Hockey Invented In England ... Not Canada

[PrimumHockeyist]

What rules did the native game contribute?

Hi again,

My own conclusion, as far as the birth of Halifax ice hockey is concerned, is that we have to apply and extend the generalizations that brought us the English theory, and the broader more settled one that says that Ice Hockey is derivative of 3 British games.

In these ways of thinking, the historians never try to prove which English or British community first introduced a given rule. They dodge the question, and instead say that the rule must have come from somewhere in England and or Britain.

As I went out of my way to point out in my first essay, this way of thinking does make a lot of sense, from North America and Europe's culturally dominant point of view. But real history requires that we consider Halifax-Dartmouth-Kjipuktuk which, when we apply the same logic, means that we say that any given rule "must have come from somewhere in England and or Britain. and/or the Mi'kmaq First Nation."

Kind of a copout, I suppose, but when one looks to Joe Cope's discussion of Byron Weston's Halifax ice hockey, we see references to face-offs, 10-player teams and so on. All chicken-egg stuff as far as I'm concerned, because I doubt that the Celts didn't have face-offs in their own game. The unanswerable question becomes, which ancient culture introduced the face-off first, the Celts or the Mi'kmaw? This is why the British stick game generalization is strong: because we don't know. And we we generalize.

A good generalization, but one that needs to be extended to account for real history, not a selective body of information that supports blatantly biased depictions of what we 'don't know." No adequate conversation of 19th century Ice Hockey history can take place without giving the Mi'kmaw their props. It is that simple.



As I wrote in my first essay, the grand irony of this ongonig national oversight is that the Mi'kmaw's participation in Halifax-Montreal "Ice Hockey" is what proves that the 'stick game that became Ice Hockey' was born in Canada, literally, and no earlier than 1749-50. It is, for the same reason that we were all born in a certain location and time: we all had to wait for our parents to hook up.


.

 

[rangersfansince08]

Hi again,

My own conclusion, as far as the birth of Halifax ice hockey is concerned, is that we have to apply and extend the generalizations that brought us the English theory, and the broader more settled one that says that Ice Hockey is derivative of 3 British games.

In these ways of thinking, the historians never try to prove which English or British community first introduced a given rule. They dodge the question, and instead say that the rule must have come from somewhere in England and or Britain.

As I went out of my way to point out in my first essay, this way of thinking does make a lot of sense, from North America and Europe's culturally dominant point of view. But real history requires that we consider Halifax-Dartmouth-Kjipuktuk which, when we apply the same logic, means that we say that any given rule "must have come from somewhere in England and or Britain. and/or the Mi'kmaq First Nation."

Kind of a copout, I suppose, but when one looks to Joe Cope's discussion of Byron Weston's Halifax ice hockey, we see references to face-offs, 10-player teams and so on. All chicken-egg stuff as far as I'm concerned, because I doubt that the Celts didn't have face-offs in their own game. The unanswerable question becomes, which ancient culture introduced the face-off first, the Celts or the Mi'kmaw? This is why the British stick game generalization is strong: because we don't know. And we we generalize.

A good generalization, but one that needs to be extended to account for real history, not a selective body of information that supports blatantly biased depictions of what we 'don't know." No adequate conversation of 19th century Ice Hockey history can take place without giving the Mi'kmaw their props. It is that simple.

View attachment 761719

As I wrote in my first essay, the grand irony of this ongonig national oversight is that the Mi'kmaw's participation in Halifax-Montreal "Ice Hockey" is what proves that the 'stick game that became Ice Hockey' was born in Canada, literally, and no earlier than 1749-50. It is, for the same reason that we were all born in a certain location and time: we all had to wait for our parents to hook up.


.

But weren't many of the original rules and style of play coped verbatim from British field hockey?

I'll withold judgement for now but I will say your theory makes more sense than hockey being some pure native American sport maliciously appropriated by those of British origin as it seems was suggested above.

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

But weren't many of the original rules and style of play coped verbatim from British field hockey?

Yes, and I go into that in my first "Halifax" essay.

"English field hockey was written into Montreal’s 1877 rules which are seen below, as taken from Mike Commito’s Twitter account. We know that a good portion of the 1877 rules were basically copied from an English field hockey source. The “English” rules can be found in items 1, 4, 5 and 6. If you click on the link you will see see a page that has the text below, if it's difficult to read.

Look and you will see that the vast majority of the English field hockey text pertains to face-offs (rules 4-6). As every hockey person knows, face-offs are only a small part of any hockey game.



If this is being used to sell the idea that Montreal ice hockey was based on English hockey, as if to infer that Halifax wasn't involved, then such an explanation needs to be reconsidered because it's clearly been grossly oversold.

If you think about it, the eye-witness Henry Joseph’s likening of Creighton’s Halifax game to “shinney” reminds us that Montreal inherited a game which involved teams, sticks, goals and a ball or puck-like object. This proves that Halifax ice hockey was already like English field hockey before Creighton introduced it to Montreal – just as it was also already like hurling, shinty and oochamkunukt.

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

So you are in disagreement with the user advocating for purely native origins?

I personally don't agree with either the wholly colonial nor the wholly indigenous explanation of Ice Hockey's birth.

There is no room for such an extreme conclusion in my own, because Halifax ice hockey was a hybrid game. Both cultures contributed to it.

Halifax ice hockey, imo, was both a game and a partnership between the two parties. Both relied on the other to produce 'the stick game that became Ice Hockey. Both rely on each other to rightully claim being the birth nation of Ice Hockey. There's this thing going on about partnership and co-dependency that way. Share the game, and things seem to fall into place. Try to deny the other, and your theory will have holes unless you can show otherwise. And I'm not saying that one cannot close this discussion entirely in the Mi'kmaw's favour. I just don't see it. I see what must be an indigenous-colonial game, from the post-1749 get-go.

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

But weren't many of the original rules and style of play coped verbatim from British field hockey?

I'll withold judgement for now but I will say your theory makes more sense than hockey being some pure native American sport maliciously appropriated by those of British origin as it seems was suggested above.

I don't agree with the maliciousness, but something similar although more innocuous seems to have happened. In the mid-20th century, when Canada began asking itself about the origins of its game, historians led with a variety of colonial-based assumptions that were flawed from the get-go. Rather than seek to correct this, they dodged the whole issue and started promoting various theories that did in fact marginalize the Mi'kmaw, and with some degree of intent, perhaps, depending on the voice.

What seems to have happened is a momentum based on this settled way of thinking, where an uncurious and quite shallow Canadian media tends to repeat the same mistakes, because these old voices dominate the search engines. That's one of the main things that prompted me to write these long-form articles. We live in an age of soundbytes based on the most accessible information, and the result is pseudo history regardless of whose saying, it, from the CBC on down. I don't believe in anything "malicious" in other words, just good old fashioned social inertia where people tend to focus only on their things - in this case British stick games.

So, here we are, 80 years after said discussion, and because of how dumbed down this discussion has become the IIHF writes Halifax and the Mi'kmaw out of Ice Hockey history narrative completely. I should mention that the thesis the IIHF borrowed from is a Canadian invention based on overly Montreal-centric considerations. It has tended to thrive because of whose saying it, even though it is bogus history.

There's your most egregious misapproriation, imo. It's of Halifax, which takes the Mi'kmaw down with it, because at the end of the day Halifax is a tale of 3 communities: Halifax, Dartmouth and the Mi'kmaw who lived in the same area which they called Kjipuktuk.

 

[Historyguy]

Looking into Montreal 1875, and specifically the elite British young men claimed to be the originators of hockey, explain just by that much of what really happened with the creation of the sport.

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

But weren't many of the original rules and style of play coped verbatim from British field hockey?

I'll withold judgement for now but I will say your theory makes more sense than hockey being some pure native American sport maliciously appropriated by those of British origin as it seems was suggested above.

You raised such an important ponit here that I thought I should share why, until further notice, I personally believe that the Mi'kmaw and the Halifax-Dartmouth colonists worked and played together in 1860s Halifax.

Byron Weston said so - and here we're talking about a former Dartmouth mayor, president of the Dartmouth Amateur Athletic Association and, most importantly, a childhood friend of James Creighton since the age of ten - which is a connection that has gone entirely ignored, it seems. Joe Cope, a seeminly well respected Mi'kmagi confirmed this a couple of days later.

The two primary sources are seen in the image below. The originals are found at "related" stuff via the flags.

In the current zeitgeist, Joe Cope is usually portrayed as the Mi'kmagi elder, then quoted with one phrase based on a document that's several paragraphs in length.

These articles remind us that Cope was also a Halifax hockeyist. This says much about the Halifax ice hockey that matters which was probably an elite setting since it involved Weston and Creighton as well. I suppose it would have been in the elites' best interest to forge a cultural bridge with indigenous peoples, where possible. Maybe they taught this stuff over at Eton and Cambridge...

But such voluntary interaction was also great business for the local Halifax Mi'kmaw people because they partnered up with the colonists who handled distribution and Acme skates, with the latter surely fueling even more the demand for more sticks. .

One could say that Montreal is the 'rock star' of 19th century story of Ice Hockey. But if so, Halifax-Dartmouth-Kjipuktuk were roadies par excellence. The growth of Ice Hockey in Canada is very much a story of demand this indigenous-colonial partnership's gear.

Frankly, it may be the one thing we got right back in the day as far as indigenous and colonial relations go, and the rise of this indigenous-colonial version of 'hockey' was a most spectacular success. It was a partnership, and partnerships are voluntary. This one lasted from at least the 1860s unto the 1930s - until the Mi'kmaq stick was finally defeated by mass production. There's some team work for ya.