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Canada's National Game

Ice hockey originated in Nova Scotia, where it developed over three-quarters of a century before spreading systematically from east to west and becoming Canada's national game. The boys of King's College School, adapted the field game of hurley to the ice of Long Pond in Windsor, Nova Scotia, c. 1800.

Ordinarily hurley is a fast, competitive game played on a field with sticks and a ball. In Ireland, where hurley originated, the weather allows the game to be played year round. For three seasons of the year, fields in Nova Scotia are also suitable. However, when winter arrives and fields are snow-covered and rough, hurley becomes impossible. The boys at King's College School adapted the game to the smooth, steely hard ice of Long Pond, their regular skating spot, just in back of the college grounds. All they had to do was to clean the snow from the ice with their scrapers and shovels, as they did each day for skating anyway, grab their hurleys, and go to it.

It was lots of fun, and they played it as much as time would allow. They had to quit and leave Long Pond before dark to get back to the school in time for supper, for they did not have outdoor lights. The trail led back through the college woods past the Frog Pond and the Devil's Punch Bowl, two of their other skating places.

Hurley-on-ice certainly made life around King's a lot more interesting through the winter. Just imagine the excitement in Halifax when boys who were attending King's went back home to their city friends and taught them the new ice game that they were playing at school in Windsor!

The boys in Halifax and Dartmouth got as excited about playing hurley on the ice as the Windsor boys, and the game soon took over the ponds and harbour inlets in Halifax and the lakes in Dartmouth. There were lots of Irish settlers in the Halifax and Dartmouth area, as well as in Windsor, and they would have been excited to see the children adapting the Irish field game to ice. The young boys played it first, but it wasn't long before the older boys and men and members of the military got interested and involved. Skaters were unsympathetic and certainly didn't appreciate these hurley players cutting across in front of them and messing up their style. They especially disliked the younger boys who were trying to learn the game, and who darted in and out, tripping, falling, and sprawling all over the ice with their hurleys. The bigger guys didn't care to have the kids around while they were playing a serious game, either. The young boys who liked to show off their skill, seemingly coming from nowhere, would grab the puck with their hurleys and race away into the distance, bringing the game to a halt. And when one of the players gave chase and was closing in on the young thief, the boy would simply shoot the wooden puck off in one direction, and scurry off in another, out of harm's way. The kids were hard to manage, but their ability to control the fast-moving puck marked the beginning of the art of stickhandling. They were fast becoming "puck-hogs," and that was the aim of every young aspiring player, then and now.

The game got a little rougher as the boys developed more speed and skill on the ice. It seemed to take on a character of its own before long, different somewhat from the game as it was played on a field. Injuries occurred, some due to body contact and high-flying sticks (just as they did on ground), and some due to skates. One injury that was talked about around the school for a long time was the story about a Halifax boy, John Cunard (whose family later developed a steamship line), who had his front teeth knocked out playing hurley on Long Pond. Pete Delancey of Annapolis, the student who wielded the wound-inflicting hurley stick, was reminded of the injury each time he met Cunard. It was a most unfortunate injury for a young student. Poor John's toothless smile would attest to the growing roughness of hurley for some time.

Folks continued to play hurley-on-ice outdoors in Nova Scotia each winter, sometime calling it "ricket" as well. Then they began calling it "hockey" on occasion, and hurley or ricket at other times. Whatever it was called, the game seemed to grow more popular each season.

For 75 years, ice hockey was played outdoors, on ponds and lakes, according to basic rules that were known to all involved. Beginning in Windsor, the playground of Halifax, the game quickly came to be known and played in Halifax and in the neighbouring town of Dartmouth. Before long, there were newspaper accounts of its also being enjoyed in Pictou and New Glasgow, 90 miles to the east. In those neighbouring towns, hurley was played on the ice of Pictou Harbour and the East River.

The game was confined pretty much to that central area of the province until it was discovered by a visiting reporter from Boston, who returned home and excitedly wrote about it in the Boston Evening Gazette in 1859. That route of communication was natural because of the early, strong bond that had been established between the ports of Windsor, Boston, and Halifax. The Prince of Wales visited Windsor, Halifax, and Saint John in 1860, and is reported to have played ice hockey back home in England in 1863. By 1865, when the new Starr self-fastening skates were invented in Dartmouth, the boys in Saint John, New Brunswick, were playing hurley on their new Starr Acme Club skates. Ten years later the game spread to Montreal where it was very well accepted, making its public appearance on March 3, 1875. From then on it developed and spread more quickly than before. It had taken nearly three-quarters of a century for the game to evolve in Nova Scotia before it caught on in another Canadian province. After it was played in Saint John and Montreal, it took only 15 years to spread to the West Coast. Records show that folks began playing ice hockey in Winnipeg and Victoria in 1890. The game had endeared itself to young and old alike, and nearly every town and village across the nation had become involved by the turn of the century.

Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada to be developed and a lot of things happened there before they happened elsewhere in the country. It's little wonder that the country's pioneers developed the national game in Nova Scotia. Just as they developed the game, so Nova Scotians devised the basic rules and the equipment with which the game is played: wooden pucks, Mic-Mac hockey sticks, and Starr skates. In the final decade of the spread of hockey from east to west, the familiar wooden, shingle-covered rinks popped up everywhere. Canada's new game was invited to come in out of the weather, from the natural ice surfaces of its origin. Finally, in 1899, with the game established from coast to coast, the Nova Scotia box net was invented, as if to complete the set of equipment used in the game before the first century of play came to an end.

Ice hockey was not invented. Rather, it grew or evolved gradually from hurley-on-ice. Chances are, the boys in Windsor played their first game on Long Pond just as it is played on the field, wearing boots or shoes. If putting the game on ice was stage one of the process, then playing it on skates was the second step. When wearing boots, it's difficult to stop quickly or turn on ice, while the use of skates facilitates sudden and speedy changes of direction. Imagine the excitement of the boys of King's College School starting to play hurley on skates on Long Pond. It would be the natural thing to do because, after all, Long Pond was their favourite place to go when they wanted to skate.

In 1876, the Windsor Mail reported that 1816 was a very good year for skating on Long Pond and on the Devil's Punch Bowl, back of the college, and by then the boys were playing hurley-on-ice there too. In nearby Halifax and Dartmouth, throughout the 1800s, skaters frequented the North West Arm, the Dartmouth lakes, and a host of other ponds and harbour inlets in and around the city. The Halifax newspapers of that era record that soon after hurley began in Windsor, it was being played on the neighbouring Halifax-Dartmouth ice surfaces as well.

The reason that the name of the game switched from hurley to hockey, in midstream as it were, is controversial. Hockey is a centuries-old English word. One derivation of the word "hockey" is founded in the language of the Middle Ages. Hock carts were two-wheeled, horse-drawn carts that were used to transport field crops during the Feast of Harvest Home festivals in the eastern counties of England as early as 1400. A game in which the farm boys got thoroughly covered in mud was played in the fields at festival time, and it was called hockey.

It is quite possible that the English family name, Hockey, was influential in bringing about the change in the name of the game. For many years a story has circulated in the Windsor area that a Colonel Hockey, stationed at the garrison on Fort Edward, had his troops playing the new Nova Scotian game for exercise, and that the game had adopted his name. The name Hockey is to be found in the British Army list located in the Library of Nova Scotia's Legislative Assembly in Halifax. As an example, the records show that quartermaster John Hockey served in the mid-1800s when the game became known as hockey.

A Windsor senior resident, Mr. Leslie Wile, himself a Canadian Army career officer and World War II veteran, tells of the Colonel Hockey referred to in the Windsor story. As a young boy, Leslie worked with his father and grandfather in the woods near Windsor, cutting logs and yellow birch trees for the hockey stick industry. Leslie's grandfather, Nathaniel Conrad, had been an enlisted man in Rudolph's division at the time of the Fenian Raids, and he told Leslie several times that Colonel Hockey was involved in the game and that the game was called "Hockey's game" for some time before it was eventually called hockey.

This oral history, related by Mr. Wile and others, is not documented. Neither is there documentation of the explanation offered by some that the name of the game came from the French word "hoquet," which means a shepherd's crook. Although there is a field game called hoquet that is played in France, I know of no evidence that it was played in Nova Scotia. Nor is there any evidence that ice hockey was ever called hoquet during its developmental years. Ice hockey is a Canadian game which had its origin in the primarily English province of Nova Scotia. Just prior to 1800, when the game began to evolve, the French population had been expelled from the province. The blockhouse on Fort Edward was the headquarters for the officers who carried out the orders for the expulsion.The ships which carried the Acadians away from the area were dispatched from the Avon River below the fort. When the French were gone, the English even changed the name of the town from the French Piziguit to the English Windsor. All of this makes it more unlikely that a French word "hoquet" would be used to name the game that began amongst English, Scottish, Irish, and American settlers. The word "hockey" has a definite English derivation, and there appears to be no plausible reason why Nova Scotians in the mid-1800s would choose a French word to name their new ice game. Add to that the fact that the English already had a field game that they called field hockey, and the possibility of a French derivation for the name of the ice game becomes even more remote.

Hockey is very popular all over the world today. However, in its formative stage it was not accepted, let alone appreciated. Skaters disliked the new ice game. Some people felt it was dangerous and should be forbidden. The clergy condemned it from the pulpit and referred to it as a "desecration of the Sabbath." Ministers preached against it and fought to have it forbidden, especially on Sundays, because the "usual business of church going was not adhered to."

When the game became more popular and the boys were wanting to play it on Sundays, a lot of parents and most of the clergy got upset because it interfered with Sunday school and church attendance. Many thought that the game was dangerous and should be forbidden. The boys thought it was all right and spent countless hours chasing a ball, a lump of coal, a frozen potato, or a frozen horse bun around the ice with their friends, all the while improving their skating skills and stickhandling ability.

Imagine the dilemma! Parents, at a time when there was little else to do on the Sabbath, had previously had little problem getting the boys to go to church. But the young boys had discovered the thrills of this new winter game and, realizing the shortness of the season, wanted to play every available moment.

Garth Vaughan. The Puck Starts Here: The Origin of Canada's Great Winter Game: Ice Hockey. Goose Lane Editions. 1996.

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