Boy, 29 pages deep in comments. Am I ever late to the party (again).
I only recently learned about On the Origin of Hockey. I got the book, read it a few times, and was left with decidedly mixed feelings. So, excuse me if I raise points that have already been mentioned here, but I only got a few pages into the comments.
First, the positive: This is a truly important work when it comes to the history of ice hockey. The authors are to be commended for their research. What the authors have shown, conclusively, is that the concept of playing "a stick and ball team game on ice with skates" did not originate in Canada, as was generally assumed prior to the introduction of this book. Until the time of this book, it was quietly assumed that a Canadian was the first person to come up with this idea, resulting in a process of imitation and transference, in Canada, that let to James Creighton's game in Montreal 1875. This is where our known history of ice hockey is generally seen to begin, and it is a process of transference that we know leads through Nova Scotia.
The notion that Creighton's game is basically an 1800s English 'hockey' game is only tenable if the demonstration game is basically like the ones that were played on ice in modern-day Britain in the 1800s. It may be natural and easy to for us to presume this, over a century later, but the words of an eye-witness to First Game, recorded less than two years later, in the Montreal Gazette in December of 1877, make EMPHATICALLY clear that this is NOT true. And so, if we are to defer to periodicals from England in the 1800s, at least as much emphasis should be placed on the 1877 article, which says that Creighton's game is very different.
One question that remains, is if all of these significant differences, which resulted in the birth of a new 'stick and ball game' that the world now recognizes as ice hockey, first appeared in Montreal or in Nova Scotia. Halifax must be considered carefully, of course, because we know that the demonstration game was based largely on a stick and ball game known as Halifax Hockey Club Rules. At present, history seems to favor Montreal, because we can see why Creighton would want to eliminate the forward pass, in order to keep his rugby-playing friends engaged and in shape during the off-season, and because we have no record that the forward pass was eliminated in Nova Scotia, sometime after Byron Weston played Halifax Hockey Club Rules (and he was almost the exact same age as Creighton).
A second Nova Scotia thing that must be considered, when it comes to the origin point of this new game, ice hockey, is the Mi'kmaq stick. It hardly seems likely that a team of settlers using old country hurley sticks, shinny sticks and field hockey sticks would have been able to compete against a team using Mi'kmaq sticks, whose blades are vastly superior sweeping instruments which, as we all know, makes a player much more able to execute forehand and backhand shots and passes.
Did the Mi'kmaq become the dominant stick where Halifax Rules was played in Nova Scotia? Was it so superior that a team of players using 'old country' sticks would have their asses handed to them by a team of otherwise equally skilled players who used Mi'kmaq sticks? We know that the settlers and military members observed the Mik'maq playing stick and ball games as early as the 1700s. Did the settlers start trying them when they played their European stick and ball games? Did it become evident that the Mi'kmaq was so superior that settlers began using Mik'maqs until those using old country tools could no longer compete?
If so, then ice hockey's first game-changing innovation - a feature that made it truly different than other stick and ball games - was introduced in Nova Scotia prior to 1875.
These ideas are certainly plausible, but all we know is this, apparently: When James Creighton decided to introduce his rugby friends to Halifax Hockey Club Rules, he did so by ordering Mi'kmaq sticks.
The 1889 Dartmouth Chebectos team, which famously went to Quebec and played Halifax Rules, are seen using a stick that looks identical to the world's reigning Oldest Stick, from Cape Breton Mik'maq country circa 1835. That stick and the ones that the Chebectos all used may be the result of centuries worth of engineering, a design that became dominant in the Mi'kmaq setting for being of optimal use when it comes to playing a stick and ball game on ice that centers around the movement of a flat object on ice. Granted, within Ontario and Quebec the blade evolved in a different direction, but throughout that transition it retained its essential feature, the difference-making blade.
In fairness, the authors do mention one English hockey stick whose design would seem to be adequately competitive. Crafted in the early 1800s, it is juxtaposed next to a similar English stick that dates to 1875. This raised the legitimate suggestion that this design endured throughout the early 1800s, until it became an official English field hockey-bandy design in the late 1800s. This raises the possibility that the Halifax settlers may have been inspired by
that kind of English stick.
This is is possible, but throughout
On the Origins of Hockey all of the other pre 1875 British sticks woould be relatively useless in a game where growing numbers of players used a Mi'kmaq stick. Based on the authors' sample then, it seems safe to presume that the majority of settlers would have brought other old country sticks - ones that were relatively useless in such games. So, they
may have imitated those English players who happened to have a stick with a more ideal blade. But when we apply that logic with respect to the settings where these stick and ball games were played in Nova Scotia, it seems far more likely that they would have been inspired by the Mi'kmaq stick.
Like I said, I think this is a truly important book, and I give the authors much credit for showing that 'the stick and ball game on skates' idea did not originate in Canada. But a major problem with
On the Origin of Hockey is the authors' definition of 'hockey' on which they base much of their case. Basically, they say that hockey is a "team game, played on ice with a curved stick and skates, where the objective is to strike an object into another team's goal." They used this definition to make a fabulous job of showing that such stick and ball games were played in Britain in the 1800s. Their definition is very useful because it enables them to show, in a legitimate way, that the British played such games, some of which were called 'hockey'.
However, the definition is intrinsically flawed. For example, near the end of the book the authors say that bandy is like hockey. This is certainly true, but according to their definition bandy IS "hockey."
You can't have it both ways. In the end, the similarities and differences of a game must be addressed,. If such differences aren't addressed then rickets also becomes hockey - rickets being that game seen by the Boston reporter in 1859, which centered on carrying the ball - an action expressly prohibited in Halifax Rules. Obviously, one should say that bandy is "an
example of a stick and ball game played on ice with skates." So, why not take this commonsense approach when it comes to 'hockey', since its various English iterations are really just other examples?
My guess is that the authors used this flawed definiton in order to make the case that Canadians were not the first people to played stick and ball games on ice with skates. Whatever the reason, once we consider such games in a fuller light, we must also address games' differeces and ask if the differences are truly significant. "Ice hockey," for being a game that is significantly different than all of the other stick and ball games that preceded it, remains a
Canadian invention.
