| | LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION: | Fonds | | No.: | PR1202 | | TITLE: | John E. Ducey fonds | | CREATOR: | John E. Ducey | | DATE RANGE: | 1921-1983 | | EXTENT: | 0.50 m of textual records and other material | | ADMINISTRATIVE | | HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | John Eugene Normile Ducey was born in Buffalo, New York on August 31, 1908 to Thomas James and Mary (Normile) Ducey. Thomas, initially from Lindsay, Ontario but having spent many of his adult years in the United States, had initially arrived in Strathcona, Alberta in 1906, but he and Mary returned to the United States for the birth of their son John. John's sister, Mary Elizabeth, was born in 1912. After years of living alternating between Strathcona and Edmonton, the family moved permanently to the north side of the North Saskatchewan River in 1914. Beginning in 1914, John attended the Tenth Street School, which moved and became Grandin School, though he switched to St. Mary's High School in 1923. In 1921 and 1922, John was batboy at Diamond Park, where the Edmonton Eskimos baseball team, of the Class-B Western Canadian League, played. He played in the church baseball league, and beginning in 1922, the new Catholic parish baseball league, where he organized, managed, pitched and played first base for his churches altar boys' team. In 1925, John was invited by Henry Boulanger to join the Yeoman team in the City Senior Baseball League at Diamond Park, playing first base. In 1930, he played for Norman Dodge's Imperials at the Boyle Street Park; also that year he became a sports reporter for the Edmonton Bulletin. In October 1930, John left Edmonton for Los Angeles, California to attend an umpiring school to be held by Beans Reardon, a major-league umpire, during the winter months. While in Los Angeles, he found employment as a hockey writer for the Hollywood News. Unfortunately for John, the umpiring school was never held, though Reardon agreed to give Ducey private lessons; the two knew each other from Edmonton when Ducey was batboy with the Edmonton Eskimos and Reardon the Western Canadian League's official Alberta umpire in 1920 and 1921. John returned to Edmonton in June 1931, umpiring his first Edmonton game June 28, 1931, and following this, began to umpire for the City Senior Baseball League on a regular basis. John also resumed his position as a sports writer for the Edmonton Bulletin. John umpired the first game at the new Renfrew Baseball Park in 1933. Beginning in 1933, John found employment as a sales representative in the sporting goods section of Motor Car Supply and Company (Co.); he left this job in 1937 for Herb Webb's Hardware as representative for CCM sports equipment. On July 13, 1935, John married Grace Jane Mungall; they had two children, son Brant and daughter Duane. Between 1938 and 1941, John spent winters in various American cities, managing ice arenas in Hollywood, San Francisco and Springfield, and summers in Edmonton umpiring baseball. Following their winter in Springfield, the family stayed there and John found work as a plant guard with American Bosch Corporation and served as a civilian auxiliary member of the U.S. military police. They returned to Edmonton in May of 1943 after John accepted work for an American company involved with the construction of the Alaska Highway. Over the winter of 1944-1945, he managed the Buffalo hockey rink, and the following spring returned to Edmonton for good. In the fall of 1945, he was director of public relations for the Edmonton junior hockey league. In 1946, with the help of John Beatty and Riley Mullen, John was awarded the lease to Renfrew Park; in April, the partners formed a joint-stock company, the Edmonton Senior Baseball League Limited (Ltd.). The plan was to form a three-team, semi-professional league in Edmonton; Ducey himself managed the Edmonton Eskimos baseball team. On March 16, 1947, Ducey, along with Beatty and Harold Cundal and Sam Timmins from Calgary, formed the Alberta Senior Amateur Baseball League, known as the Big Four Intercity Baseball League; the League operated until the end of the 1950 season. In February 1951, John purchased Beatty's fifty percent interest in the Edmonton Senior Baseball Club. In October 1952, through the work of John and financial backing from many Edmonton businessmen, Edmonton Eskimos became a franchise in the Class-A Western International League (WIL); the team lasted in the WIL until 1954 and Edmonton did not have another professional baseball team until the Pacific Coast League Trappers came to Edmonton in 1981. John then organized, with Saskatoon and North Battleford, the Western Canadian Baseball League (which became the Canadian-American, or Can-Am, League in 1959); this Edmonton Eskimos team and the Can-Am League lasted through the 1959 season. John continued his search for a league for an Edmonton team and worked towards improving the baseball facilities at Renfrew Park. He earned his living as a full-time property insurance agent and commercial real estate broker; he sold his insurance business in 1974. In 1964, John was instrumental in the formation of the Edmonton Oldtimers Baseball Association, for which he was historian and newsletter editor. He was named Edmonton's Sportsman of the Year in 1954 and 1958, and was inducted into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame in 1972, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983. John Ducey, known as Edmonton's "Mr. Baseball" and the "Rajah of Renfrew," died September 11, 1983. Renfrew Park was renamed John Ducey Park on March 13, 1984. | | CUSTODIAL HISTORY: | John E. Ducey donated to the Provincial Archives of Alberta and allowed the records to be copied by the Provincial Archives of Alberta in 1971 and 1982. The originals were returned to him. In 1996, Brant E. Ducey, John's son, also deposited the records of John E. Ducey in the Provincial Archives of Alberta. | | SCOPE AND CONTENT: | The fonds consists of information about (predominately newspaper clippings) and correspondence with various baseball and sports personalities, newspaper clippings about baseball, programs, scorecards, baseball guide books, notes and photographs of various baseball teams and baseball and sports personalities. | | ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: | Brant Ducey donated 78 photographs, images of baseball in Edmonton and John Ducey, which were used in the The Rajah of Renfrew: The Life and Times of John E. Ducey, Edmonton's "Mr. Baseball," to the City of Edmonton Archives in Edmonton, Alberta. The photographs have been catalogued as EA-524 | | GENERAL NOTE: | Information for the biographical sketch is from the records and from The Rajah of Renfrew: The Life and Times of John E. Ducey, Edmonton's "Mr. Baseball," which can be found in the Provincial Archives of Alberta Reference Library, 929.27963712334.
Also included in accession PR1996.0573 were the following fonds: Brant E. Ducey fonds, Edmonton Senior Baseball League Limited fonds, Edmonton Baseball Club Limited fonds and Edmonton Baseball Club (1955) Limited fonds.
The photographs can be located in the A file of the Provincial Archives of Alberta reference prints under the numbers A.7246 to 7287, and A.11,952. One photograph can be located in the Alfred Blythe fonds, the BL file of the Provincial Archives of Alberta reference prints under the number BL.2714.
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