November 5th 1859 – In Nova Scotia the time for fun is during the months of December, January and February. The lakes are then frozen and the ground generally covered with snow, although but seldom is there snow enough before Christmas to make sleighing. Skating is the favorite pastime during December and, indeed, all through the winter, if – as is sometimes the case – there is not a great deal of snow.
There are some excellent skaters in the Provinces, particularly in Halifax. I have seen young men who could cut their name in German text, or write the Lord’s prayer with skates on the ice easier than most skaters could cut the “outside edge.” I don’t like to be uncharitable, but I have known some skaters who, I think, would not be able to do it without a written or printed copy before their eyes. Throwing a somersault on skates is almost an impossibility, yet I once saw it done successfully.
Fancy skating is not so much practiced in Nova Scotia now as formerly; more attention is paid to games on the ice. Ricket is the favorite pastime, and is played thus. Two rickets are formed at about the same distance, one from the other, that cricketers place their wickets. If there are many players, the rickets are further apart. A ricket consists of two stones – about as large as the cobble stones with which some of our streets have been lately paved – placed about three or four feet apart and frozen to the ice. Sides are then formed by two persons – one opposed to the other – tossing or drawing lots for first choice of partners. The one who obtains the first choice selects one from the crowd, the other party then chooses another, and so on alternately, until a sufficient number is obtained on each side. Any number can play the game, and, generally, the “more the merrier.” Each ricketer is provided with a hurley (or hockey, as it is termed here,) and all being ready, a ball is thrown in the air, which is the signal to commence the play, previous to which, however, a ricket is chosen by each side and placed in charge of a man whose duty it is to prevent the ball from passing through. The game may be 10, 15 or 20, or any number agreed upon, the side counting the number first being winners. The counting consists in putting the ball through your adversary’s ricket, each time counting one. From the moment the ball touches the ice, at the commencement of the game, it must not be taken in the hand until the conclusion, but must be carried or struck about ice with the hurlies. A good player – and to be a good player he must be a good skater – will take the ball at the point of his hurley and carry it around the pond and through the crowd which surrounds him trying to take it from him, until he works it near his opponent’s ricket, and “then comes the tug of war,” both sides striving for the mastery. Whenever the ball is put through the ricket the shout “game ho!” resounds from shore to shore and dies away in hundreds of echoes through the hills. Ricket is the most exciting game that is played on the ice.
“It might be well if some of our agile skaters would introduce this game. It would be a fine addition to our winter sports, and give a new zest to the delightful exercise of skating. We have sent down for a set of hurleys preparatory to its introduction. -Eds. Gazette
NOTE – It is important to know that the Boston reporter wrote this about four years before the introduction of Dartmouth’s revolutionary Acme skate. His references to “carrying” the ball prove that he describing Irish hurling, as it would be played on ice. This makes very good sense. Halifax-Dartmouth was a multi-ethnic community whose citizens included a strong Irish presence by this time.
The Boston reporter’s reference to “rickets” may be that term’s last. It may also be the last Nova Scotia reference to ice hurling in general. The Boston reporter’s “most exciting game” definitely disappeared at a point. We suggest that it was replaced by a different Nova Scotia game that lives on today.
In 1863, Halifax ice hockey players were gifted with superior footwear to go along with their superior Kjipuktuk Mi’kmaq sticks. We do hear about 1860s Halifax ice hockey from Byron Weston and Joe Cope. Weston described a game where pucks were kept on the ice as a rule. The Mi’kmaq sticks impose this game in practical terms, with their “flat thin blades.” These considerations prove that Weston’s and Cope’s Halifax “ice hockey’ was a different game than rickets.
A final thought, writing in 2024… If you’ve ever read one of those lists of Byron Weston’s Halifax rules, chances are high that you’ve read a flawed summary. The 1943 newspaper article in which his testimony appears is one of the most important evidentiary sources we have about the early game. That’s because it describes, during an era when others played “hockey” in North America and Europe, the singular version of “hockey” that was transferred to Montreal by Halifax’s James Creighton in 1872–73.
Look for it in the Archives section at hockey-stars.ca .
The Four Stars of Early Ice Hockey 