As a member of the University of Toronto junior team, ice hockey defenseman Beattie Ramsay first made an impression on the hockey world in 1915 when his squad won the Ontario Hockey Association junior title. When the entire team enlisted to fight in World War I the following year, Ramsay served with the Royal Flying Corps in Italy. Upon his return he joined the senior-level University of Toronto hockey team in 1919 and played with them for three seasons. In addition to winning an Allan Cup, given annually to the men’s amateur senior ice hockey champions in Canada, in 1921, he also helped capture the intercollegiate championships all three times. The following year he was made an honorary coach of the school’s senior and intermediate teams, both of whom won their intercollegiate champions. More notably, however, he joined the Toronto Granites, the amateur senior men’s hockey team that captured the Allan Cup that season and earned themselves a trip to the 1924 Winter Olympics as representatives from Canada. In addition to playing in five games and scoring ten goals, helping his team win gold in that year’s ice hockey tournament, he also served as a referee for the matches between France and Great Britain, and France and the United States.
From 1924 through 1927 Ramsay was the coach of the Princeton University Tigers ice hockey team and earned a record of 19-25-1 before lacing up his skates once more to play with the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs in their first full season. After only one year with the NHL, he returned to coaching, beginning with the Yorkton Terriers of the Saskatchewan Senior Hockey League, followed by the Prince Albert Mintos from 1932 through 1934, and finally the Regina Aces from 1934-1936. In his youth his other interest had been engineering and, after his playing career was over, he founded the Beattie Ramsay Construction Company, which specialized in highway infrastructure. Since his death, the Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association of Saskatchewan have offered an annual scholarship in his honor to a third-year civil engineer at the University of Saskatchewan. Ramsay also served as president of the Regina Pats Hockey Club after World War II and is a member of the Saskatchewan (1985) and University of Toronto (1995) Sports Halls of Fame.
Canada