It started in a bar. As the best stories often do.
One rainy evening in 1972, a lawyer tired of driving to New York to play rugby, a newspaper publisher tired of fishing, and an Australian philosopher tired of listening to both of them walked into a Saranac Lake tavern and decided to start a team. A few weeks later, the Saranac Lake Mountaineers Rugby Club played their first match at Van Courtland Park in New York City. They lost. They came back anyway.
What followed was more than fifty years of rugby in the Adirondacks, and the Can-Am Rugby Tournament, one of the longest-running rugby tournaments in the region, born right here and built by the players, coaches, and characters who gave everything to the game and this community. Leading them all was Snuffy, the Mountaineers’ beloved mascot, as much a symbol of Saranac Lake rugby as the red and black jerseys themselves.
Hotel Saranac is proud to bring that history inside our walls. The Can-Am Rugby Museum in our Grand Ballroom celebrates the founding of the Mountaineers, the legacy of the Can-Am Tournament, and the people who made it all happen.
Grand Ballroom, Hotel Saranac Open Daily, July 20 – 25 | Through 8 p.m.