In-Depth Review: L'histoire du hockey au Québec, Part 5

We're up to part five of my in-depth review of Donald Guay's 1990 book L'histoire du hockey au Québec: Origine et développement d'un phénomène culturel avant 1917 ("The History of Hockey in Quebec: The origin and development of a cultural phenomenon before 1917"). We're still working through the quite extensive third chapter; after this post we'll about one-third of the way through the book.

Today I'm going to look at Guay's discussion of the development of the major eastern senior hockey leagues from 1886 to 1917. On page 77 he gives us a nifty graphic representation of the subject matter, which I cannot provide a scan of without ruining my copy of the book. So instead, I re-created it below.

The Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), which was formed in 1886, went along fairly swimmingly for the first decade of its existence. In 1897, the executive of the league passed a fateful resolution, but one that made a good deal of sense. With this resolution, the champion team of the AHAC intermediate section for a year could apply for admission into the senior ranks the following season, subject to the majority vote of all AHAC clubs (senior, intermediate and junior).

The Ottawa Capitals had, the season before, applied for admission into the senior AHAC. The Capitals were the champions of the Central Canada Hockey Association (CCHA), but as the AHAC did not recognize that league as a senior one, the Capitals instead joined the AHAC intermediate division for 1897/98. They were intermediate champions in 1898, and that's when the fun began.

As was their right, the Capitals applied to join the senior ranks of Canada's greatest hockey league. Guay notes that after a long debate and appeals to fair play, the team was admitted by a vote of 23 to 11. All of the intermediate and junior clubs were in favour of the motion, as were the senior Shamrocks. The older clubs - Ottawa, Québec, AAA and Victorias - were all vigorously opposed. So, they exhibited the very best in amateur sportsmanship, and took their pucks and went home. These four clubs withdrew from the AHAC, and formed the Canadian Amateur Hockey League (CAHL).  The Shamrocks eventually joined them, which was really their only option, and Guay notes that when drafting the CAHL constitution, the new executive made sure that it would require a unanimous vote to admit a new club to the senior level.

Guay states that after this split, the AHAC ceased operations entirely, but this not accurate. Michel Vigneault's dissertation on the history of hockey in Montreal makes it clear that the AHAC continued to operate at the intermediate and junior levels for several seasons, meaning that it should not be included at all in the illustration above since they were not senior. Guay's illustration is also inaccurate since it shows the Capitals splitting off to play in a league with Brockville and Cornwall. But this is a reversal of history; these three teams made up the CCHA before the Capitals joined the AHAC. At the senior level, there was no split; the senior AHAC became the CAHL.

Guay then discusses the Federal league, and notes that le National de Montréal were the first senior-level French-Canadian hockey club. When this club transferred to the CAHL in 1905, they were replaced by the Montagnards. The author suggests that the battle between the CAHL and FAHL that ensued in the mid-nineteen-oughts is the reason that the French teams became accepted in senior hockey. The Nationals had been rebuffed by senior hockey before, but with a rival league to battle, establishing a French-Canadian fanbase was important. I certainly cannot argue against Guay's conclusion here, and it's a very interesting observation.

The author proceeds with the development of the CAHL into the Eastern Canada league, but his illustration does not take note of the cross-pollination that occurred between the CAHL and FAHL, as Ottawa defected from the CAHL to the FAHL, and then went back, taking the Wanderers with them. Guay does correctly describe that the Eastern Canada league did not undertake a smooth transition to the NHA. In fact, arguably, the direct line of descent of AHAC to CAHL to ECAHA to ECHA ends with the Canadian Hockey Association, which began the 1909/10 hockey season but did not complete it, being absorbed by the National Hockey Association mid-season.

Guay's direct line between the Federal league and the NHA is really also invalid. Only one team from the 1908/09 FHL season actually played in the NHA in 1909/10. The Wanderers came over from the ECHA, and the Canadiens were an entirely new team. The greatest representation in the inaugural NHA season was actually from the Temiskaming Professional Hockey League (Cobalt and Haileybury), thanks to J. Ambrose O'Brien's money. The NHA was not a continuation of any league when it first started, it was assembled from bits and pieces, but Guay's direct line from the Federal league to this one would suggest otherwise. With the NHA and CHA merged into one, senior hockey in Canada was well in the hands of the professional leagues.

Overall, Guay gets quite a lot of the details wrong in the development of senior hockey in eastern Canada into the professional game in the 1910s. I can't give him a failing grade, but I can't say that I'm impressed:

In-Depth Review: L'histoire du hockey au Québec, Part 4

This is the fourth part of my in-depth review of Donald Guay's 1990 book L'histoire du hockey au Québec: Origine et développement d'un phénomène culturel avant 1917 ("The History of Hockey in Quebec: The origin and development of a cultural phenomenon before 1917"). Please note that since the book is written in French, any time I quote from the book, I will provide both the original passage in bold italics, followed by my translation in regular italics.

Here I begin to address chapter three, which discusses the organization of hockey in Quebec. I'm not sure yet how many posts it will take to cover this chapter, but it will be a few since this is by far the longest chapter in the book, taking up over one-third of the total page count. But let's get started.

Guay begins by noting that one charactestic of the organization of sports is the tendecy for teams to join together to form leagues, made up of teams of approximately equal strength. This was and is generally done along the lines of age groups - juvenile, junior, intermediate and senior - though this is not always the case (for example, commercial leagues that are organized by employer or by profession.) The explosion in the number of hockey leagues in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is an illustration of the enormous growth in popularity of hockey in Canada. The first hockey league was formed in 1886, and Guay notes that by 1917, 81 different hockey leagues had been mentioned in the Montreal press. This isn't to say that there were 81 hockey leagues in 1917, since many had come and gone by that point, but the fact is clear. The growth in the game in Canada was indeed remarkable.

Before the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) came into being in 1886, there was the Montreal Winter Carnival hockey tournament, the first of which was held in 1883. McGill won the Carnival Cup that winter over the Montreal Victorias and Quebec HC. This tournament was also played in 1884 and 1885, but the carnival was cancelled in 1886. Two things happened as a result of this cancellation, one which Guay makes note of and one which he omits. Guay does not mention that there was a winter carnival hockey tournament played in 1886, but it was in Burlington, Vermont as two Montreal teams travelled there to take on a local side. This was the first international hockey tournament, though admittedly it doesn't have much relevance to the development of hockey in Montreal.

Guay does discuss the 1886 Montreal city championships. With the carnival tournament cancelled, the clubs of the city decided to play a season-long series to determine the champion for the year. Each of the four clubs (AAA, Victorias, McGill, and the eventual champion Crystals) would play each other club twice over the winter. This illustrates that the clubs were not simply playing in the carnival tournaments for fun or sport; they specifically wanted to crown a champion. As such, even though in chapter one Guay suggests that sport is played with the goal of honourable victory, and that the stake can be something as simple as the satisfaction of winning, the hockey clubs of Montreal had already moved beyond that. Winning wasn't enough; they wanted recognition for their victories.

Indeed, it seems the creation of the AHAC was in part due to the desire for recognition. Guay quotes a Montreal Gazette sports writer, who in December 1886 suggested that the AHAC would provide "a higher standard of excellence, both as a game and in the eyes of the public." (p.75). As such it seems clear that the views of the public were relevant to sport, or at the very least to the organization of sport. This is not something that Guay addressed when addressing his proposed dichotomy of games versus sports with his six criteria in chapter one of the book, and indeed it illustrates the issue of making such a binary distinction.

Now, Guay's distinction was between game and sport, not between organized sport and non-organized sport or whatever you might call it, but the principle is the same. These are best viewed as continuums, where particular versions of an activity can lay at any point along the scale. The creation of a hockey league increased the organization in hockey, certainly, but one cannot say that it created organization in hockey, since there was some level of organization in hockey already. Drawing a line in the middle of the scale and declaring that everything to one side of the line is "organized hockey" (while the other side is not) is far too simplistic and limits understanding. This also applies to making such a distinction between game and sport.

Guay notes that the AHAC modelled their constitution on that of the Dominion Lacrosse Association, and points out the tendency for amateur athletic organizations to centralize authority rather than allow for democratic decision-making. This results in sweeping powers being given to a small group of executives. Sometimes even a single powerful individual could serve as judge, jury and executioner in amateur sport. Guay is absolutely correct to point out that this put the AHAC «en situation de conflit d'intérêt permanent...» ("in a permanent situation of conflict of interest.") (p. 76)

Ultimately it would be this tendency for centralized authority in amateur hockey which would spped along the later development of the professional version of the game, as the draconian rulings handed down by the Ontario Hockey Association in the late 1890s forced former amateur hockeyists to seek money for their efforts as they were forced out of the "pure" sport. Guay does not really address the fact that this centralized authority, and the issues that he rightly states it creates, would seem to disqualify amateur hockey from this time from his previous definition of "sport", since fair play would so often be left aside for petty politics and tyrannical decrees by executives.

It also seems professional hockey would thus be excluded from his definition of sport, since monetary concerns would seems overtake sportsmanship. Indeed the moral panic of anti-professionalism started early in hockey. Guay notes that a Gazette sports writer in 1888 suggested that the Montreal AAA and other clubs might be paying their players. Readers rebuffed him, but he said the future would bear him out. It's odd that the AAA would be the only team specifically mentioned by the writer; years later when eastern hockey became openly professional, the Winged Wheelers were one of two teams to withdraw from the league rather than become a pro side.

Guay begins to delve into the history of AHAC seasons. Strangely enough, when the AHAC began play in the winter of 1886/87, they did not use the series system that the Montreal teams had adopted for 1886. They played a challenge system in 1887, wherein the team currently holding the championship title could be challenged by another team, and the winner of that game would become the current title-holder, and on and on until the season came to a close, when the team holding the title at that time was declared the season's champion. A series system was played in 1888, but the league returned to a challenge format from 1889 to 1892, at least in part to make it easier for teams outside Montreal to participate. The Ottawa and Quebec clubs would have difficulty playing a series system due to the financial constraints of amateur hockey.

The results of the 1892 season illustrate the significant issue with the challenge system. Ottawa won nine straight matches during the season, but lost their final challenge match to the Montreal AAA, who had failed in three previous challenges that season. But there was no more time for hockey that winter, and as such, the AAA (with their record of one win and three losses) was declared champion over Ottawa (who had nine wins and one loss). The system had previously been called "supremely ridiculous" in 1890 (p.81), when the AAA had gone undefeated in nine matches, and it was recognized that if they had lost their last match, they would not have been champions. The absurdity of the system should be apparent to any modern hockey fan, and was realized by at least some fans at the time, but it was the system they used.

The thing is, and this is not from Guay but my own observation, that hockey today still effectively uses a challenge system to decide the season's champion. The concept of annual playoffs appended to the regular season is exactly the same as using a challenge system to decide a champion. The regular season, played as a series, is merely used to seed the playoffs, which is a challenge system. The league (for example, the NHL) decides which teams are allowed to challenge which other teams based on the results on the regular season, until it comes down to a winner-take all final series, after all other teams have been eliminated by losing four out of seven games, regardless of how many they had won before that time.

In theory, an NHL team could go 82-0 in the regular season and sweep the first three rounds of the playoffs to reach the championship final with a record of 94-0. Their opponent could be a team that was 41-41 during the season and won the first three rounds in seven games each, for a record of 53-50. And yet, if the latter team beats the former four games out of seven (raising their season record to 57-53), they will be declared champion over the team that won 97 out of 101 games that year. The possibility of this sort of result was recognized to be "supremely ridiculous" in 1890, and yet now it is so deeply ingrained in North American hockey that most fans would not understand any other way of doing it. Annual playoffs are taken for granted in North American sports, and I don't think many fans really stop to consider this potential absurdity.

When a series system was finally adopted on a permanent basis by the AHAC for the 1892/93 season, the move was hailed, as the fixed schedule of game would be much better for the fans, which again illustrates the importance the views of the public had in the development of organized hockey. Once again Guay mentions this but does not really give it due consideration, and how it affects his ideas about the criteria that are representative of sports.

Next time, we'll get into some of the trials and tribulations faced by amateur hockey in the late 20th century, many of which it ultimately brought on itself.

In-Depth Review: L'histoire du hockey au Québec, Part 3

Welcome to part three of my in-depth review of Donald Guay's 1990 book L'histoire du hockey au Québec: Origine et développement d'un phénomène culturel avant 1917 ("The History of Hockey in Quebec: The origin and development of a cultural phenomenon before 1917"). Please note that since the book is written in French, any time I quote from the book, I will provide both the original passage in bold italics, followed by my translation in regular italics.

In chapter one, Guay defined a sport but did not define hockey. In chapter two we finally get to some characteristics of the sport of ice hockey that can be used to differentiate it from other games and sports. Guay discusses five such characteristics, including their origins and evolution over time: the number of players, the puck, the goals, the sticks and the rink.

The first thing I notice is that one of the most basic defining characteristics of hockey is not included here: the skates. I think you'll agree that, even if a game is played on ice, it would not be considered ice hockey by our current understanding if skates are not used. Let's see what Guay has to say about the characteristics he does identify.

Number of Players

Guay points out that in the earliest recorded Montreal hockey matches, the norm was nine players per side, shrinking to seven by the early 1880s. This is fewer players than other similar sports, such as the eleven used as bandy, and as such the author suggests that this is a differentiating characteristic of ice hockey. It is, however, unwise to use something so specific to define a sport. Bandy has eleven players per side, and early hockey had nine per side. If, in a bandy match, two players on each side are sent off with penalties, does this now mean they're playing hockey, since they now have nine per side, and nine per side is characteristic of hockey?

Moreover, there is a version of bandy called rink bandy that was developed in the 1960s in Sweden, that is played in hockey rinks with six players per side. How are we to differentiate between ice hockey and rink bandy, if the lower number of players is supposed to be a defining characteristic of ice hockey? This illustrates that when defining what a game is, referring to specific rules is a bad idea, since rules change over time and can lead to overlaps such as this.

Guay goes on to discuss how the number of players in ice hockey was gradually reduced, first to seven and then to six in the early 1910s when the rover was eliminated in eastern hockey, a move which the western leagues were slower to adopt. Guay discusses the rover a bit, and notes that sports writer Andy O'Brien claimed that players at this position were not subject to any rules, and were allowed to go anywhere on the ice at any time. That is, the strict offside rules of the time did not apply to the rover. This is simply hogwash. The position was called a rover not because of the rules, but because of the roles forwards played on offence. Art Farrell, in Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game (1899), explained that while the centre played the middle of the ice and the wings their own sides, the rover was supposed to go wherever he was most needed to support the other forwards.

To Guay's credit, he does not suggest that O'Brien's claim is accurate, stating that he was unable to corroborate it. Of course, he could have simply referred to the rules from this time, and he would have found it was complete bollocks. Indeed, the fact that he needed to try to corroborate this suggests that Guay is not very familiar with the game as it was played at this time. There is nothing mysterious about the rover, it was simply another forward.

The Puck

Guay begins here by noting that in the 1870s, hockey was played with a rubber ball like that used in bandy, shinty, hurling and field hockey. For the first Montreal match on March 3, 1875, however, a circular piece of wood was used, in order to protect the spectators. Guay states that this was specified to be an exception, however, and that until 1885 matches of ice hockey played outside, at least, used a ball and not a puck.

We can go through the newspaper game summaries from 1875 to 1884 to see if this lines up with history. In these years, I can find reports for ten different matches that refer to the object of play by one name or another.

March 3, 1875: Montreal Gazette (03 Mar 1875) refers to a "flat circular piece of wood"; Montreal Gazette (04 Mar 1875) refers to a "block of wood"; Montreal Daily Witness (04 Mar 1875) refers to a "flat piece of board."

March 15, 1875: Montreal Gazette (17 Mar 1875) refers to a "little circle of wood."

February 5, 1876: Montreal Gazette (07 Feb 1876) refers to a "puck." This is the first recorded instance of "puck" used in this manner. It may be derived from the same term used in hurling, where "to puck" the ball means to strike the ball.

February 1, 1877: Montreal Daily Witness (02 Feb 1877) refers to a "hockey block" and a "wooden block." This is consistent with matches to this date, and it's clear that the were still using a wooden puck to play hockey. However, the report also refers to the puck as "the ball" in one instance. This suggests that sometimes the term ball was still used to refer to the puck, even though it was not a ball in the sense of a spherical object. This will become more certain later on.

February 26, 1877: Montreal Gazette (27 Feb 1877) refers to a "ball" nine times. However, given the February 1, 1877 reference we cannot be sure that this actually means a spherical ball and not a puck.

March 6, 1879: Montreal Gazette (07 Mar 1879) refers to a "ball." See comments above.

February 16, 1882: Quebec Morning Chronicle (17 Feb 1882) refers to a "puck" twice.

January 27, 1883: This was the final match of the 1883 Montreal Winter Carnival, and was played at the Victoria rink, and not the St. Lawrence River as the previous games in the tournament. Quebec Morning Chronicle (29 Jan 1883) refers to a "puck" six times, a "ball" five times and a "rubber" three times. This makes it quite clear that the term "ball" was sometimes used to mean the puck. Montreal Gazette (29 Jan 1883) refers to a "rubber" twice, a "ball" twice and a "bully" twice.

February 5, 1884: Montreal Gazette (06 Feb 1884) refers to a "ball."

February 7, 1884: Montreal Gazette (08 Feb 1884) refers to a "rubber." This match, and the match above, were part of the 1884 Winter Carnival. The matches in this year's carnival were all played at the McGill rink, which was an outdoor rink, not covered like the Victoria or Crystal rinks.

Taken all together, it seems clear that the puck used on March 3, 1875 was not an exception in the sense of being a one-time thing, but in the sense of a persistent change from the previous norm. It seems to be a change that stuck. Some confusion can arise given that it also seems that the term "ball" was used sometimes even when the object was flat and circular, like the puck we know. Apparently "ball" could have the generic meaning of the thing that you play the game with, and did not necessarily mean a sphere. So perhaps Guay read the February 5, 1884 report and saw the word "ball", and figured this meant that this outdoor game was played using a rubber sphere. Given the information above, we cannot make this assumption, and indeed it seems likely the object was pucklike in nature.

Of course, it is possible that the converse was the case; that the term "puck" became the generic term, even was the object was actually a sphere. However it's very unlikely that such a new term would become the widely-accepted generic term for such an object in such a short period of time. We have evidence that ball was the generic term. In a game report in the Montreal Daily Herald of 08 Feb 1887 made reference to a puck four times, and a ball once. We know, according to AHAC rules written before that season, that a flat, disklike puck is the object that would be used in the match. As such it seems clear that puck was a specific term meaning a flat disc used for hockey, while ball could be used to mean any object of play in similar games.

Although Guay appears to be incorrect about the use of pucks and balls in early Montreal hockey, he is correct when he says this:

«Cette modification, si elle semble banale à première vue, apporte un élément essentiel qui va distinguer davantage le hockey des autres jeux et sports alors pratiqués, tels que le shinty, le bandy, le hurling ou le hockey sur gazon qui se pratique tous avec une balle, mais de différents grosseurs. Il devient possible de manier, de contrôler la rondelle qui glisse sur la glace, ce qui permet aux jouers de se déplacer rapidement avec la rondelle et de mieux maîtriser des «combinaisons», c'est-à-dire le jeu d'ensemble. Le technique de base est le «stick handling» ou maniement du bâton qui permet de développer de nombreuses techniques qui demeurent très difficiles, sinon impossible avec une balle» (p.54)

"This change, seemingly trivial at first glance, brought an essential element which would further distinguish hockey from other games and sports played at the time, such as shinty, bandy, hurling or field hockey which are played with balls of various sizes. It made it possible to handle, to control the puck while it glides along the ice, which permits the players to move rapidly with the puck and to better use "combinations", that is, passing plays. The basic technique is stick handling, which allows the development of techniques which would be very difficult if not impossible with a ball."

I reached this very same conclusion in On His Own Side of the Puck. The change to a puck was originally done only to protect spectators, but it had great unintended consequences. The greater "science" that it allowed in ice hockey is surely one of the reasons that the popularity of the sport increased so dramatically in Canada in such a short period of time.

The Goals

This section is uncontroversial, with Guay providing a fine summary of the evolution of the goal posts, and later goal nets, used in ice hockey. One item of note is that Guay asserts that the posts were eight feet apart in 1875, which is based on a reference in the report for the March 3, 1875 game in Montreal. However, the report only stated that the goals were "about" eight feet apart, and it's not clear if the writer was referring to the goals used in the hockey match, or to lacrosse goals, which the game was being compared to at the time. So ultimately, until the 1886 rules specified how far apart the goals were to be, we don't know for certain how far apart they were.

The Stick

Guay briefly discusses early sticks, noting that the shape of the blade is different from sticks for other sports such as field hockey, bandy and shinty. Pretty straightforward stuff.

The Rink

Finally, Guay notes that ice hockey is played on a smaller surface than other similar sports. Hockey's standard is about 200 by 85 feet, while bandy used about 300 feet by 150 feet. But once again, even though hockey used a smaller surface, using this as a defining characteristic of hockey is problematic. How long and wide does the playing surface have to be before hockey becomes bandy? If the rink is 250 feet long, is this characteristic of hockey or bandy? If a game, using hockey equipment and rules, is played on a bandy-sized surface, is it no longer hockey? If bandy is played in a hockey rink, is it no longer bandy? This is why specific dimensions should be avoided is trying to define what hockey is, and how it is different from similar sports such as bandy.

After all this, Guay suggests that it is because ice hockey had written rules that the sport overtook traditional British games such as field hockey, bandy, shinty and hurling. I'm really not sure what to make of this statement, since ice hockey took its first written rules from the written rules of English field hockey's written rules, and the author knows this. Bandy also had published rules before ice hockey came into being. As such, Guay does a fairly poor job in defining what hockey is and how it is different from similar sports. He discusses some of the characteristics that hockey has, but does not really define what hockey is. Notably, he leaves skates out of the equation entirely, even when comparing it to sports that are not played on ice and do not use skates, though all that is really needed is the puck to differentiate it from similar sports, to which the author does give proper credit.

In-Depth Review: L'Histoire du hockey au Québec, Part 2

This is the second part of my in-depth review of Donald Guay's 1990 book L'histoire du hockey au Québec: Origine et développement d'un phénomène culturel avant 1917 ("The History of Hockey in Quebec: The origin and development of a cultural phenomenon before 1917"). Please note that since the book is written in French, any time I quote from the book, I will provide both the original passage in bold italics, followed by my translation in regular italics.

In the first part of the review, I discussed Guay's definition of sport, which he uses to differentiate certain physical activities from others, which he refers to as games. I find the definition lacking, since it ultimately seems to use only one criterion to make this distinction: sportsmanship. Also, he did not define what he means by hockey when he says he's interested in the origins of the sport of ice hockey. However, we will press on and continue to review chapter one, discussing the origins of hockey.

Guay selects four claims for the origins of hockey in Canada to discuss. They are: the Hurons in the 17th century, Montreal in 1837, Kingston in 1855 and Montreal in the 1870s. These are the only four claims he considered worthy of consideration; notable by its absence is any mention of Nova Scotia. I am, of course, not talking about the flimsy Windsor claim, but Halifax/Dartmouth. Of course, Guay's book predated Martin Jones' work Hockey's Home by a dozen years, so perhaps that's understandable. We certainly cannot fault Guay for not having the information in the recent On the Origin of Hockey by Gidén, Houda and Martel either, but of course we may bring some of that into the discussion if it becomes relevant.

Let's move on. Guay discusses each of these four claims in turn.

Hurons, 17th Century

Guay discusses the passage written by Gabriel Sagard in his 1632 work Le grand voyage au pays des Hurons ("Travelling in the land of the Hurons"), who related that young Hurons played «...avec des bâtons courbés, qu'ils fount couler par-dessus la neige et crossent une balle de bois Léger, comme l'on fait en nos quartiers.» ("...with curved sticks, they run in the snow and pass a light ball of wood, like we do back home.")

Guay suggests that this is more likely to be a description of baggataway (lacrosse) played in the snow, rather than hockey, and that while lacrosse and hockey do have some basic similarities we have no reason to believe that one developed from the other. I certainly agree with Guay's conclusions here; there's no reason to call this hockey rather than lacrosse. However, he has made it difficult on himself because he has not defined what hockey is. Guay does not specify what characteristics hockey has that he can use to make the determination that what is being described is not hockey.

Montreal, 1837

This comes from John Knox, who claimed that his father played hockey in Montreal in 1837, supposedly between two clubs called the Dorchesters and the Uptowns. There exists no contemporaneous corroboration for this story; it was told in 1941 by an 84-year-old Knox, who referred to an undated document apparently written by his father. The lack of corroboration may be enough by itself to sink the claim; we certainly cannot rely on undated documents and decades-old memories to establish history.

Guay takes a different approach. He notes that the document referred to the fact that the activity had "no referees and no such thing as a face-off, no blue lines, no offsides" (p.28, quoting from the document), and that this means the activity had no rules. Without written rules, of course, this cannot be the sport of ice hockey, since Guay's definition of sport requires written rules. Aside from the weakness in Guay's definition, I don't think he has any basis to conclude that the activity had no rules (assuming it happened according to the document's story.) Since the document referred to two matches, one ending 1-0 and the other 3-1, there must have at least been unwritten rules, otherwise how could there have been a score? No blue lines and no offsides just means there was not these two particular rules in play. Moreover, the lack of a referee does not mean there were no rules; in the first half of the 19th century and earlier, for example, in field hockey it was fairly common for team captains to be in charge of determining when rules were broken, and sometimes players would be allowed to mete out punishment themselves, in the form of shinning: hitting the offending player in the shins with your stick.

So Guay concludes that this was not a sport, but a game. But which game was it? The document in question calls it ice hurling, in fact, not ice hockey. So it is likely that, if these games did occur, they were a version of the traditional Irish game of hurling, played on ice. This is a reasonable conclusion, although again, Guay has not suggested how he would tell the difference between the game of ice hurling and the game of ice hockey, other than implying that if it is not a sport by his definition, it cannot be ice hockey.

Kingston, 1855

James Sutherland's claims about Canadian hockey beginning in Kingston are pretty well-known, and have been promoted by various parties since they were first made. Guay notes that the claim is built on writings in a journal, which stated that shinty was played on the ice. Shinty is a traditional Scottish game, which Guay suggests had no fixed rules, no written rules, no referee. And without written rules, of course, it cannot be the sport of ice hockey, according to the author.

Sutherland's claim has holes in it, such that it is not taken seriously by historians as a "birthplace" claim. For example, the story asserts that the country's first hockey league was formed in Kingston, in 1885 or 1886. But we only have record of permanent hockey clubs first being established there in 1888, and without hockey clubs there can be no hockey leagues.

Guay also notes that in an 1887 article in the Kingston British Whig newspaper, when asked about hockey, locals responsed "What is hockey?" This, of course, is a question that Guy himself has not answered yet.

Montreal, 1870s

Guay devotes an entire section of chapter one to Montreal in the 1870s, entitled «La naissance du hockey sur glace» ("The birth of ice hockey.") He makes mention of the famous March 3, 1875 match in Montreal, the first recorded match of organized hockey in Canada. Remember that Guay means the sport of ice hockey, as he again refers to his six criteria to begin this section. He goes through them one at a time.

Clearly this ice hockey was a physical activity, and it was played between two opposing teams. One might quibble with this point for the March 3 match, since it was played between two teams drawn from members of the Victoria skating club, not from opposing clubs. Beginning with the second match later than month, the competitors represented different clubs, so this may be a minor point. Guay asserts that the teams were there for fun, but were also determined to win, indeed that each team made it a "point of honour" to be victorious (p.40). I don't see how can know the latter, and this illustrates one of the weaknesses of his definition of sport. How does he know the players were not playing solely for fun? He assumes they made it a point of honour, but provides no evidence that this is true.

He does provide evidence of sportsmanship, as the game report noted that the "best of humour" was maintained even in a physical game on March 3, 1875, with bumps and collisions to be expected. Tempers were not raised. This could, of course, just as easily be seen as evidence that the players were playing for fun, and did not make winning a "point of honour." He does note that in the recorded matches played between 1875 and 1885, the vast majority of them were won by close scores, which suggest that teams were generally evenly-matched, which is another requisite of sportsmanship by his definition.

As for the written rules, Guay states that the 1870s Montreal matches were played using rules borrowed from English field hockey. This is largely true, as discussed in my book On His Own Side of the Puck. However, given Guay's insistence that written rules are required for an activity to be a sport, it must be noted that we do not know exactly what rules were used for the Montreal matches played in 1875. It was not until 1876 that the newspaper reported field hockey rules were being used for a match, and it was not until 1877 that the Montreal version of said rules were published. So we do not know what rules were used for certain in 1875 - they may not even have been written down. And yet Guay leads off with the March 3, 1875 match in Montreal as the first example of the sport of ice hockey, despite not having evidence that it fulfills all six of his criteria for being a sport.

Though we don't know for certain, it is quite likely that field hockey rules were used in 1875. Guay notes that the Montreal Gazette report on the March 3, 1875 hockey match states that some of the players involved were reputed to be "exceedingly expert" at the game. Since there were no reports of ice hockey in Montreal before this one, but we do know that field hockey was played in the city before then, Guay concludes (quite reasonably) that these first ice hockey matches were essentially field hockey put on ice. Not just ice, of course, but skates, though Guay does not make note of this. He also does not indicate whether he considers field hockey to be a sport, or a game.

At the end of chapter one, Guay writes:

«Il est évident que le hockey sur glace n'a pas encore toutes les caractéristiques qui le particularisent actuellement, ni même à la fin du XIXe siècle, mais il est déjà suffisamment différent des autres jeux et sports pour être perçu comme tel par les observateurs contemporains.» (p.41)

"It's clear that ice hockey did not yet [in the 1870s] possess all of the characteristics which we associate with it today, or even at the end of the nineteenth century, but it was already sufficiently different from other games and sports to be recognized as such by contemporary observers."

The is the first time Guay addresses what might make hockey hockey, but unfortunately he does not provide any examples of the characteristics he's talking about. In an earlier caption for an 1880 illustration of hockey on ice, Guay wrote something that could be taken as a definition of what "hockey" means. He states that in its beginnings, hockey was:

«...un jeu élementaire qui consiste à frapper une balle avec un bâton en forme de canne pour lui faire franchir les buts de l'adversair.» (p.38)

"...a simple game consisting of hitting a ball with a cane-shaped stick, to pass the ball through the opponent's goal."

This is not a bad definition of hockey in the general sense, though it's certainly not a definition of ice hockey specifically, since there is no reference to ice or skates. Moreover, even if ice were invluded it would be insufficient to differentiate hockey from bandy, so these cannot be all of the characteristics he is referring to. Guay suggests he will discuss some of these characteristics in chapter two, which we will address next time.

In-Depth Review: L'histoire du hockey au Québec, Part 1

I've done a few book reviews in the past, but I'm going to try something a bit different this time. Last week I had to look something up in a book that's been sitting in my hockey history library for some time. In doing so, I realized I had never actually read the book in its entirety, only ever really using it for reference. So I decided it was time to read the thing, and when going through the first chapter I realized there was probably a lot of meat for some blog posts in there. So this will be a series of posts, making up an in-depth, chapter-by-chapter review of the book from my analytical perspective. The book is quite dense and scholarly, and intentionally so, and as such I think it's appropriate to devote some time to it.

The book is L'histoire du hockey au Québec: Origine et développement d'un phénomène culturel avant 1917 ("The History of Hockey in Quebec: The origin and development of a cultural phenomenon before 1917"), published in 1990. It was written by Donald Guay (b.1934), a Quebec historian who has published well over a dozen works, mostly on the subject of Quebec sports history. As you may have surmised, it's written in French. As such, any time I quote from the book, I will provide both the original passage in bold italics, followed by my translation in regular italics.

The book is made up of five chapters, and I intend to cover each one in some detail. I'm not going to read ahead, I'm going to review each chapter as I go through it. Some chapters, at least, will be broken up into multiple parts (I know this because chapter three is about four times as long as any other chapter in the book, and besides that, as you'll see I won't even get through chapter one in this fairly large post).

So let's introduce the series, naturally enough, by addressing the introduction.

Introduction

In the introduction, Guay posits that despite the enormous role hockey plays in Canadian society, historians and sociologists have not (at least as of 1990) devoted a great deal of attention to it. I think this is largely a fair comment; there was certainly nothing like The Hockey Conference at the time this book was written. As such, Guay suggests that he will be examining a number of important questions about the history of hockey in Canada, and specifically addressing them from a French-Canadian sociocultural perspective. I won't be spending too much time commenting on the French-Canadian perspective, since I cannot claim to have much insight in that regard. I will, however, be commenting on the information and arguments in the book having to do with hockey history specifically.

Some of the questions Guay intends to ask (and hopefully answer) are:

• When were the matches played in the sport of hockey?
• Who organized these first matches?
• How, when and by who were the first hockey clubs and leagues formed?
• What part did French Canadians play in the development of hockey in Canada?

So we can see that Guy does not intend to focus solely on the French-Canadian perspective; he's asking some very basic questions about Canadian hockey history here, which should give us a lot to discuss. Chapter one focuses on the origins of hockey; chapter two discusses the evolution of various component parts of the game (such as the puck and stick); chapter three examines the organization of the sport at various levels; chapter four studies the growth in popularity of hockey; and chapter five discusses some of the problematic aspects of the game, such as violence. With that in mind, let's get started with chapter one.

Chapter One: Les origines du hockey ("the origins of hockey")

You may have noticed that in the first question above, I used the term "sport of hockey" when referring to the first hockey matches. This is not my distinction, but Guay's. The first part of chapter one is spent discussing the difference between «des jeux» ("games") and «le sport» ("sport".) Guay suggests that it is important to differentiate between a sport and other forms of physical activity, and to do so he suggests six observable criteria resulting from an «étude empirique» ("empirical study") of sport and games. I'm not entirely sure it's proper to use the term empirical here, as we'll see when we discuss the criteria below, some of which seem rather subjective to me.

Guay summarizes these six criteria into a definition of sport (as opposed to a game) as follows:

«Le sport est donc une activité physique compétitve et amusante pratiquée en vue d'un enjeu selon des règles écrites et un esprit particulier, l'esprit sportif.» (Guay p.19)

"Sport is therefore a competitive, but fun, physical activity played with something at stake, using written rules and according to a spirit of sportsmanship."

The last part of this definition strikes me as possibly circular; sport is something played according to a spirit of sportsmanship. Okay, what is a sporting spirit then? Guay expands on this here:

«L'esprit sportif, la mentalité sportive comprend des valeurs qui orientent, guident les attitudes et les conduites des sportives et des sportifs. C'est une éthique fondée sur l'équité, le désir de vaincre et la loyauté. L'esprit sportif, c'est cette volunté de vaincre, mais de vaincre loyalement sure un adversaire de calibre.» (Guay p.19)

"Sportsmanship, or the sporting mindset, is defined by the values that guide the attitudes and actions of sportswomen and sportsmen. It's an ethic based on fairness, the desire to win and honour. Sportsmanship is this will to win, but to win honourably against a quality opponent."

You will notice that this is arguably results in quite a narrow definition, and my fear when reading it is that it will be later used by the author to exclude professional hockey from the definition of sport, or indeed whatever version of the activity that he wishes to exclude. Guay seems to be using a more old-fashioned, olde-tyme elitist definition of sport and sportsman, from the days when such activities were undertaken solely by gentlemen and gentlewomen, without the sweaty lower classes being involved. The implication seems to be one of praise for the mythic virtues of amateur sport above all else.

The reference to fun is also a bit odd. One might think that fun or enjoyment is more characteristic of a game than a sport, as a sport can often be far more competitive that a casual game. But Guay suggests that while opponents on a sporting playing field may be the greatest of rivals, for his purposes something is not a sport unless the participants take pleasure in the playing, because «le sport n'est qu'un jeu.» ("sport is nothing but a game.") I trust I'm not the only one confused by this bit; most of the criteria seem to be showing how much a sport is the same as a game, rather than differentiating them.

One also worries that this definition is established in order to later enshrine Montreal as the birthplace of hockey. It's too early so say, but I'm seeing signs of it going in that direction.For example, it refers to written rules. But why must the rules be written in order for something to be a sport, or sporting rather? Are unwritten rules insufficient for sporting gentlemen to engage in sport?

With respect to the «enjeu» ("stake"), Guay does not in fact mean that there must be some tangible prize, or else much of amateur sporting would be excluded by this. By the stake, he suggests that sportsmen are seeking victory «qui confère satisfaction, honneurs, gloire, argent, etc.» ("which provides satisfaction, honour, glory, money, etc."). So the stake can be anything (tangible or otherwise) that the participant values. This is fine, but I can't see how it serves any purpose to differentiate a sport from a game. Does anyone play a game without getting anything out of it? If satisfaction from participating in the activity is sufficient, then that's broad enough to cover pretty much every game ever played by anyone, be it a physical activity or not.

Indeed, since Guay is attempting to differentiate between two types of physical activity, one which he calls a game and one which he calls a sport, I don't think his definition accomplishes this goal. A sport is a physical activity; but in this context so is a game, since Guay refers only to non-sport physical activities and does not mean board games or anything similar by the term. A sport is competitive; but games can clearly be competitive as well. Most games are, I would suggest. A sport is fun, but so is a game, I think you'd agree (otherwise, why play it?) A sport has something at stake, but Guay's definition of stake is so broad that it cannot exclude someone playing a game because he or she simply enjoys doing so. A sport has written rules, but many games do as well, so that draws no distinction. This leaves only the final criteria, sportsmanship, to tell the difference between sports and games.

This distinction may actually be clearer in English than in French. The English term sportsmanship is recognized as a positive thing, while the similar term gamesmanship has a negative connotation. The former suggests being straightforward and honest, playing a game honourably as Guay would suggest, while the latter suggests underhandedness, doing whatever it takes to win, exploiting loopholes in the rules, that sort of thing. But I question whether this is a valid distinction between sports and games, since it has to do only with the mindset of the participants rather than the activity itself. It's surely possible to play a game in a sportsmanlike manner, and to use gamesmanship in a sport (using more everyday meanings of sport and game). Moreover, this means that a specific instance of an activity can be considered both a sport and a game at the same time, depending on which player's perspective you are examining. One player could be in it for honourable victory, while another may be thinking he would kill someone's grandmother just to score an extra point. Since Guay purports to be looking at the origins of hockey as a sport in Canada, the first time the sport of hockey was played in Canada, I suggest that he cannot rely on the mindset of individual participants to make such a determination. How could he know, for example, that of the 18 men who played in the March 3, 1875 hockey match in Montreal (which we will discuss), they all had honourable victory as their goal? No, it would be far better for the criteria to be solely about the nature of the activity itself, not dependant on what the participants may or may not have been thinking.

But even if Guay is drawing a valid distinction with the criteria of sportsmanship, I daresay this does not line up with what most people understand as the difference between sport and game. For example, compare modern shinny and hockey. The former can be called a game, and the latter a sport. Shinny is much more informal than hockey, often played on a pick-up basis with minimal rules, no referee, that sort of thing. Meanwhile hockey typically implies a scheduled match between organized teams. I suggest the modern understanding of games versus sports has much more to do with the level of organization in the activity, while Guay is putting forward something of an archaic distinction, based on ideals that (in my opinion) never really existed. Even at the time when amateur sports were placed on a pedestal above professional sports, these ideals were mythical. Amateur hockey, for example, had lots of gamesmanship and shenanigans, betraying the fact that the participants were often more interested in victory than making sure the victory was honourable.

As such, I find Guay's definition of sport to be unconvincing, incomplete, and ultimately unnecessary. Why do we even need to distinguish between a game and a sport? Why are the origins of the game of hockey not interesting, but the origins of the sport of hockey are? At any rate, let's move on. We'll keep this attempted distinction in mind if it becomes relevant later.

Actually, it becomes relevant almost immediately - this is what you get when I write a review as I read the book. Guay proceeds to discuss the idea that hockey had its origins in ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks or Persians. He's obviously now referring to hockey in the general sense of hitting a thing with a stick, rather than a specific form of such activity such as ice hockey. It's notable at this point that while Guay has tried to define what a sport is, he has made no attempt to define what hockey is. This is an unfortunate tendency in hockey historical writing, to jump around between meanings of hockey without noting that you are discussing different things.

Indeed, Guay criticizes others for seemingly attempting to push the history of hockey as far back as possible. He apparently fails to recognize the distinction between the modern meaning of hockey and the older, more general meaning. Of course, this may not be entirely his fault, since the authors he refers to may not have explicitly made that distinction themselves; as I said, that's a common problem. Guay states (p.23) that while these games «...aient une certaine ressemblance avec le hockey comtemporain, on ne peut affirmer que ce soit du hockey...» ("...have a certain resemblance to modern hockey, we cannot confirm that they are hockey...) I'm seeing more worrying signs here. This sounds like Guay is going to argue that while earlier, pre-Canadian versions of the game are not really hockey because they do not sufficiently resemble what we now call hockey. Of course, the first hockey matches played in Montreal in the 1870s also suffer from this issue, in that they were very different from the modern version of the game, but that is often glossed over by proponents of the Montreal birthplace idea. It's too early to judge, but I've seen this before so we'll keep out eyes open for it. It would help, of course, if Guay would define what he means by hockey, but unfortunately he does not.

Guay takes a different tack, referring to these ancient activities as games, not sports, thus illustrating why he built up a distinction in the first place. He says that since we cannot directly connect these "games" with the "sport" of hockey played in Canada since the late 19th century, they cannot be called hockey. Moreover, since as discussed above the distinction between game and sport that Guay makes seems predicated solely on "sportsmanship", he seems to be saying that sportsmanship is a recent invention, that ancient peoples could not have possessed it. A cynic might be inclined to say that the definition of sport is therefore written to exclude all forms of games from before the last couple of hundred years from the discussion. We'll see how it goes.

Next time, we'll look at Guay's discussion of a few "birthplace" claims for ice hockey, and his own statements about the birth of that sport.

The Voyage of the Puck, or the Ascent of Hockey

Full disclosure: I consider the authors of On the Origin of Hockey to be colleagues, and at least one of them to be a friend. I received my copy of the book at no charge, however this was simply as a result of attending the 2014 Annual General Meeting of the Society for International Hockey Research; everyone there was given a copy. Furthermore, the authors make at least one very complimentary reference to my own book in their work. I suppose you could use all of that to discount my opinion of their work entirely. All I can do is assure you that the identity of the authors did not affect my reaction to this book. Besides, there are already so many valid reasons to discount my opinion entirely that you really don't need to go making another one up, now do you?

A review of On the Origin of Hockey

You may have seen some of the many headlines in response to the new book On the Origin of Hockey, which was launched this past weekend, declaring that “Hockey is actually an English game!” or words to that effect. The book is purported to prove that hockey, the game so long considered to be a Canadian one, was really born in England. Is this true? Have the Canadian origins of the great winter game been completely refuted?

The short answer is no, not really. But fortunately for the authors (Carl Giden, Patrick Houda and Jean-Patrice Martel, or GHM for short), that's not what they claim to prove. They are clear that the transition from the early forms of hockey to the modern version was given impetus and took place in Canada, and without the Canadian influence the sport would not be the great one that we have today. If we look at the very last paragraph in the book, for instance, we see that GHM have no interest in declaring hockey anything other than Canadian:

Today, regardless of where it is played, hockey is a truly Canadian game. That is the legacy of the first Montreal game, thanks in large part to the leadership of James Creighton, who recognized how ideally suited to Canada's climate and people the game of ice hockey was, and who masterfully gave it the impulse it needed to become the greatest winter sport that exists. (p. 267)

So we apparently cannot rely on the mainstream media to provide an accurate picture of what the book it about, which is to be expected given the relatively nuanced position that the authors take. But if refuting hockey's Canadianness is not the point of the book, then what is? What conclusions do GHM actually put forth in their work? Fortunately for our purposes, they provide a concise summary of their findings in their final chapter. They are:

1. Ice hockey...was played in England for several decades before it was played in Canada.

2. There were several instances of organized hockey games played in England before the one played on March 3, 1875 in Montreal.

3. No reasonable definition of hockey could be imagined that would include all games played in Montreal since March 3, 1875, but exclude all games played in England to that date.

4. Prior to the 1890s...bandy and hockey were exactly the same activity, called by different names depending on the region.

5. The activity in which children and adults engaged on ice with skates in England in the 19^th century – and even before – was not merely a variety of “stick and ball games.” It was hockey.

6. Ice hockey does not have mysterious origins. It came very naturally to English (and other British) field hockey players who took their game to the ice and put on skates when the weather provided such ice, which occurred almost every winter.
(pp.257-259)

None of these statements are merely asserted. Voluminous evidence and analysis is provided to lead the reader clearly to each conclusion. GHM do discuss the “birthplace of hockey” claims made about various Canadian locales, from those with almost nothing to support them (Windsor, Nova Scotia) to those with much more evidence behind them (Halifax, for example). However, the real point is that “birthplace” is an improper term to use, something that other hockey authors have argued in the past (such as Bill Fitsell in How Hockey Happened). The authors acknowledge that there is evidence that early forms of hockey were played at some of these locales in Canada, but present evidence that such hockey was played across the Atlantic before being played in Canada. Ice hockey was not first invented in Canada, but it was certainly grown and developed here. Indeed, the authors admit that they cannot say hockey was invented in England either, just that the earliest recorded evidence (which has been uncovered only recently) for hockey played on ice comes from that country.

In order to reach such a conclusion, GHM rely on a definition of hockey developed by the Society for International Hockey Research (SIHR) in their 2002 Report of the Sub-Committee Looking into Claim that Windsor, Nova Scotia, is the Birthplace of Hockey. This definition consists of only six points: ice surface, two contesting teams, players on skates, use of curved sticks, small propellant (a ball or puck), objective of scoring on opposite goals. (p. 31) The authors clearly demonstrate that, using this definition of hockey, the game was played in England before it was played in Canada.They also forcefully demonstrate that based on this definition, early bandy is not merely a "hockey-like game", it is in fact hockey. If one wishes to call bandy a hockey-like game, one must call the first Montreal game in 1875 a hockey-like game as well.

This is not the first work to suggest that early forms of hockey originated in Britain, ultimately. However, the general consensus has long been that “organized” hockey had its beginnings in Montreal. This is the attitude presented in the SIHR report, which went beyond its mandate of examining the Windsor claim, and put forward Montreal as the birthplace of organized hockey. This is because an organized hockey match was played in Montreal on March 3, 1875, and it is the first recorded game of its kind. Or at least, it was the earliest known recorded match at the time the SIHR report was written.

GHM present volumes of evidence that has been uncovered in the years since the SIHR report was published. For example, the authors discuss a game of hockey that was played on December 27, 1870 in Spetchley, Worcestershire and that was reported in two newspapers. Two 10-man teams played in this match, one representing Worcester and the other, Spetchley. The latter club took the match by a score of 4-3, and we even know the identities of the goal-scorers (Tyler, Yeates and A. Everill for Worcester; Tayler, Wheeler, Dale and Francisco for Spetchley [p. 74]), which is information we are missing for the first Montreal game. As GHM point out, you may be able to develop a definition of organized hockey that would exclude this game but include the first Montreal match, however such a definition would have to be arbitrary and designed specifically to exclude the former. Such a definition would be unreasonable, since this 1870 game has far, far more in common with the 1875 Montreal game than the latter has in common with a 2014 NHL game (for example). It would therefore be silly to group the latter two together while keeping the former two separate.

In fact the authors take to task the very phrase "hockey as we know it today", since it is so often used to justify this division. Hockey before the first Montreal game was not hockey as we know it today, therefore it can be dismissed from being "true" ice hockey. But as GHM point out, the hockey played in Montreal in 1875 is also not "hockey as we know it today", so the argument has no basis. They list a number of examples of offenders in this regard, including me. So I will take this opportunity to retract my comment, with the explanation that it was more a case of lazy writing than actually making the offending argument. I intended to refer to the set of hockey games that can be shown to have evolved directly from the first Montreal game, not to suggest that the first Montreal game was indeed hockey as we know it today.

Astute readers may also notice that the definition or organized hockey that I used in On His Own Side of the Puck may appear to be just such an arbitrary definition, designed to exclude pre-Montreal hockey from consideration. To that I will say that my purpose in writing that definition is very narrow, and it is not intended for general use in the hockey origins discussion. In fact, I was never entirely happy with using the term "organized hockey" for it, but I was short on options. I was trying to describe the set of hockey games that can be shown to have evolved directly from the first Montreal game. I could have used "organized Montreal hockey", I suppose, but its later growth far beyond the borders of that city would make such a term problematic. A more precise term would be "the version of organized hockey that was first played in Montreal in 1875, and all subsequent versions of hockey that can be demonstrated to have developed directly from that version", but I think you'll agree that's more than a bit unwieldy. Ultimately my point is that nothing in GHM's work contradicts my own; they are looking at the entire spiderweb, while I was looking at only a single strand.

There was at least one other recorded game of organized hockey played in England before 1875. On February 2, 1871, the Moor Park team defeated an Oxford side by a score of 5-2. We again know the identities of the goal scorers, and Moor Park's Algernon Grosvenor (a noted sportsman in his lifetime) scored three of them (p. 72), making him the scorer of the first recorded ice hockey hat trick, contrary to what you've previously read here at Hockey Historysis (sorry, Mr. Geddes, that honour no longer belongs to you.)

These are just a few examples of the many astounding bits of evidence that GHM present to support their conclusions. As a researcher myself, the amount of information that these three historians have accumulated from a wide variety of sources is mind-boggling. The result is that there is nothing we can say about early ice hockey that has been shown to have happened in Canada that the authors cannot show happened in England even earlier, and that's the crux of the argument. If you must point at a place to be called ice hockey's birthplace, it would be England (based on the evidence currently available to us). The cradle, however, would be Canada, and that's where the game grew and matured to its heights.

If you are at all interested in the early years of hockey history, and in the development of the game, you absolutely need this book. If, however, you are more interested in holding on to cherished existing ideas about where hockey came from, then you should probably skip it (although I would encourage you to have more intellectual curiosity than that). But if you're looking for facts, this volume cannot be impugned, and it is perhaps the single most important contribution to the study of this aspect of hockey history that has ever been published. And I don't think I am exaggerating that point.

He Writes a Good Game

A Review of Stephen J. Harper's A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs & The Rise of Professional Hockey

In case you haven't heard, our sitting Prime Minister has just released a book, some eight years in the making, on the history of professional hockey in Toronto. In hockey history circles, we have been awaiting this book for some time. I had long decided not to let any political opinions I have about Mr. Harper enter into my interpretation of this book, and I will ask the same of you. Any comments left here that address his politics rather than his book will be promptly deleted. This is a blog about hockey history, full stop. So let's get on with it.

The physical product is quite nice, 286 pages of text on good-quality paper. I have the hardcover edition, with its oddly-textured dust jacket. The book features many black and white images, which are mostly only acceptable in quality, with some good ones. Several are really too low-quality to be published. There are also two inserts of glossy, colour images, and these are much easier on the eye. Especially intriguing are the illustrations of various hockey sweaters from the time period, drawn by researcher Greg Stoicoiu. These are interesting in themselves, but also serve as an homage to the colour plates in Charles Coleman's Trail of the Stanley Cup, which is a very nice touch.

Harper focuses on the growth of hockey in Toronto, from its very earliest beginnings to the rise of the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), and eventually the arrival of the professional game, focusing most of its attention on the Toronto Hockey Club, sometimes called the Toronto Professionals, which played only two seasons in 1907/08 and 1908/09. Harper does a good job of setting the hockey scene in Canada's second city from the 1890s onward, and ultimately the narrative follows the stories of the Canadian "Athletic War" (amateurs versus pros) and of Bruce Ridpath - player, coach, manager and Toronto hockey's favourite son.

Harper does not shy away from calling the "amateur ideals" of the day for what they were - simple attempts to exclude those that powerful men felt were undesirable. The exclusion of professional players from athletic competitions has really always had this goal, however it might be dressed up. For example, Harper quotes an 1873 rule of the Montreal Pedestrian Club, which was one of the country's first definitions of an amateur athlete:

One who has never competed in any open competition or for public money, or for admission money, or with professionals for a prize, public money or admission money, nor has ever, at any period of his life taught or assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises as a means of livelihood, or is a labourer or an Indian.

Translation: the working class and natives need not apply; we don't want you in our club. Most organizations are not this transparent about their goals, of course, using window dressing of sporting idealism to enforce their prejudices.

John Ross Robertson of the OHA, called a "puritanical tyrant", are the most frequent targets for Harper's jabs at this hypocritical idealism. He does acknowledge that in most aspects of his life, Robertson was a great man, a conclusion which I cannot argue with. However, when it came to hockey, he was more often than not on the wrong side of reason. His autocratic decrees may ultimately have had the opposite effect of what he intended; hastening the arrival of pro hockey to Southern Ontario rather than preventing it, as Harper points out. However, if his goal was merely a complete separation of amateur and pro, then perhaps he accomplished this.

The first third of the book or so is largely dedicated to the events leading up to the Toronto professionals and the founding of the professional league. Harper delineates how the OHA's iron- and ham-fisted attempts to stamp out professionalism in the area's hockey ultimately provided the impetus for professional teams to finally be viable in Southern Ontario. Without the masses of excellent players permanently barred from the OHA by Robertson and his chums, building a local professional team would have been much more difficult - you can't have a professional team without professional players. As such, Robertson's short-sighted, totalitarian policies may have been self-defeating. They greatly encouraged the growth of something they were intended to destroy. Casting out players like Doc Gibson and Fred Taylor only served to strengthen professional hockey, at the expense of the amateur game. And the eventual withdrawal of the OHA from Stanley Cup competition seems to be a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Much of the OHA material has been covered before, for example in Scott Young's 100 Years of Dropping the Puck, and late in the book we get into the NHA and the beginning of the NHL, covered by Morey Holzman and Joseph Neiforth's Deceptions & Doublecross. However all of the material presented is relevant to the story of the rise of professional hockey in Toronto, so it is not mere regurgitation.

Indeed, Harper does not simply repeat claims from other sources. For instance, in discussing the Fred Taylor incident that resulted in his expulsion from the OHA, Harper addresses arguments made by Eric Zweig that question the veracity of Taylor's version of the events (which was that he was ordered to play for the Toronto Marlboros, or he would not be allowed to play at all). Zweig is hockey's Mythbuster, and I consider him a friend and a colleague, and share his attitude of healthy skepticism. But in this case, I think Harper does a good job of building an argument that, while not necessarily confirming Taylor's tale, at least renders it plausible. I believe he successfully addresses Zweig's points. In so doing, Harper demonstrates that he does not mindlessly reprint claims; he considers their doubters and provides reasons to believe they are true.

He also seeks to set some often-misrepresented facts straight. For example, the Maple Leafs nickname that is sometimes applies to the first Toronto pro team is a recent invention; the team was never called that contemporarily. He also points out that what is generally called the Ontario Professional Hockey League, even by the most serious historians, was actually christened the Canadian Hockey League.

But with this focus on getting the details right, a few things niggle. Harper consistently refers to the Montreal AAA hockey team as the Montreal Wheelers. This club was frequently called the Winged Wheelers in their day, but I cannot recall any example of them being referred to simply as the Wheelers. He also mentions two players, Edgar Winchester and Angus Dusome, whose given names are incorrect. According to the Society for International Hockey Research player database (and confirmed by the Canadian Census data of 1901 and 1911), these men are Elgin and Andrew respectively. Harper refers to the "Manitoba Hockey Association", which was properly the Manitoba and Northwest Hockey Association at the time. Also he notes that in the 1903/04 season, the Canadian Amateur Hockey League, the highest hockey league in the world, had only five member clubs. This is not stricetly true; the CAHL had five clubs that played at the senior level, but also Westmount, Montcalm and Trois-Rivieres at the intermediate level and six others at the junior level. The book strives for accuracy, and generally achieves it. These small, inconsequential errors are the only blips I noticed in my reading.

A Great Game strikes a good balance in its style, never straying into mere opinion on one side, or a simple chronicle of events on the other. Even in the middle third of the book, which deals with the brief life of the first pro Toronto team in chronological order, it does so as a narrative, describing first the team's meteoric rise from a twinkle in manager Alex Miln's eye to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender in a single season, and their equally quick fall from grace and ultimate demise. And this club's tale is framed as a reflection of the Canadian pro hockey boom of the time - too much, too fast. Harper provides us with the information to reach these conclusions ourselves, without him having to hand them to us on a platter, a style which I appreciate.

Overall, I am very impressed by this book, both for its research and its writing. It doesn't cover a great deal of new ground, but it does a very good job of sythesizing a variety of information into a cogent tale of hockey in Hogtown. I absolutely recommend it for anyone interested in this period of hockey history.

Review of "1913" by Craig Bowlsby

Craig Bowlsby has recently published a brief book entitled 1913: The Year They Invented the Future of Hockey, through Knights of Winter Publishing. It's been 100 years since the Patrick brothers introduced real forward passing to hockey, and this book discusses the introduction of this radical rule. Mr. Bowlsby sent me an unsolicited review copy of this book, and as it is a worthwhile topic and certainly related to the subject matter of this blog, I decided to write a review.

You may know Bowlsby's name from his two previous works on hockey history The Knights of Winter: The History of British Columbia Hockey from 1895 to 1911, and the very well-received Empire of Ice: The Rise and Fall of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, 1911-1926. I really should review both of these books here, they're both important contributions to the study of the game's history and are both well worth having, if you're into hockey history the way I am. (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that description fits you. If it does, you have my condolences).

This new book is a departure from these previous works, which are chronicles covering many years of hockey action. 1913 instead only discusses the Patrick brothers' decision to introduce a form of forward passing to their Pacific Coast Hockey Association, and how this rule change affected the play of Stanley Cup championships in 1914 and 1915, and ultimately changed the face of the game.

It's a small volume as I said, in octavo format (8" by 6") and only 56 pages, including eight pages of relevant photos. Given the very tight focus of the subject matter, the limited size is not a problem by itself. That being said, I would have liked to have seen more words devoted to supporting some of the claims that Bowlsby makes. He often makes reference to the motivations and reactions of specific individuals involved in these events, and provides nothing solid to demonstrate this.

For example, on page 17 Bowlsby suggests that Lester Patrick, after having seen it in play for the first time, now "hated" and "was afraid of" the new offside rule. I would prefer to have something other than Bowlsby's assertion that this characterization is accurate. There are several other examples of this, where the author purports to understand how a person was thinking, without providing justification for this. If he had some supporting materials for this, he should have included references to them.

Bowlsby sometimes goes in for grand overstatements as well. For example, when discussing how the rule change was seen by men of Victorian and Edwardian sensibilities, he claims that:

In a very real sense, the new forward pass in hockey threatened people's world view. It threatened a Canadian's view of morality, religion, and science... (Bowlsby p. 11)

If he had said a metaphorical sense, I might accept that statement. But if it's meant in a real sense, I'm forced to dismiss it.

I also have to take issue with the depiction of the Eastern league as being resistant to change, and the Patricks as the great visionaries who see where the game must go. Frank and Lester Patrick were undeniably important men in the game, and introduced many changes that were seen as positive to its development. However, as mentioned in the book, when Eastern and Western teams met on the ice, the rules used alternated between the two. Specifically, when the Eastern rules were used, one less man per team was on the ice. The NHA dropped the rover position before 1913, and the Patricks stood firm against this change into the 1920s. They did not have a stranglehold on innovation.

Recommendation

Bowlsby is undeniably correct in his thesis that the introduction of forward passing into the game ultimately sped up hockey. Certainly the game we know and love today would look quit different had this rule been implemented. Despite its shortcomings, this book is definitely worth reading, and reasonably priced at $7.95 (Canada or US). The book does present both sides of the Patricks, their creativity and innovation on one side, and their stubbornness and arrogance on the other. Bowlsby's discussion of how the rule change was seen at the time, what it was predicted to do to the game, and what it finally did do to the game, is quite fascinating. Many thought it would ruin the game, that it would reduce it to a farce, that it would in fact slow down the game. Fortunately for us, these dire predictions proved to be untrue. If you're looking for a quick read, a concise work on a hockey history subject, this book is for you. Don't focus just on the issues I have outlined here, the positives still far outweigh the negatives.

A Backward Game?

In the end notes, Bowlsby relates a portion of an email discussion he had with Bill Fitsell, founding member and past president of SIHR, subsequent to the publication of proof copies of the book, which I received as well. The discussion was with regard to Bowlsby's characterization of early hockey as a "backward" game, in the sense that the puck was generally moving backward, because of the offside rules. Fitsell's argument was that a more fair term would be "lateral and back-passing", since lateral passes were common, not simply back-passes. Bowslby disagrees, stating that lateral passes would have been quite rare (he guesses less than 10% of all passes), since in practice players could not really advance in a line abreast; the puck-carrier would generally be at least a half-step ahead to avoid the other players inadvertently going offside.

So who's right? Is Bowlsby's assertion that nearly all passes were backward correct, or is Fitsell's claim that lateral passes were as common as back-passes accurate? Well, in my opinion, they're both wrong.

Early hockey rules are often described as not allowing forward passes, which would seem to suggest that the puck cannot move forward on a pass. However, in reality the rules only referred to players remaining on their own side of their puck. For example, the offside rule in the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), which is reproduced here, read as follows:

When a player hits a puck, anyone of the same side who at such moment of hitting is nearer the opponent's goal line is out of play and may not touch the puck himself, or in any way prevent any other player from doing so until the puck has been played. A player must always be on his own side of the puck.

Note that this rule refers to the positioning of players at the time the puck is struck. So when a player passes the puck, his teammates are onside so long as they were behind the puck when the pass was made. The position of the pass recipient, when he receives the puck, is irrelevant. The implications of this should be obvious. But let us refer to an authority on the subject: Hall-of-Famer Art Farrell, one of the great Montreal Shamrocks forwards from the turn of the century. In his book Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game (published 1899), Farrell describes the principles of sound combination (ie, passing) play. To wit:

A scientific player rushing down the ice with a partner will give the puck to the latter, not in a direct line with him, unless they are very close together, but to a point somewhat in advance, so that he will have to skate up to get it. The advantage in this style of passing is that the man who is to receive the rubber will not have to wait for it, but may skate on at the same rate of speed at which he was going before the puck was crossed, and proceed in his course without loss of time. (Farrell p. 67, emphasis added)

When two "wing" men play combination together, in an attack, the puck should scarcely ever be passed directly to each other, but should be aimed at the cushioned side of the rink, some distance in advance of the man, so that he may secure it on the rebound. (Farrell p. 68, emphasis added)

These passages make it clear that ideally, the puck has a forward trajectory when passed. The "forward" in "no forward passing" refers to the starting position of the player to be receiving the puck, not to the movement of the puck itself. According to Art Farrell, star hockey player c.1900, nearly all passes have the puck moving forward, not laterally (much less backward). Both Bowlsby and Fitsell appear to be mistaken in their impressions of hockey before 1913. It was not a backward game, it was a game focused on keeping the action moving forward at the greatest speed possible.