Origin Of Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey was neither invented, nor did it suddenly start one fine morning or one particular year. It started by around 1800, in Windsor, where boys belonging to the first college of Canada, King’s College School, which was established in the year 1788, acclimatized the thrilling field game of Hurley to the ice of their much loved skating ponds and invented a completely new winter game, which was none other than Ice Hurley. With time over a period, Ice Hurley gradually developed into Ice Hockey.

Till date, North America’s most quoted author, Thomas Chandler Haliburton,  has provided the evidence of King’s boys playing “hurley on the ice” as a young student at school way back in 1800. Well, this is the oldest reference that we have in English literature though there is claims of a stick-ball game that were being played on ice in Canada. As Haliburton, wrote the first history of Nova Scotia and he was also the first Canadian to achieve international acclaim as a writer, thus his account is of great importance. However, soon after the boys of King’s College School became used Hurley to the ice, the soldiers at Fort Edward, in Windsor, took up the new game. They acknowledged the game to Halifax, where it achieved momentum as it was played on the beautiful Dartmouth Lakes, and frozen inlets of Halifax Harbour.

By: Tulika Dey

Content: http://www.birthplaceofhockey.com/origin/overview/