Origin   Evolution   Hockeyists   Windsor

Evolution

Overview

Stick-Ball Games

Equipment

Team

Rules

Glossary

Evolution Of Canada's Great Winter Game -
Ice Hockey
by Garth Vaughan © 1999

Stannus Street Rink, Windsor -
Built 1870 - Oldest standing Wooden Rink in Canada.

Ice Hockey was not invented, nor did it start on a certain day of a particular year. It originated circa 1800 with students at Canada's first college, King's College, when they adapted the exciting field game of Hurley to the ice of their favorite skating pond. They originated a new winter game, Ice Hurley, which gradually developed into Ice Hockey. Thomas Chandler Haliburton, of Windsor, who was the first Canadian to acquire international acclaim as a writer, and who wrote the first history of Nova Scotia, told of King's boys being first to play "hurley on the ice". This is the earliest reference in English literature to a stick-ball game being played on ice. The development of Ice Hurley into Ice Hockey is chronicled in the newspapers of Nova Scotia, the first province to be developed in the country. The first equipment with which Ice Hockey was played naturally developed in Nova Scotia as well. "Hockey" skates, "Hockey"sticks, wooden "Hockey"pucks, "Hockey" goal nets, as well as the position of Rover, and the early rules of the game all developed in Nova Scotia as one would expect. Nova Scotians were also first to use the forward pass and to allow the goal keeper down on the ice to protect his "goal".

  Origin   Evolution   Hockeyists   Windsor   Home   Site Map   Contact   Links   ©