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The birthplace of hockey?

Broadcast Date: Feb. 24, 2001

Howard Dill is hockey mad. But it's not the photos, pucks and pennants that bring skate-toting pilgrims to Dill's Windsor, N.S., farm. It's the ice out back. Long Pond, many believe, is where hockey was born 200 years ago when students put the Irish game of "hurley" on ice. But, as we see in this CBC Television clip, some question if it really is the pond. "There's only one Long Pond," says a defiant Dill.

The birthplace of hockey?

• Since this clip aired, debate has raged over where exactly hockey was born. Books have been published making the case for competing sites. Old novels, letters, paintings and even wooden pucks have been held up as evidence. The claim supporting Howard Dill's pond, or another in Windsor, N.S., competes with claims for sites including Dartmouth, N.S.; Montreal; Kingston, Ont.; Déline, N.W.T.; and New York State.

• Fuelling the debate is confusion over what exactly constitutes hockey. As far back as the 1500s, European ball-and-stick games were tried on ice, including hurley (also called hurly and hurling, an Irish game sometimes compared to lacrosse), cricket and shinty.

• The Society for International Hockey Research, formed in 1991, defines hockey as "a game played on an ice rink in which two opposing teams of skaters, using curved sticks, try to drive a small disc, ball or block into or through the opposite goals."

• The Windsor, N.S., claim is based on a novel, The Attaché, or, Sam Slick in England, by Windsor-born Thomas Chandler Haliburton. A character describes boys playing "hurly on the long pond on the ice," apparently voicing the author's early 1800s recollections of a hockey-like game played by students of King's College, now called the University of King's College.

• The Society for International Hockey Research, made up of hockey historians, issued a 2002 report on hockey's origins that cast doubt on Windsor's claim. It said the literary passage is "not a satisfactory indication," that the activity described was hockey. The society declined to offer an opinion on the birthplace of hockey. It noted, however, that the first eyewitness account of an organized game was at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink on March 3, 1875.

• In February 2004, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia trumpeted the find of an 1867 Henry Buckton Laurence lithograph depicting 10 skaters with curved sticks playing on ice in Dartmouth. The next month, however, researchers pointed to a painting made 32 years earlier by folk artist John Toole showing a similar scene with four players in the U.S. state of Virginia.

• Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer, wrote that his crew exercised by playing "hockey" on ice in Northwest Territories in 1825. And, in 1843, a British army officer wrote in his diary that he had learned to skate and play hockey on ice in Kingston in what is now Ontario. Around the same time, people in Halifax and Dartmouth were playing a game on skates called "wicket" or "ricket."

• In early forms of hockey, players were not allowed to pass the puck forward. The offside rule and the forerunner of the face-off, called a "bully," were adapted from rugby.

• As mentioned in the clip, Howard Dill is famous for more than his disputed claim to own the birthplace of hockey. He is also a grower of giant pumpkins, with four world titles under his belt. Although no longer competing, he sells Dill's Atlantic Giant seeds that have grown champion pumpkins for others.

The birthplace of hockey?

Medium: Television

Program: Saturday Report

Broadcast Date: Feb. 24, 2001

Guest(s): Howard Dill, Garth Vaughan

Host: Suhana Meharchand
Reporter: Phonse Jessome

Duration: 2:51

Last updated:
May 5, 2008