THE RAGTIME STORY OF THE COLORED HOCKEY LEAGUE
Logline Synopsis by Michael Greenburg & Gerard de Marigny
Glory League is the epic and virtually unknown tale of the fabled champions of the Colored Hockey League (CHL). The CHL was the first organized Black sports league in the world and one of the most complex sports organizations ever created. The CHL’s vital contribution to the sport is apparent in every aspect of the National Hockey League (NHL) and in how hockey is played around the world today.
Over a hundred years ago, the CHL was formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Comprised of the sons and grandsons of runaway American slaves, the league pioneered the sport of ice hockey by changing this winter game from the slow paced gentlemen’s pastime of the nineteenth century to the fast-paced exciting game of today’s NHL. This feat was accomplished during the time of rampant racism, World War One and The Great Depression.
James Kinney, the first Black graduate of the Maritime Business College, and “one of the greatest Canadian leaders never known” was the league’s chief organizer and driving force. Envisioned, organized and led by the charismatic nineteen-year old Baptist preacher and entrepreneur Kinney, the CHL was founded on the principles of Black pride. Kinney strove to uplift the mind, body, and spirit of the Black community to break the racial restraints inhibiting Black equality.
The CHL and Kinney’s community had its enemies. A clandestine Canadian chapter of the KKK was one of the forces arrayed against the black populations and sportsmen. Meanwhile, the league had an even more formidable adversary in North America’s largest railway concern led by the economic might of two infamous rail barons, Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann.
Against overwhelming odds and obstacles, Kinney builds the CHL with a cast of diverse characters during the explosive and exhilarating jazz age, when great new confluences and conflict of people and cultures prompted promise and pain, experiment and exclusion. On and off the ice, in the back room of a church, in the stands, in barrooms, and courtrooms, knockdown bloody brawls are commonplace as the black league fights for its life, and our characters sacrifice theirs in the name of a vision, a dream and progress. James Kinney knew what had to be done …
“We’ll beat them at their own game.”
Joe Acton
END OF THE ROAD
Police Drama Television Series (Pilot)
“We have two lives, and the second one begins when we realize we only have one.” Confucius may have said it in 550 BC but Bill Blair is living it out right now in Alaska, truly the last great End Of The Road in the U.S. The big empty won’t forgive your sins or redeem your transgressions, but it will let you start over, no questions asked. Mostly. An Army Ranger Sniper who transferred to the CID after criminally negligent intel got his entire platoon killed in a Taliban ambush, his second life really got rolling when he was cashiered out of the Army for charging a Two-Star Theater General with embezzling a hundred grand from the translators’ funds. Everyone has their price: the Army’s was their public esteem, the General’s was his career, and Bill’s was his reputation – and retirement. Calls were made, papers signed, and Bill retired with full 20-year benefits and an investigator’s position with the Anchorage Police Department. Easy peasy. This will be like working for Andy and Barney with Gomer working on his car, right? What the hell could possibly be going on in Alaska? In reality, it’s a place to start over AND to hide out: from authorities, adversaries, other criminals, society in general, yourself, e.g.,
- The Russian Mafia kills their own to smuggle illegal ivory from Alaska to Asia.
- Serial killer flies his victims into the wilderness and hunts them.
- Chinese drug lords air freight fentanyl through Alaska to Lower 48.
- Federal agent is murdered searching for a missing nuke from the 1971 Amchitka test.
- Teen murder is live-streamed on Snapchat.
And that’s why this is an anthology series: there’s too many compelling stories told against the backdrop of Alaska’s majesty to settle for merely interesting stories we’ve heard before, told against the same B rolls of NYC, LA, and Chicago. Been there, done that. This is fresh, riveting.
Robert Service was right, “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. Their arctic trails with their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.”
