Ernest James Liffiton an early professional ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 player. Over the span of his career, he played for Pittsburgh Bankers

Pittsburgh Bankers

The Pittsburgh Bankers were a Pittsburgh hockey club that consisted of a group of local men from Pittsburgh that were employeed by local banks during the early 1900s. The Bankers began as the amateur Banker's League. The league later merged into one team which became members of the Western...

, Pittsburgh Professionals

Pittsburgh Professionals

The Pittsburgh Professionals also called the Pittsburgh Pros were a professional ice hockey team that participated in the International Professional Hockey League from 1904 until 1907. The team was based in the Duquesne Gardens and was the first inter-city professional hockey team in the city of...

, Renfrew Creamery Kings

Renfrew Creamery Kings

The Renfrew Hockey Club, also known as the Creamery Kings and the "Renfrew Millionaires" was a founding franchise in 1909 of the National Hockey Association, the precursor to the National Hockey League...

, Montreal Wanderers

Montreal Wanderers

The Montreal Wanderers were a Canadian amateur, and later becoming a professional men's ice hockey team. The team played in the Federal Amateur Hockey League , the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association , the National Hockey Association and briefly the National Hockey League . The Wanderers are...

, Halifax Crescents

Halifax Crescents

The Halifax Crescents were an early amateur and later, professional ice hockey team operating in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The team operated in several leagues, gone defunct and been resurrected. The original club challenged for the Stanley Cup in 1900...

 and the Toronto Tecumsehs

Toronto Tecumsehs

The Tecumseh Hockey Club, also known as the Toronto Tecumsehs and nicknamed the Indians, were a team in the National Hockey Association in 1912-13. They then became the Toronto Ontarios....

. In 1908, he played on the Montreal Wanderers team that won the Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup

The Stanley Cup is an ice hockey club trophy, awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoffs champion after the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Finals. It has been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley's Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley's Mug...

.

Renfew vs. Pembrook

In December 1907, the Pembrook Hockey Club refused to play against the Renfrew Creamery Kings. They objected to the presence of Ernie, who was a member of Montreal Wanderer at the time, who was slated to play for the team. In that match and one that followed, both teams brought in professional players from Montreal and Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 to bolster their chances for victory.

Personal life

Ernie was the son of a jeweler, who grew up in a family of one sister and five brothers. In 1909, at the age of twenty-four, Ernie married Louise Jane Thomas. He worked work in his father's Montreal wholesale jewelry and confection store, but in later years moved to Windsor, Ontario

Windsor, Ontario

Windsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor...

where he worked in the steel industry. He and his second wife, Hedwig "Hattie" Rueckwald, would go on to raise four children.

Although Ernie played hockey professionally, the census records of 1911 identify his job as "clerk."