Vive le Hockey!
The winter season in Canada means ice hockey season! Hockey has been the nation’s official national winter game since 1994 but has been quasi-synonymous with Canadian sport for much longer. From the very young to older adults, first-time players to internationally acclaimed professionals, and the West Coast to the Maritimes, Canadians of all stripes play hockey in backyard rinks, small towns, and large cities. Surveys indicate that well over one million adults and nearly one-quarter of all children participate in hockey across Canada and significantly more Canadians follow hockey competitions at all levels, including several professional men’s teams in the National Hockey League (NHL) and professional women’s teams in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), both of which include Canadian and American hockey clubs.
Women’s hockey game, 1888-1893, including Lady Isobel Stanley in white. Image credit: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Humans from centuries ago have left evidence of stick-and-ball games all around the world. In northern regions, such games did not stop when winter weather set in, possibly serving as the precursor to ice hockey. The sport in Canada was likely influenced by Native American games resembling lacrosse and alternative forms of hockey played by British soldiers and settlers who arrived in Canada in the 19th century. Organized hockey games began in Montreal in the late 1800s and spread over the border into the northeastern United States. Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada during the reign of Queen Victoria, was immediately enamored of ice hockey once he witnessed games in Montreal. He encouraged all his children, including daughter Isobel, to play ice hockey and in 1892, donated a silver bowl to serve as an award to the best amateur ice hockey team in Canada as determined by challenge games. The Stanley Cup continues to be the symbol of competitive excellence in North American hockey to this day.
Various attempts to form hockey teams, leagues, and tournaments arose in both Canada and the United States throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, blurring the lines between amateurs and professionals and often devolving into conflicts over rules, players, and members. In 1909, an Ontario-based businessman named Ambrose O’Brien founded the National Hockey Association (NHA) along with player-coach Jimmy Gardner of the Montreal Wanderers hockey team, repeat winners of the Stanley Cup. In addition to three teams owned and operated by the O’Brien family and the Wanderers, the founders decided that the O’Briens would support the formation of a Francophone hockey team to complete the initial lineup of NHA hockey clubs. The intent was to foster interest and rivalries and to eventually place the team in Francophone hands. Today, the Montreal Canadiens are the only surviving team of the NHA as well the most successful of all NHL teams, having won 24 Stanley Cup championships.
1907 Stanley Cup winners, Montreal Wanderers hockey players and team officials. Image credit: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
During the 1910s, turmoil continued among rivalry hockey associations, owners, and players as teams recruited players who realized that the business end of hockey was leading to higher pay in select situations. The newly formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) set up hockey arenas and clubs in British Columbia and enticed NHA players westward. The NHA and PCHA eventually signed an agreement in 1913 that created a commissioner position, laid out territories and rules for signing players, and established an annual competition to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup. However, the combination of the outbreak of World War I and actions of a rogue owner of the Toronto Shamrocks, Eddie Livingstone, led to a scarcity of high-level players and the demise of the NHA in 1917. Meanwhile, women’s hockey teams and games were organized at the college level and under the auspices of groups such as the Eastern Ladies Hockey League in Montreal and Ladies Ontario Hockey Association in Ontario.
Shortly thereafter, the NHL replaced the NHA in 1917 by starting operations with the Toronto Arenas, Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, and Ottawa Senators and excluding Livingstone’s Shamrocks. Although the Wanderers suspended hockey operations after losing its arena in a fire the following year, the other three NHL teams were eligible to compete for the Stanley Cup against the Western hockey clubs until 1924, when the successor to the PCHA folded. The NHL expanded by adding six teams located in the United States and welcoming the Montreal Maroons, which replaced the Wanderers. Two of the famed Original Six NHL teams date from this era – the Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs (successor to the Arenas).
Canadian hockey teams dominated the international stage for the next thirty years or so, winning the men’s gold medal at all but one Winter Olympic Games from Antwerp in 1920 through the Oslo Games in 1952. Once state-sponsored Soviet teams began to best Canadian and other national amateur teams at subsequent Olympic Games, a great deal of discussion ensued within Hockey Canada, the country’s governing entity of ice hockey, concerning Canada’s training, coaching, selection, and participation approaches to international hockey. The debate over amateur versus professional status caused Hockey Canada to refrain from sending a hockey team to the 1972 and 1976 Winter Olympic Games, but Canada recaptured the gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, on home turf in 2010 in Vancouver, and again in Sochi in 2014.
Game between the USA and Canada hockey teams at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Image credit: Rosie Perera, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Canadian women’s hockey team has displayed its own dominance, winning gold five times and silver twice in the seven Olympic women’s hockey tournaments held since debuting in Nagano in 1998. These results have been unsurprising given the track record of Canadian women’s teams in the Women’s World Championship beginning with an overall victory in 1987 in Toronto. Out of 23 contests, Canada has appeared in 22 finals and won 13 championship titles, more than any other nation. Canada has played an outsized role off the ice in promoting the women’s game, led by Fran Rider, whose lifelong dedication to hockey spanned numerous roles within Canada as well as serving as a persistent and effective advocate for women’s ice hockey at the international level. She was the first woman to receive the Hockey Canada Order of Merit, was inducted into the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) Hall of Fame, and currently serves as the CEO of the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association.
It is no wonder that Canada’s national and professional ice hockey teams have garnered such a high degree of acclaim. Hockey is a significant part of Canadian culture that embodies Canadian values of effort, teamwork, and perseverance as well as providing a common bond throughout society. Every winter, backyard, public, and privately-owned rinks provide opportunities for players to convene for a game or two, while higher level hockey games attract even more fans to arenas, public gatherings, and within the privacy of their own homes or those of fellow enthusiasts, helping fuel the Canadian economy.
Jeu de français
Ice hockey is one of many sports that foster community while promoting healthy habits. In the sports crossword below, translate the English language clues into their French counterparts. Several answers are the same, or quite close to each other, in both languages.
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