the slight alteration that the crest was placed on a white background before being sewn onto the sweaters. The sweaters themselves were bright orange, unlike the blood orange/red worn from 1960-62 when the logo was first introduced.

1975-76 sweater and team photo in the Trail Museum


Black Smoke (modified)

The 1974-75 team adopted a logo that had appeared on the program as early as 1971-72 but had not been on the uniforms as far as I can tell. They wore it again from at least 1978-80 and the juniors subsequently adopted it.


In this version, the stacks and smoke are all black, and the smelter building no longer has windows. The typeface, at least in the post-1978 version, was Helvetica. The overall effect isn’t nearly as charming as the 1935 original, yet this was the version some people would later lose their minds over, insisting any alteration to it was sacrilege.


The Oval

In 1981-82, the team switched to a much sharper-looking oval crest that maintained the black smokestacks, smoke, and buildings, but put “Smoke Eaters” over them. The ring around them said “Trail” at the top ... and “Extra Old Stock” at the bottom.


Sandy Santori, who was on the team executive, explains money was tight. “We were living on pennies. We used to pay players $40 for a win, $25 for a tie, and $10 for a loss. We went on a 10-game winning streak. I said ‘We have to pray the guys don’t win tonight. We don’t have enough money to pay them!


At the time, Labatt Brewing was a long-time team sponsor at $500 per year. Santori’s brother, who worked in the liquor industry in Vancouver, put him in touch with a representative from Carling O’Keefe, who offered more money plus cases of beer for the players. Santori went back to Labatt, asking if they would increase their sponsorship, but they declined, so the team signed the deal with Carling O’Keefe. It called for the Smoke Eaters to put the beer ad on their uniforms. Santori does not recall any criticism of the move.


The team used these uniforms for at least a couple of seasons. I don’t know what was worn for the final few years before the team folded in 1987, but the oval logo would come back later. When the senior team was revived for a few years in the early 2000s, they used the original white smoke logo.

1983-84 Smoke Eaters (Courtesy Wayne Florko)


Junior teams

The present Smoke Eaters are a junior club who shared the name with the senior team for many years, but now have its exclusive use. Junior hockey has been played in Trail since at least the 1920s. Teams sometimes used the same crest as their senior counterparts, sometimes modified versions, and sometimes other things entirely.


The earliest junior team photo we have, from 1927-28, shows the goalie wearing a TAAA shield but his teammates just in dark sweaters. In 1931-32, the sweaters had light torsos, dark midsections, and no crest. In 1932-33, they wore the Trail wordmark, sloping down and then rising back up. The 1943-44 team, which went to the Memorial Cup, appeared to have two sets of uniforms: one with a New York Rangers-style shield with “Trail AAA” written on it, and another with “Trail” across the front, sloping downward.


From 1947-49, the juniors used a crest similar to the seniors: the original white smoke, but the circle around the symbol was either white or very light orange. It appears the letters on the junior version were also in some colour other than black. From 1949-51, the junior sweaters had “Smokies” on the front plus the player’s number, along with stripes similar to the 1930s senior uniforms.


I can’t find any junior photos from the 1960s, when the KIJHL was founded, but as of 1973-74, the team wore sweaters that said “Trail Jrs.” in a script font. In 1976-77, they used that ghastly second modified S logo, and in 1978-79, their sweaters said “Trail Smokies” in a sort of Medieval typeface.


I can’t find any photos of the team in the 1980s either, but a schedule for the 1988-89 season bears the oval logo with “Junior” taking the place of the beer ad. I can’t swear that the logo appeared on the sweaters that season. In 1990-91, they used the modified black smoke logo that the seniors had worn at times in the 1970s. When the Smokies left the KIJHL for the Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League in 1991, they brought the oval logo with them.

They kept the same logo when they joined the British Columbia Junior Hockey League in 1995. However, it appears they alternated it with the modified black smoke logo until 2000.


Smokeless Stacks

This brings us back to the decision in May 2000 to redesign the logo minus any smoke spewing from the stacks.


The junior team explained it this way: under financial strain, they approached Cominco about increased corporate sponsorship. As an incentive, the Smoke Eaters proposed a smokeless logo. The company agreed. The actual financial terms weren’t reported at the time and Sandy Santori, then team president, can’t recall the exact amount but believes it was five figures. “It wasn’t for political or environmental reasons,” he told me. “It was a financial arrangement.”


Santori insisted the idea to change the logo came strictly from them, not Cominco (a point he periodically reiterates to this day). He said the team was interested in portraying a more positive and accurate image of the city.

He told the Trail Daily Times potential players from out of the area frequently asked: “Is there really that much smoke in Trail?” While the answer was no, the logo sent the opposite message. “Unfortunately, there is a perception outside of our community that thick black smoke continues to dominate our city and the existing logo would seem to [confirm] that,” Santori said.  


So local artist Glenn Schneider was commissioned to modernize the design. While some of his ideas did not feature any smoke stacks at all, the team executive felt it was important to retain them. The final version maintained the circle, words, and dots of the previous logo, but substituted two stacks that looked slightly like foam No. 1 fingers and the blade of a hockey stick that symbolized the Columbia River.


While Cominco supported the change, Santori recalls a manager asking: “Are you going to get away with it?” Santori didn’t expect universal acclaim, but was unprepared for the blowback that followed, fanned by Vancouver Province columnist Jon Ferry. “The smokeless new stacks look nothing like those which continue to dominate the skyline of the sports-mad interior city,” he huffed. “They look more like a bar-chart.”


The Province ran a few letters from annoyed Trail residents, current and former. Marcello Pavan said taking the smoke out of the logo was “ludicrous.” “It is a symbol of a team, not a tourist photo of the city,” he said. The National Post also put the story in the spotlight and called the Smokies logo “one of hockey’s holy symbols.”


Others who condemned the change included longtime trainer Ken Caputo, who accused the team of kowtowing to Cominco; Murray Greig, author of Trail on Ice, who called it “one more example of tradition being sacrificed in the name of namby-pamby political correctness”; and Sally Basso, who had been cheering for Trail hockey teams since the original white smoke logo was adopted in 1935, and likened the alteration to “tearing down a heritage building.”


“Why not just change the name to the Trail Freshaires and be done with it?” asked Times columnist Dave Thompson. “If it’s all about the image of our community, wouldn’t that serve the purpose better than just denying the fact this used to be a damaged heavy industrial area?”


Some former players were similarly unimpressed. Norm Lenardon, who scored the goal that clinched Trail’s world championship in 1961, felt the logo should be left untouched. Ironically, so did his teammate Seth Martin, who, as we have seen, was responsible for a far more drastic logo change many years earlier. (Although his version retained a plume of smoke, it was so stylized as to be unrecognizable.) “It’s been a tradition for the Trail Smoke Eaters having that logo on their jersey all these years,” Martin said. “It’s just a crime to change it. It’s terrible.”

Some of the news coverage of the great logo debate of 2000.


On the other hand, Times sports editor Guy Bertrand felt the logo change was no big deal and that nostalgia only cut so deep. “Why don’t we bring back prohibition, gas-guzzling cars, and one-room schoolhouses while we’re at it?” he asked. While he agreed the team name was well known, he doubted most out-of-town hockey fans could describe the logo. Nor did he find the change as drastic as the one in 1960. The controversy, he concluded, was mainly a media-induced madness.


Nevertheless, the team’s annual general meeting that month was stormy. Santori was forced to defend the economics and aesthetics of the decision before a room full of skeptics, including several members of the ’61 team, who accused him of disrespecting tradition. He admitted bewilderment. “I never in a million years thought there’d be this much controversy. Had we changed the name, they’d have every right to lynch us — but a logo?”


In addition to the financial argument, Santori actually had history on his side. He pointed out the logo had changed several times over the decades, and that the ‘61 Smokies had not worn it, either during the regular season or at the world championship. It mollified some of the critics, at least a bit.

Eventually, the tempest blew over. In addition to its increased annual sponsorship, Cominco paid to restock the souvenir shop with items bearing the revised logo. Santori is pleased the team is still benefiting from the arrangement with Cominco, now Teck, after all these years. He also feels it got them over the hump until the team’s on-ice performance improved, resulting in bigger crowds and better bottom lines.


The logo adopted in 2000 has not changed since. In fact, the last 25 years have been the longest stretch in Trail’s hockey history where the logo hasn’t been tinkered with, although at times the team has worn alternate uniforms with different logos (more on that below).


Jimmie Rood’s original white smoke logo still appears on some official memorabilia such as t-shirts and ball caps, where it is described as a retro logo. The same goes for the oval logo of the 1980s and ‘90s.


Program-only logos

A few versions of the Smoke Eaters crest appeared on team programs but not, as far as I can tell, on any sweater. The first, from 1950-51, is similar to the original but has a more elaborate smelter skyline, with extra windows and three smokestacks instead of two (two white, one black). Wisps of smoke, rather than thick plumes, curl from the stacks. The lettering is also thinner.

On the 1957-58 program, the smelter image is orange, surrounded by a white ring with black lettering. 

The 1971-72 program introduced a version where the ring is orange with black lettering and everything in the smelter image is black (the 1945-46 version was similar, but in that case the smokestacks were still white). 

This inspired the logo worn on the senior team’s uniforms in 1974-75 and from 1978-80 as well as on the junior team’s uniforms in 1990-91 and from 1998-2000. However, the version on the uniforms used a more refined skyline and, from 1978 onward, Helvetica as the typeface, where the 1972 program version was hand-lettered and the smoke and buildings were more amorphous. 


The 1975-76 program used the mirror image of the all-black symbol from the 1971-72 version with a serif typeface (New Century Schoolbook, I think).

The 1979-80 program used the 1971-72 symbol, but substituted Franklin Gothic as the typeface. It looked a lot better than the Helvetica version, but never appeared on the uniforms.


Retro sweaters

The Trail Historical Society created the first Smoke Eaters replica sweaters in 2007, of the 1961 Team Canada design. The team started holding retro nights no later than 2011, when they wore The S. For the last several seasons, they have worn designs from throughout the team’s history. The sweaters are subsequently sold or auctioned off. To wit:


2017-18: The Wordmark (based on 1932-33 juniors)

2018-19: White Smoke

2021-22: The Oval

2022-23: “Smokies” (based on 1940s/‘50s juniors)

2023-24: The T

2024-25: The S (the video also shows the first modified S)


Trademarks

In the early 1990s, Trail city council was alarmed by a rumor that the society that ran the Smoke Eaters might sell the team to a Castlegar businessman who would move it to Osoyoos. “The prospect of seeing the Osoyoos Smoke Eaters on the ice upset a lot of people,” says Jamie Forbes, who was then city clerk. 


Council decided to register the name “Trail Smoke Eaters” and the 1939 and 1961 crests as trademarks to ensure the name didn’t go along with any sale. The trademark office ruled they couldn’t register the word “Trail” but allowed “Smoke Eaters.” Once approved, the city could prevent others from using the name without permission. 


While the team’s sale never happened, the city did acquire the trademarks. They licensed the 1939 crest to the Trail Historical Society to produce a replica sweater and other memorabilia. Interestingly, the versions that were filed were not the original crests for either year, although Forbes says they were likely close enough that it didn’t matter.


The first to be registered was a version I have not otherwise seen. It’s very similar to the S logo used by the senior Smoke Eaters in 1973-74, except in this case the symbol touches the centre ring. The trademark application was filed Nov. 13, 1991, it was registered May 27, 1994, and expunged on Jan. 7, 2010 after the city failed to renew it.

Although the next sketch below is a blotchy mess, this is the modified black smoke version, created by 1971 but possibly not used on sweaters by the seniors for a few more years. It was also used by the juniors in the early and late 1990s. The sketch looks more like the version that showed up on the 1979-80 program, which turned the dots on either side of “Trail” into hyphens.

The application for this one was filed March 10, 1992 and registered March 25, 1994. Even though it’s not used anymore, it was renewed on March 25, 2024, with an expiry date of March 25, 2034.


The city applied to trademark the original S logo on Feb. 7, 2011. Although it went through a statutory advertising process, it was never actually registered for some reason.

The city’s application to wordmark “Trail Smoke Eaters” was filed Feb. 19, 1996 and registered on March 20, 1996. Forbes says the city enforced its trademark a couple of times, against teams in Ontario and Holland who used the name (of whom, more below). They were issued cease and desist letters.


When Minnesota businessman Rich Murphy bought the Smoke Eaters in 2016, the Trail Times reported that “a big question mark” revolved around the rights to the name and logo. “As far as the trademark goes, the city will provide consent for use,” city manager David Perehudoff said, adding their main concern was that the club continue to operate in Trail.


Hockey Canada, meanwhile, filed to trademark the Smoke Eaters’ 1961 Team Canada heritage jersey. The application was received on Dec. 31, 2003 and it was registered on July 12, 2007. It was renewed on July 12, 2022 and expires on July 12, 2032.

To my surprise, the current smokeless stacks logo is not trademarked. At least it doesn’t show up in the Canadian Intellectual Property database that I can see.


Postscripts

• It wasn’t just the hockey club that used the crest designed in 1935. Photos exist of the city’s lacrosse players of that era wearing similar uniforms.


• The merchandising of the Smoke Eaters logo got underway in earnest in the mid-1990s. Now it’s on everything from toques, mittens, and scarves to key chains, cowbells, and shot glasses.


• Glenn Schneider, who designed the smokeless stacks logo, has another interesting claim to fame: he suggested the name Columbia River Skywalk for the pedestrian bridge that opened in 2016.


• The Trail Smokettes women’s team has been around since at least the late 1970s, but I have no idea when their logo was designed or by whom. I like it, though!

• The Geleen Smoke Eaters, a Dutch hockey team that took its name from its Trail counterpart in 1968, had a bunch of different logos, none of which bore any resemblance to the Canadian original. At some point in recent years, the team renamed itself Eaters Limburg. Its present logo features a devil character.


Below are charts outlining what is known about the uniforms the senior and junior teams wore each year.

SENIORS

SWEATER/CREST DESIGN

1902-13

Unknown

1913-14

The T

1914-15

Unknown

1915-16

Light-coloured turtlenecks, no obvious crest

1916-21

Unknown

1921-22

The Shield

1922-26

Unknown

1926-27

The Shield

1927-28

The Wordmark (sloping downward)

1928-29

The Wordmark (straight)

1929-30

Unknown

1930-31

The Wordmark (straight)

1931-32

Unknown

1932-34

The Wordmark (rising and falling)

1934-37

Unknown (but probably The Cursive Wordmark at some point)

1937-40

White Smoke

1940-42

Unknown

1942-45

No team

1945-46

Black Smoke

1946-47

White Smoke with lighter ring

1947-48

Unknown

1948-49

White Smoke with lighter ring

1949-50

No crest, numbers on front

1950-53

Unknown

1953-54

“Trail” on front, with number

1954-56

Unknown

1956-57

White Smoke (stars)

1957-58

White Smoke

1958-59

Unknown

1959-60

White Smoke

1960-62

The S

1961

Team Canada

1962-63

No league

1963

Team Canada

1963-66

Unknown

1966-71

The S (first modification)

1971-73

Unknown

1973-74

The S (second modification)

1974-75

Black Smoke (modified)

1975-76

The S

1976-78

Unknown

1978-80

Black Smoke (modified)

1980-81

Unknown

1981-83

The Oval

1983-87

Unknown

1987-2002

No team

2002-04

White Smoke

JUNIORS

SWEATER/CREST DESIGN

1927-28

TAAA shield for goalie, rest just dark sweaters

1928-31

Unknown

1931-32

No crest, light coloured torso and dark coloured midsection

1932-33

The Wordmark (falling and rising)

1933-43

Unknown

1943-44

Trail AAA shield/Trail across front, sloping downward

1944-45

Unknown

1945-46

No crest

1946-47

Unknown

1947-49

White Smoke with white oval

1949-51

“Smokies” plus number, with stripes as original sweaters

1951-55

Unknown

1955-56

“Smokies”

1956-73

Unknown

1973-74

“Trail Jrs.” in script font

1974-76

Unknown

1976-77

The S (second modification)

1977-78

Unknown

1978-79

“Trail Smokies” in Medievel-like font

1979-81

Unknown

1981-82

“Trail Smokies” in Medievel-like font

1982-90

Unknown

1990-91

Black Smoke (modified)

1991-95

The Oval (with “Trail Junior A”)

1995-2000

The Oval (with “Trail Junior A”) alternating with Black Smoke (modified)

2000-present

Smokeless Stacks


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