Sutherland was known in the 20th century as the "Father of Hockey" for his tireless work administering and promoting the game.
The native of Kingston, Ontario, was born in 1870, three years after the birth of Canada as a nation. Sutherland played hockey until his late teens for, among others, the Athletic Club of Kingston, Canada's first official league.
After his playing days, he would turn his attention to officiating, coaching and researching the history of hockey, increasing its profile as he did. Sutherland boldly declared his hometown as the birthplace of the sport, a claim that has been disputed by many, including Montreal, at least two cities in Nova Scotia, Canada's Northwest Territories, and a group of historians in Great Britain.
First involved as a player, then as a referee and a coach, Sutherland would serve as president of the Ontario Hockey Association from 1915-17 and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association from 1919-21, selling shoes to make ends meet.
A veteran of World War I, he resolutely set off to establish a place to celebrate hockey and its early stars and pioneers. In 1938, Cooperstown, N.Y., was selected as the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, an appropriate choice given that the town was recognized as the cradle of the sport. Sutherland saw no reason why a shrine to hockey couldn't similarly be established in Kingston.
In the 2003 Hockey Hall of Fame book "Honoured Members," author Andrew Podnieks chronicles Sutherland's substantial efforts during World War II to build a shrine to hockey in his hometown, his plan agreed upon on Sept. 10, 1943 by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association and the NHL.
It was Sutherland's stated desire "to perpetuate the memories of the men who have done so much to develop nationally and internationally Canada's great winter sport."
A huge collector of hockey memorabilia, Sutherland put up $1,000 of his own money and had more raised with the help of Kingston Mayor Stuart Crawford to create the International Hockey Hall of Fame.
But construction delays and soaring costs brought the Kingston shrine to physical life only in 1965, a decade after Sutherland's death and four years after the NHL's Hockey Hall of Fame opened in Toronto.
Even without a roof over its head, Sutherland's Hall began honoring hockey's legends in 1945. The class included Hobey Baker, Howie Morenz, Georges Vézina and Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley.