Bowie played centre and rover for numerous amateur Montreal teams in the 1890s as a teenager, and for the Montreal Victorias of the CAHL and the ECAHA from the 1896 to the 1908 seasons. He was a five-time scoring champion and scored an unprecedented 234 goals in 80 recorded league games. Bowie played for the Vics' final Stanley Cup champion club in 1898. An accomplished stickhandler who credited his skill to employing an unusually short stick, he was cited in many all-star lists as one of the very best forwards of hockey's first half-century.