Evolution Of Canada’s Great Winter Game – Ice Hockey by Garth Vaughan © 1999
Evolution Overview
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.
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”.
Image of boys playing hockey in front of the Stannus Street rink
Stannus Street Rink, Windsor, built in 1897 following the great Windsor Fire which destroyed Windsor’s first rink built at Fort Edward in 1870. The Stannus St rink is the oldest standing wooden rink in Canada.