| Sport | Ice hockey |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1894 |
| Founder | |
| Ceased | c. 1911 and 1930 |
| Country | Canada |
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL) was an all-black ice hockey league founded in Nova Scotia in 1894, [1] which featured teams from across Canada's Maritime Provinces. [2] [3] The league operated for several decades lasting until 1930. [4] [5] [6] [7]
The league was founded in 1895 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada by a group of four black Baptist leaders and black intellectuals: Pastor James Borden of Dartmouth Church, James A.R Kinney, lawyer and community leader James Robinson Johnston, and lawyer and Pan-African organizer Henry Sylvester Williams. [8] The league was constructed to attract young black men to Sunday worship with the promise of a hockey game between rival churches after the services. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, "with the influence of the Black Nationalism Movement—and with rising interest in the sport of hockey—the league came to be seen as a potential driving force for the equality of Black Canadians." [9]
Among the teams in the league were the Halifax Eurekas, based in Halifax, and the Amherst Royals, based in Amherst. [9] At its zenith, the league had teams in seven communities in Nova Scotia and one in Prince Edward Island, the West End Rangers from The Bog in Charlottetown. [9]
With as many as a dozen teams, over 400 Black Canadian players from across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island participated in competition. [10] The Colored Hockey League is credited by some[ who? ] as being the first league to allow the goaltender to leave his feet to cover a puck in 1900. This practice was not permitted elsewhere until the formation of the National Hockey League in 1917. It is also claimed that the first player to use the slapshot was Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eureka in 1906. [11] [12]
In January 2020, Canada Post issued a postage stamp featuring the 1906 champion Halifax Eurekas to commemorate the history of black hockey players in Canada. [9] [13]
The history of the league is profiled in Darril Fosty and George Fosty's 2004 non-fiction book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925, 2014 book Tribes: An International Hockey History, which expands on their previous work, and in Hubert Davis's 2022 documentary film Black Ice . [14]
The history of the league, including its destruction and the destruction of its black community in Africville by the Halifax government trying to expand their railway, is also visited in Canadaland's Hockey #2 — "The Birth of Black Hockey" [15]
Truro is a town in central Nova Scotia, Canada. Truro is the shire town of Colchester County and is located on the south side of the Salmon River floodplain, close to the river's mouth at the eastern end of Cobequid Bay.
Amherst is a town in northwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, located at the northeast end of the Cumberland Basin, an arm of the Bay of Fundy, and 22 km (14 mi) south of the Northumberland Strait. The town sits on a height of land at the eastern boundary of the Isthmus of Chignecto and Tantramar Marshes, 3 km (1.9 mi) east of the interprovincial border with New Brunswick and 65 km (40 mi) southeast of the city of Moncton. It is 60 km (37 mi) southwest of the New Brunswick abutment of the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island at Cape Jourimain.
A slapshot is a powerful shot in ice hockey. Its advantage is a high-speed shot that can be taken from a long distance; the disadvantage is the long time to set it up as well as its low accuracy.
Halifax is the capital and most populous municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the most populous municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of 2023, it is estimated that the population of the Halifax CMA was 518,711, with 348,634 people in its urban area. The regional municipality consists of four former municipalities that were amalgamated in 1996: Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and Halifax County.
The Canadian Elite Hockey League (CEHL) was a semi-professional hockey league that played one season in 2005–2006. The CEHL was founded by Harold MacKay, a prominent member of the local hockey community. He previously brought the expansion Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL to Nova Scotia in 1994 and was later responsible for moving the Granby Predateurs franchise to Cape Breton where they became the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles.
Woodlawn High School is a Canadian public school, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It is operated by the Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) and is an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school, offering the Diploma program. It also offers the O2 program.
The Maritime Junior Hockey League (MHL) is a Junior A ice hockey league under Hockey Canada, a part of the Canadian Junior Hockey League (CJHL). It consists of six teams from New Brunswick, which make up the EastLink North Division, five teams from Nova Scotia, and one team from Prince Edward Island, which make up the Eastlink South Division. The winner of the MHL playoffs competes for the Centennial Cup against the winners of the 8 other tier 2 junior A leagues across Canada. Prior to the pandemic the MHL champions participated in the Fred Page Cup. This tournament involved the Bogart Cup champions from the Central Canada Hockey League (Ontario), the Kent Cup champions from the MHL (Maritimes) and the winner of La Coupe Napa of the Quebec Junior Hockey League (Quebec) as well as a predetermined host. The winner moved on to compete for the Canadian National Junior A Championship. However with the departure of the British Columbia Hockey League from affiliation with the CJHL in March 2021 as well as Hockey Canada in June 2023, no Centennial Cup qualifying tournaments such as the Kent Cup have been played since 2022, and instead all the league champions directly advance to the Centennial Cup.
Saint Mary's University (SMU) is a public university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The school is best known for having nationally leading programs in business and chemistry. The campus is situated in Halifax's South End and covers approximately 32 hectares.
The Nova Scotia Regional Junior Hockey League is a Junior "C" ice hockey league in Nova Scotia, Canada, sanctioned by Hockey Canada. League playoff winners compete in the Maritime-Hockey North Junior C Championships.
The Yarmouth Mariners are a Junior "A" team based in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. They play in the Maritime Junior Hockey League. All home games are played out of the 1,501 seat Mariners Centre. The season usually runs from mid-September to early March every year.
Black Nova Scotians are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. The first recorded free African person in Nova Scotia, Mathieu da Costa, a Mikmaq interpreter, was recorded among the founders of Port Royal in 1604. West Africans escaped slavery by coming to Nova Scotia in early British and French Colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many came as enslaved people, primarily from the French West Indies to Nova Scotia during the founding of Louisbourg. The second major migration of people to Nova Scotia happened following the American Revolution, when the British evacuated thousands of slaves who had fled to their lines during the war. They were given freedom by the Crown if they joined British lines, and some 3,000 African Americans were resettled in Nova Scotia after the war, where they were known as Black Loyalists. There was also the forced migration of the Jamaican Maroons in 1796, although the British supported the desire of a third of the Loyalists and nearly all of the Maroons to establish Freetown in Sierra Leone four years later, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.
Malcolm Sterling Davis is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. Davis played for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League and its American Hockey League farm team, the Rochester Americans, and later with TPS Turku in Finland.
The Nova Scotia Clippers were a professional soccer team based in the original Canadian Soccer League. They were based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but played their matches in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia at Beazley Field. They played only a single season in 1991.
The Valley Wildcats are a Canadian junior ice hockey franchise from the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia. The team is a member of the Maritime Junior Hockey League and plays in the EastLink Division. They play their home games in the Kings Mutual Century Centre in Berwick, Nova Scotia.
The history of black players in North American ice hockey has roots dating back to the late 19th century. The first black ice hockey star was Herb Carnegie during the Great Depression. Willie O'Ree broke the NHL's color barrier with the Boston Bruins in 1958.
Darril Wayne Fosty is a Canadian-born Pulitzer-nominated journalist, author, and documentarian.
Vincent Churchill "Manny" McIntyre was a Canadian professional athlete who played both ice hockey and baseball. He is an inductee of the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Bog is a former neighbourhood in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The community was settled in the early 19th century by Black people who were enslaved, who had been brought to the colony by their Loyalist enslavers after the American Revolutionary War. The neighbourhood was bounded by Euston, Pownal, Richmond, and West streets, and by Government Pond. The neighbourhood was demolished for a redevelopment project in the early 20th century.
The Maritime Amateur Hockey Association (MAHA) was a governing body for amateur ice hockey in the Maritimes of Canada. It was a branch member of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association from 1928 to 1974, with its jurisdiction including the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The MAHA operated leagues for senior ice hockey which competed for the Allan Cup, and leagues for junior ice hockey which competed for the Memorial Cup. The New Brunswick Amateur Hockey Association separated from the MAHA in 1968, and the MAHA ceased to exist after the Nova Scotia Hockey Association and Prince Edward Island Hockey Association were established in 1974.
Black Ice is a 2022 Canadian documentary film, directed by Hubert Davis and produced by Vinay Virmani. Based in part on Darril Fosty and George Fosty's 2004 non-fiction book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925, the film presents a history of the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes of the early 20th century, and the lingering history of anti-black racism in the sport of ice hockey.
