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Q: Birthplace of hockey ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   3 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Birthplace of hockey
Category: Sports and Recreation > Team Sports
Asked by: dalectv-ga
List Price: $25.00
Posted: 30 Jun 2002 07:47 PDT
Expires: 30 Jul 2002 07:47 PDT
Question ID: 35145
Where is the birthplace of hockey, when was the game invented and who
invented it? Please provide specific evidence for your selection
including: City or town names, individuals' names and dates. Be sure
to include a brief history of all cities and towns which have staked a
claim to this piece of sports history.
Answer  
Subject: Re: Birthplace of hockey
Answered By: scriptor-ga on 30 Jun 2002 11:40 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Dear dalectv,

The origins of hockey are surrounded by the fog of history.
Hockey-like field games have already been played as early as 2000 BC
in ancient Egypt. Near the village of Beni Hasan, paintings have been
discovered in the tomb of governor Kheti showing two men with curved
sticks and a ball. The image indicates that a hokey-type game must
have been popular in the Nile valley about 40 centuries ago.

To view this oldest known document of a hockey precursor, please visit
this website:
http://www.indianhockey.com/html/history.htm
History of Hockey, by Indianhockey.com, 1999

Also, the Hellenistic cultures knew sports very similar to today’s
field hockey. Though we do not know what rules they had, the game
itself - called ‘Keritizin’ then - looks very familiar on a Greek
marble relief dating from 514 BC:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/romeball.html
Roman Ball Games, by Dr. Wladyslaw Jan Kowalski, Pennsylvania State
University, 2002

The Romans knew this game under the Latin name ‘paganica’. Also,
various kinds of more or less similar sports have developed in many
parts of the world such as precolumbian Aztec Mexico and North
America, Persia, Arabia and Ethiopia. Two teams each trying to bring a
ball (or some other small object) into the rivals’ goal using curved
long sticks is obviously a very basic concept of human entertainment.

In the middle ages, various rough hockey-type games were known in
Europe under regionally different names: ‘Hurling’ in Ireland,
‘shinty’ in Scotland, ‘crosse’ in France. Presumably, the name of
today’s hockey has also French roots because ‘hoquet’ is the French
term for a sheperd’s curved stick. In 1527, the Irish ‘Galway
Statutes’ provide a list of prohibited games, including the following
words: "(...) the horlinge of the litill balle with hockie stickes or
staves." (taken from Dr. McLennan’s ‘Shinty in England, pre-1893’ -
see sources section below). The term ‘hockie’ would surely not have
seen use in the document if it had not been common.

So there are good reasons to declare early 16th century Ireland,
namely Galway, the brithplace of hockey: The sports had found the
basic game concept and its name. However, this answer might be not
really satifsfying. There are no individual names connected with this
birth, no organized teams, no reliable exact data. And it is still not
‘modern’ hockey. When and where did hockey as we know it today emerge?

It was surely not the England of the 1600s and 1700s, where teams of
60-100 players often represented whole villages in nearly inordinate,
rough matches. In Windsor, Nova Scotia, a game heavily influenced by
Irish hurling and a similar game of the native Micmac Indians
developed step-by-step in the period between 1800 and 1850. According
to an undocumented local legend, it had been named after a certain
Col. Hockey. There is surely truth in this, but although the Canadian
Town of Windsor claims to be the ‘Birtplace of Hockey’, this is just
one of many proto-hockey variants. The British Isles are the real
cradle of modern hockey: The first hockey club, Blackheath, was
founded in 1849 (1861 according to other sources, including the club
itself), making hockey a sports no longer practiced only occasionally.
The gradual development of organized hockey led simultanously to more
precisely fixed rules, like in 1852, when the sportsmaster of the
English Public School of Harrow stated that no team may have more than
30 players on the field at the same time.

Hockey became a sports very popular at British schools during the 19th
century. In the 1860s, a first set of fixed rules was worked out at
Eton College, in 1875 the London hockey club (est. 1871) refined the
existing rules, and in the same year the English Hockey Association
was founded. Henceforth it was forbidden to play the ball with the
hands nor to lift their sticks above shoulder height. In 1883 team
numbers were restricted to 11 players but the most important
development was the introduction of the shooting zone, all of which
was incorporated in 1886 into the newly formed English Hockey
Association, the current men's governing body, the Hockey Association.
The All-England Women's Hockey Association in 1895 was established - a
year after the Irish Ladies' Hockey Union. When the 20the century
began, hockey had almost gotten today’s face.

What do these data indicate? Hockey has not been ‘invented’ by
someone, it has no ‘birthday’ or ‘place of birth’. Like most sports,
it developed over the centuries and in many countries, cities, towns
and villages. Even modern hockey has many fathers who have all added
their bit, their ideas and their imagination to upgarde, reform and
enhance a game which already many generations had played then.

As it seems, only one town worldwide claims to be the definite
‘birthplace of hockey’: Windsor, Nova Scotia (Canada). Originally
named Pesaquid; founded by French settlers in 1685, permanent British
settlement started in 1749. A British strongpoint, Fort Edward, was
built in 1750. The Township of Windsor was created in 1764, and in
1878 Windsor was declared a Town. To fires in 1897 and 1924 destroyed
large parts of Windsor. In spite of all tenacity they defend their
demand to be the cradle of hockey, the modern form of this sport as it
is played today internationally does not have its one-and-only root
there, but at least a strong side branch.

Sources:

History of Hockey, by Indianhockey.com, 1999
http://www.indianhockey.com/html/history.htm

Roman Ball Games, by Dr. Wladyslaw Jan Kowalski, Pennsylvania State
University, 2002
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/romeball.html

The story of the hockey stick from its roots to the age of composite,
by tk-hockey.com
http://www.tk-hockey.com/EHome/history/hauptteil_history.html

Et HocGenus Omne - Shinty in England, pre-1893, by Dr. Hugh D.
McLennan, University of Stirling (Scotland), 2000
http://www.umist.ac.uk/sport/Mclennan992.htm

A History of Hockey, by Victorian Hockey Information, Australia, 2002
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~hockeyv/history.htm

A research paper on hockey, by Janet Klinkhachorn, 1997
http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~klink/hockey/History.html

Hockey’s History, by the Windsor Hockey Heritage Society
http://cnet.windsor.ns.ca/Pages/Hockey/history.html

Hockey, by an unknown author
http://lovepk.freeyellow.com/hockey.htm

Blackheath and its History, by the Blackheath Preservation Trust, 1999
http://www.blackheath.org/history.htm

History of Windsor, by the Town of Windsor, 1999
http://www.town.windsor.ns.ca/History.HTM

Search terms used:
"history of hockey":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=%22history+of+hockey%22&meta=
hockey hockie: ://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=hockey+hockie&meta=
hockey birthplace: ://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=hockey+birthplace&meta=
history windsor "nova scotia":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=history+windsor+%22nova+scotia%22&meta=

Hope this includes the information you were looking for!
Regards,
Scriptor
dalectv-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Excellent answer, thanks. That's certainly what I was looking for. In
particular, I found the background information about early
"hockey-like" games being played around the world especially
interesting.

Comments  
Subject: Re: Birthplace of hockey
From: mmi-ga on 30 Jun 2002 12:07 PDT
 
Hey dalectv-ga,

I was about to answer this question when I was forcibly separated from
my machine. :-(

So I'll post it as a comment. *Newman!*

The Canadian town of Windsor, Nova Scotia seems to have a strong claim
as the birthplace of hockey in the early 1800's:

http://www.gameofhockey.com/

This site seems to be very informative:

http://www.birthplaceofhockey.com/evolution/overview.html

Here's an article that mentions Halifax, Montreal and Kingston,
Ontario as "pretenders":

http://www.mun.ca/muse/archive/Volume50/Issue09/sports/hockey.html

Apparently, Montreal may have been the site of the first "organized
game." Here's a column that argues the "Halifax game" had different
rules, with the Montreal rules drafted in part by McGill University
students in 1877:

http://ww2.mcgill.ca/alumni/news/w96/back.htm

These documents contain useful histories of the development of hockey.
The third one lays out the arguments you may be looking for:

http://cnet.windsor.ns.ca/Pages/Hockey/history.html

http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Hockey/English/Pregame/Origins/game.html

http://www.historytelevision.ca/archives/olympics2002/originsCdnhockey/

Here's a page that discusses "the first game ever":

http://www.funet.fi/pub/sports/hockey/hockey.british

This page has some interesting info in section 3595:

http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/301/hansard-e/35-1/058_94-04-27/058PB1E.html

Here's a document that discusses the origins of hockey in Europe:

http://www.geocities.com/Baja/Dunes/5958/info.html

Houghton, Michigan, apparently has some claim as the birthplace of
hockey in the United States:

http://www.aux.mtu.edu/hockeydev/location.html

I searched in Google on: "birthplace of hockey" and also excluded
Windsor.

Hope this helps!

mmi-ga
Subject: Re: Birthplace of hockey
From: mwalcoff-ga on 30 Jun 2002 16:07 PDT
 
UPDATE -- A group of hockey historians recently came out with a report
saying Windsor, Nova Scotia, is definately *not* the birthplace of
hockey. Needless to say, the citizens of that town disagree. See the
following link from TSN:

<http://tsn.tsnmax.com/magazine/column.asp?bg=hockey8&story=020613&col=walling>
Subject: Re: Birthplace of hockey
From: chromedome-ga on 30 Jun 2002 16:12 PDT
 
It should be pointed out that Windsor's claim to be the "birthplace of
hockey" should be interpreted only as pertaining to the game of ice
hockey.  Their contention is that field hockey, hurling, and related
sports were transmuted into something new in their town, just as
soccer ("football") became "Rugby football" in that town.

The claims of other Canadian cities are based on the notion that what
was played at Windsor was not yet "real ice hockey".  Modern ice
hockey rules, of course, were not standardised in their current
widely-accepted format until the WW I era.

-Chromedome-ga, Nova Scotian and "hockey history" buff.

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