Hockey Invented In England ... Not Canada

[The Roy Of Ottawa]

Ice hockey or field hockey? Which came first?

 

[McFlash97]

England apparently invented a lot of things.....


They are just not very good at most of them....lol

They invented slavery too.....

Now most of the countries they enslaved are passing them by...

 

[Midnight Judges]

England apparently invented a lot of things.....


They are just not very good at most of them....lol

They invented slavery too.....

Eh, slavery predates England by at least several thousand years.

 

[Don'tcry4mejanhrdina]

As a Canadian I'm not upset at all. Hockey is still distinctly Canadian, regardless of where it was invented. On the flip side, basketball isn't distinctly Canadian despite being invented by one.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

Ice hockey or field hockey? Which came first?

If I'm not mistaken field hockey was played by the Incas in the 1500s(?)

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

Don't know who created it but the first organized league was in Montreal with various Montreal teams, an Irish One, An English One and a Scotish One. And then a team from Ottawa was grafted to it. The guy from Ottawa owned the Ottawa team and another Ontario team(not from Toronto, it was the city he was from,not a big one).

Then a frustrated owner left and wanted to created a competitive league and created The Montreal Canadiens who would target the french audience of Montreal. But since no french people played hockey they hired a bunch of guys with french-sounding names (Marleau? check) and a frenchy from Ottawa. Other teams joined and teams from the other league joined too. And this new league became more popular and became the only league, etc...

You're likely thinking of M.J. O'Brien and there were more teams in the league than that.

NHA NHL Birthplace Museum Renfrew

The O'Briens had a hockey team, the Renfrew Creamery Kings, that were part of the Upper Ottawa Valley Hockey League and they issued a Stanley Cup Challenge to the reigning team, the Montreal Wanderers. According to the rules of the day, this was one of the two ways a team could win the Cup.
But the Wanderers turned down the challenge and, as they were part of the Eastern Canadian Hockey Association – a different League than the Renfrew Creamery Kings – it seemed the O'Briens had no way to grasp this sacred cup.
Not willing to give up easily, Ambrose O'Brien went to Ottawa for the annual meeting of the Eastern Canadian Hockey Association in November, 1909, to ask to join the League. But with hockey quickly becoming recognized as a profitable venture, Association members decided to limit membership to maximize profits, so they dismantled the Association and then restructured it to form the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA).

 

[James Laverance]

Some old references to the Ice-Hockey in England.

The Standard
London, Greater London, England
24 Dec 1840, Thu • Page 2

The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser
Preston, Lancashire, England
Sat, Jan 19, 1850 · Page 3

 

[rangersfansince08]

If I'm not mistaken field hockey was played by the Incas in the 1500s(?)

Depends where you draw the line. Could go far back as Greece. but likely from shinty US Camanachd - A Brief History of Shinty But most cultures have had similar sorts of games and as with most of these sports the linear descent and standardizing of rules comes from a British game.

 

[rangersfansince08]

I guess that's why England is such a powerful hockey nation. I think which country was most instrumental in making a sport popular is the important thing. If hockey had only stayed in England, hockey obviously would've never have gone anywhere, as seen by the fact that the English just don't seem to care about it at all. Then there's all the things that actually make up what we think of as hockey. In Canada (and U.S.), hockey was developed into the sport that so many countries have come to love, from the develpment of the puck, to certain rules like how many players are on the ice at once time, ice size, equipment (and equipment development), the creation of an actual hockey rink, the conduct of players, passing rules, offsides, etc., etc. etc.

Hockey today is NOT hockey they played in the 18th century in any country--including Canada. The description of "hockey" as written in the article is hilarious. Oh yes, that sure sounds like todays hockey--it hasn't changed a BIT! LOL

Canada developed the game as we know it today, and it has gone on to become one of the "big four" sports in North America. The US also had influence into creating what we now know and identify as to what hockey is, as well, so Canada has never had a monopoly on it, anyway. It's not even our national sport in Canada. But fact is, we did mostly develop it into what it is today, and that's all that really matters.

I'm sure people in Africa or China were kicking around various ball like objects with their feet over 4000 years ago for fun. Does that mean they invented football/soccer? It's ridiculous, and ultimately an irrelevant question all-together. Just like the Americans weren't the first people to ever hit something with a stick ("bat") to hit it a far distance. You can go on and on.

Actually FIFA had the nerves to say football originated in China.

 

[I Hate Blake Coleman]

I guess I've never really asked where it originated but I don't think I've heard anyone say Canada was the first country to play, just the most fanatic.

 

[KarmaPolice]

Actually FIFA had the nerves to say football originated in China.

Interesting. I haven't heard about that. Anyway, I deleted that cringey post you replied to. Hard to believe a post from 2014 of mine is still even here. That's kind of unnerving to me because I think I was a bit of a lunatic back then. Obviously I don't stand behind what I said.

 

[NigerianNightmare]

England kind of invented Canada, too.

 

[rangersfansince08]

Did field hockey impact ice hockey? Where was field hockey invented? Also England?

 

[rangersfansince08]

If I'm not mistaken field hockey was played by the Incas in the 1500s(?)

Did that actually impact modern field hockey?

 

[Nathaniel Skywalker]

Even if it was invented in Canada prior to 1850. Canada was still a colony of England therefore the english would still get credit

 

[rangersfansince08]

What a thread !

I always thought (and still do tend to think) the native tribes of Canada played a game of "hockey" way before any English. I thought the first few attempts across the pond by settlers introduced them to the game and therefore enabled them to take the game back to the UK to introduce to anyone that would part take.

Great reads here.

I don't think this is the case. The British stick and ball games evolved from games likely dating to Roman times. Skates were also probably invented in Europe.

 

[rangersfansince08]

^^^ Alrighty then. Fact of the matter is it doesnt matter where or when hockey was first played because Canada is without debate or question the cradle of the game. The place where it was nurtured and grew up, given flight. Took off. Montreal the indisputable "birthplace of the modern game" possessing the kind of provenance required to authenticate & validate exactly that. Did North American Natives, Scandinavians, the Dutch, French & British play games similar to hockey or shinny as we'd played it as kids on the street, in fields, on frozen lakes, ponds, backyard & community rinks recreationally & just for fun? Absolutely. Just common sense that if they were skating (which they were) and then using a pike pole or staff to propel themselves (on bone skates, your not gunna glide a whole lot, need like an outboard motor, an oar to push yourself around pre-iron age & the creation of proper blades) and for balance, would just naturally evolve into playing pickup with whatever object was available to bat around on an ice surface. Games an amalgamation transcending culture. Very old. But it was Creighton, the Montrealers' who gave it form & substance. Made it their own. Canadas Gift to the World.

Good point. Lots of people might have had ball and stick games played on ice but were those organized sports with rules resembling modern hockey? I would guess now. it was probably Creighton and his contemporaries who created that.

 

[rangersfansince08]

By all your post's in the thread it's abundantly obvious you've fallen for the book; hook-line and sinker. Research more and don't be so quick to jump upon the bandwagon of people who have scant and arguable information simply attempting to grab headlines. I'm aware of all the differing theories, I'm also aware New-Scotland wasn't a hotbed of the irish like you've previously claimed, Pictou county - the Mi'maq word for pocket of gas, is my wife's home and littered with generational scottish.

Hey, speaking of Scottish, they invented a game with a stick and a ball!... Holy Hannah, maybe they invented Hockey!

Or... perhaps, just maybe it was invented by the natives of this land and introduced to the settlers and popularized over time. If it had been an already established sport in England, of ANY name, Lord Stanley or Preston wouldn't of marvelled and fallen in love with that odd Canadian game, which he'd never seen before. Nor is there any form of definitive paper trail beyond wild speculation and interpretation of paintings by people trying to reach for some form of European origin. The hardest evidence and the word-of-mouth history that passes on through generations place it here.

Which is why anyone and everyone in the hockey world including noted Hockey historians laugh this stuff off.

As will I.

Word of mouth history isn't something to rely on

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

Holy cow, what an old discussion:

Let me be the first to recognize that Montreal contributed many great things to the stick game that became Ice Hockey. But that game was born in Halifax, and just like James Creighton it didn't change its date and place of birth when it moved to Montreal.

Much of the mythos around the 1875 VSR match marking the birth of Ice Hockey, or Montreal somehow being where the game began, heavily rely on one not focusing on what the 1872-73 birth of Montreal ice hockey tells us about the earlier game that was transferred from Halifax by Creighton. I wrote about this in an essay I posted recently. Here's some of it, since you've brought this up, i kind of tweaked the second portion. It's the second of two essays under the blue flag if you want to read further.... cheers

Let’s return to the birth of Montreal ice hockey, but this time at the part where around two dozen young guys are still lacing up. Every one of them has taken one of Montreal’s first ice hockey sticks. There’s a pile of extra sticks nearby, and some wooden pucks that Creighton also ordered.

While everybody is getting set up, James Creighton – who came early – decides to go for a warmup. He starts going in one of those counter-clockwise circles that one sees before games, with a stick and puck.

A few of the founding fathers look on. It’s no surprise that Creighton’s a very good skater. And he’s not the only very good skater in this group. What stands out immediately, is how he uses his stick to control the puck thing. He shifts the stick over the puck to either side with steady rhythm. Left, right, left. The puck obeys his every movement, moving along with him as he carves circles into the ice. This is the Montrealers very first introduction to stick-handling.

It is one of many things that Creighton will show them, and sell them on, on this most historic day.

Left, right, left, right, left… As ten years of cellular memory starts to come back, Creighton Man feels that special twinge in his legs where he wants to bust out of himself. Unable to contain himself, he lays down his first Tuft’s Cove twist of the season. The Montrealers are quite blown away. Then Creighton starts skating backwards. The puck follows him like a puppy dog. Left, right, left, right…

We may think that we know this scene: An advanced person shows up at a gathering where total beginners are. We know how this translates in Ice Hockey (today). In today’s world, beginners step onto the ice because they’ve seen Ice Hockey and want to become players. The founding fathers of Montreal ice hockey had no such prior frame of reference. Nor had those who watched the city’s Winter Carnival games from 1883 to 1889.

Halifax-Dartmouth-Kjipuktuk's James Creighton had just come from 'the' place in North America and Europe where the Acme skate and the Mi'kmaq stick were used in combination. This was where 'world class' stick ball was played on the day when Montreal ice hockey was born, and Creighton Man was a 10-year vet when it came this craft.

What the founding fathers of Montreal ice hockey saw in Creighton, therefore, should explain why one stick game became associated with Ice Hockey in Canada and beyond. In this practical way of thinking, Creighton didn’t just transfer a game based on certain rules. He also transferred some of the sizzle of Halifax ice hockey, which was mainly about what the Acme skate and Mi’kmaq stick could do in combination.

Without these two Halifax technologies, the Montrealers would have had nothing to show those who attended the March 3 1875 match at the Victoria Skating Rink - two years after the Halifax game was transferred to Montreal - other than another crappy stick game played with crappy sticks and even crappier skates.

Basically, James Creighton turned all of his new chums into versions of his "Halifax" self where, back home, he was just another dude who played hockey rather than Ice Hockey's Dad, which is what the VSR birther mythology tries to sell. This is a technological proposition that has nothing do to with goal posts, 9-player teams and so on. It is all about how the Halifax stick game played out on ice. This kind of technological replication, of the Halifax hockey player explains much about Ice Hockey’s true proliferation. The formalization of Ice Hockey, through things like the AHAC and the Stanley Cup, was very much a celebration of this unique kind of Halifax hockey and player.

 

[MadLuke]

I am sure there something interesting about the actual invention if it is possible to really put it in a singular place and time (for many things a bit complex, plane, car, phone, computer not really, that would be rare, like there is no first chicken in the history of evolution that his parents were not chicken).

Maybe Micheal Jackson did not invent the moonwalk, Musk did not start Tesla or Apple portable mp3/itunes (that was bought, it was named SoundJam to sync music on Rio player before) or the smartphone, making something popular is often more work and accomplishment than inventing it.

I would imagine there was no first hockey game (a game that would be hockey but that the closest attempt just before would not)

 

[PrimumHockeyist]

I am sure there something interesting about the actual invention if it is possible to really put it in a singular place and time (for many things a bit complex, plane, car, phone, computer not really, that would be rare, like there is no first chicken in the history of evolution that his parents were not chicken).

Maybe Micheal Jackson did not invent the moonwalk, Musk did not start Tesla or Apple portable mp3/itunes (that was bought, it was named SoundJam to sync music on Rio player before) or the smartphone, making something popular is often more work and accomplishment than inventing it.

I would imagine there was no first hockey game (a game that would be hockey but that the closest attempt just before would not)

Personally, my own research led me to the conclusion that there must have been a first game, however embryonic. There were many stick games being played at the time when Montreal ice hockey was born. Each started at some point.

The idea that each game is taken from earlier games is good, but can take us only so far in Ice Hockey's case because Ice Hockey was based on contributions from two continents. This is what the birth of Montreal forces us to recognize, and it has devastating effects on the blinkered English invention theory:

Working past in time, Montreal ice hockey leads to Halifax ice hockey which, by around the time when James Creighton moved, has become associated with a thing called the Halifax Hockey Club. That game must have had its own beginning, but as a hybrid colonial-indigenous game that must have been born after the first colonists arrived in 1749, and at no earlier point, because this particular stick game required the involvement of Halifax colonists.

The fatally-flawed English invention theory either ignores or fails to recognize the Mi'kmaw whose involvement in Halifax hockey has been very well known since at least 1943. Halifax's game is the one stick game that Montreal inherited and brought to the big time. The stick game created by the "partners" of Halifax, Dartmouth and Kjipuktuk is simply too big for the English invention theory, which considers only Ice Hockey's British contributors. And it had to wait for the partners to meet in order to be literally 'born'.

 

[Barnum]

If I'm not mistaken field hockey was played by the Incas in the 1500s(?)

Actually, there are depictions of field hockey going all the way back to the Greeks in 510 BCE. There’s also records of it going back further to the Persians and Egyptians.

However, modern day field hockey as it is played today and distinguishing it from hurling, is credited to England early 1800s.

 

[rangersfansince08]

Personally, my own research led me to the conclusion that there must have been a first game, however embryonic. There were many stick games being played at the time when Montreal ice hockey was born. Each started at some point.

The idea that each game is taken from earlier games is good, but can take us only so far in Ice Hockey's case because Ice Hockey was based on contributions from two continents. This is what the birth of Montreal forces us to recognize, and it has devastating effects on the blinkered English invention theory:

Working past in time, Montreal ice hockey leads to Halifax ice hockey which, by around the time when James Creighton moved, has become associated with a thing called the Halifax Hockey Club. That game must have had its own beginning, but as a hybrid colonial-indigenous game that must have been born after the first colonists arrived in 1749, and at no earlier point, because this particular stick game required the involvement of Halifax colonists.

The fatally-flawed English invention theory either ignores or fails to recognize the Mi'kmaw whose involvement in Halifax hockey has been very well known since at least 1943. Halifax's game is the one stick game that Montreal inherited and brought to the big time. The stick game created by the "partners" of Halifax, Dartmouth and Kjipuktuk is simply too big for the English invention theory, which considers only Ice Hockey's British contributors. And it had to wait for the partners to meet in order to be literally 'born'.

What rules did the native game contribute?

 

[Historyguy]

My new book on hockey origins suggests a very different story, that hockey was a Native ceremony appropriated by the British Elite of Montreal in order to create a specific identity for itself and the country as a whole. Hockey didn't happen, it was a planned operation.

The book thread is here

Hockey's Origin Unmasked book

Hello this is the author of the new book Hockey's Origin Unmasked: The hidden hand covering a Native source, which looks at the strange untold story of the formation of hockey and other sports in the 1800s. Where did hockey really start? You might think that answer has been solved. Not really...

forums.hfboards.com

 

[rangersfansince08]

Personally, my own research led me to the conclusion that there must have been a first game, however embryonic. There were many stick games being played at the time when Montreal ice hockey was born. Each started at some point.

The idea that each game is taken from earlier games is good, but can take us only so far in Ice Hockey's case because Ice Hockey was based on contributions from two continents. This is what the birth of Montreal forces us to recognize, and it has devastating effects on the blinkered English invention theory:

Working past in time, Montreal ice hockey leads to Halifax ice hockey which, by around the time when James Creighton moved, has become associated with a thing called the Halifax Hockey Club. That game must have had its own beginning, but as a hybrid colonial-indigenous game that must have been born after the first colonists arrived in 1749, and at no earlier point, because this particular stick game required the involvement of Halifax colonists.

The fatally-flawed English invention theory either ignores or fails to recognize the Mi'kmaw whose involvement in Halifax hockey has been very well known since at least 1943. Halifax's game is the one stick game that Montreal inherited and brought to the big time. The stick game created by the "partners" of Halifax, Dartmouth and Kjipuktuk is simply too big for the English invention theory, which considers only Ice Hockey's British contributors. And it had to wait for the partners to meet in order to be literally 'born'.

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