Hockey Re-enactment
Long Pond, February 28, 1999

History was made February 28, 1999 at Long Pond with the re-actment of the first games of hockey.

A youth game held first between King's-Edgehill and the Halifax Grammar School resulted in a 6-1 victory for King's-Edgehill while the senior game between the Halifax Wanderers and Windsor Old-Timers ended in a 3-3 draw.

Both games were played under Halifax rules which involved wooden pucks, one piece hockey sticks and stones for goal posts.

Blair Hammond of Halifax was the guest referee.

This "regulation puck" was one of several old pucks that surfaced after the excavation of Long Pond in the fall of 1998. According to Bill Fitsell, hockey historian and former editor for the Society for International Hockey Research, in Kingston, Ontario, stated that the vulcanized puck was first defined one inch thick and three inches in diameter in Montreal back in 1886. No one has proven who manufactured and stamped the first regulation disc but the Montreal Canadian Rubber Co., which produced a number of products in 1875, may have been among the earlier manufacturers.


Dr. Alexander H. Beaton, Secretary of the Ontario Hockey Association, stated in 1898, "nearly 20 years ago hockey, as a scientific sport, was introduced into Upper Canada from Nova Scotia, the latter province being the indisputable home in Canada of this game."

"I know of no place in Canada where there is any written evidence of the game being played any earlier." ( Brian McFarlane, Host of Hockey Night in Canada for 27 years and the author of many books on hockey, Roy Mayer, Inventing Canada, 1997 )



THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF HOCKEY

The late Dr. Charles Bruce Ferguson, Nova Scotia provincial archivist wrote the Origin and Evolution of Hockey back in 1968 for Nova Scotia Journals of Education. A publication that most hockey historians refer to today.


[ Hockey Evidence | Site of First Hockey Evidence | Hockey Re-enactment | School Re-enactment Teams | Long Pond - Birthplace ]

Contact: Howard Dill   Tel: 902-798-2728 | Fax: 902-798-0842
400 College Road, Windsor, Nova Scotia, B0N 2T0




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