After a season with the Winnipeg Strathconas of the city’s Senior Hockey League, defenseman Bobby Benson (known for being fairly small for this position) joined the Winnipeg Falcons in 1913, a team with which he would be affiliated through 1920. During this time he served in World War I as a member of the 223rd Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and won the Allan Cup, given annually to the senior men’s ice hockey champions in Canada, in 1920. This victory allowed the Falcons to represent Canada at the 1920 Summer Olympics, where the nation took home the gold medal in ice hockey and Benson scored one goal in three games played. Upon his return he spent a season with the Saskatoon Crescents of the Saskatchewan Senior Hockey League before joining the Saskatoon/Moose Jaw Shieks of the newly-created Western Canada Hockey League. He switched allegiances and suited up with the Calgary Tigers until the league was renamed the Western Hockey League in 1925, at which point he joined the Saskatoon Crescents for its final season. Before this, however, he skated in eight games with the Boston Bruins during the 1924-1925 season in his only National Hockey League appearances.
The WHL’s demise lead to the creation of the Prairie Hockey League and Benson rose again with it, this time as a member of the Moose Jaw Warriors. From 1927 through 1929 he suited up with the Minneapolis Miners of the American Hockey League (in addition to two games with the short-lived Winnipeg Maroons) and from 1929 through 1931 he participated in two of the Pacific Coast Hockey League’s three seasons as a member of the Seattle Eskimos. After an ephemeral tenure with the Hollywood Stars of the California Professional Hockey League, Benson retired from active competition in 1932, taking up work as a carpenter and a contractor, a profession that he had practiced prior to World War I. He had a moderately successful stint as a coach during the late 1930s and the early 1940s with the San Antonio Muckers, the Kenora Thistles (who won a Manitoba Junior Hockey League championship in 1940 under his guidance), and the junior Winnipeg Falcons.
Canada