Hockey: Canada or England Origin Story?
Jordan Leuschke
2025-04-11 04:19:50
Count answers: 4
Most people consider its rightful birthplace to be in Canada, where hockey is the country’s national sport. Some say that the Irish and French played a version back in the 1700s, but others say that Canadians invented it in the mid-1800s. The first organised indoor hockey game was played March 3, 1875, at Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink, between two teams of nine players each, many of whom were McGill University students.
Heaven Harvey
2025-04-02 08:49:09
Count answers: 4
It will irk Scottish nationalists, but English field hockey's influence was stronger. Hockey on the ice originated in England.
Vince Howell
2025-04-02 04:50:11
Count answers: 5
It was people from Northern Ireland (sic) who first brought hurling to Canada. We found out that William Cochran, a principal in a school in Windsor, Nova Scotia, was teaching his pupils hurling, which he then improvised into ice hurling. The seed of the game came from hurling and ice hurling, and then the game just took off. After hurling took to the ice and became ice hurling, it took a new life of its own. A new sport.
Rashawn Wilkinson
2025-04-02 04:06:43
Count answers: 8
But it now appears that ice-hockey, Canada’s national game, can be added to the list, with a letter from Charles Darwin suggesting the naturalist was one of the game’s first players.
The news will come as a shock to Canadians, who are taught the game as soon as they can walk, but the authors of a forthcoming book on the subject claim to have proved conclusively that the game was invented in England in the 19th century, with a young Darwin an exponent during his school days.
In a letter dated 1 March, 1853, Darwin writes to his son William, who has gone to Shrewsbury School where the father of evolutionary theory had been a pupil: “My Dear Old Willy… have you got a pretty good pond to skate on? I used to be very fond of playing at Hocky on the ice in skates.”
Despite the game’s English origins, Mr Martel stressed that Canadians had assumed ownership because of their passion for the sport.
Canada took the game, sped it up and made it better.
Canada really made the game its own and hockey is truly a Canadian game now.
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