Before There was an NHL: The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes

One of the Whitest professional team sports in America is, without a doubt, hockey. There are so few minorities playing in the National Hockey League that when one sees a person of color on the ice, it is truly unusual. But there is an interesting history behind the sport of professional ice hockey. It was NOT always so lilly white. As a matter of fact, Blacks were in the forefront of starting professional hockey in North America. And it all began in Canada.

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes was formed in 1895 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Organized by Black Baptists and Black intellectuals, the league was designed as a way to attract young Black men to Sunday worship with the promise of a recreational hockey match between rival churches following religious services. Later, with the influence of the Black Nationalism Movement of the period — 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.

Comprised of the sons and the grandsons of runaway American slaves, the league helped pioneer the sport of ice hockey, changing this winter game from the primitive “gentleman’s past-time” of the Nineteenth Century to the to the modern fast-moving game of today. In an era when many believed Blacks could not endure cold, possessed ankles too weak to effectively skate, and lacked the intelligence for organized sport, these men defied the established myths.

With as many as a dozen teams, over 400 African Canadian players from across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island participated in competition.[13] The Coloured Hockey League is credited by some as being the first league to allow the goaltender to leave his feet to cover a puck in 1900, a practice not permitted elsewhere until the formation of the National Hockey League in 1917 (22 years after the formation of the Colored Hockey League). In their book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925, historians George and Darril Fosty state that the first player to use the slapshot (A slapshot in ice hockey is the hardest shot one can perform) was Eddie Martin, and African Canadian, of the Halifax Eureka in 1906. (source: Wikipedia)

The Colored Hockey League (CHL) was a complex sport organization that was lead by Baptist ministers and church laymen who were the sons and grandsons of runaway slaves. It transformed the game from a primitive, gentle manner that white leagues played, into a fast-paced competition. By the turn of the century, The CHL had expanded from a humble three-team league in 1895, onto a league that involved newly formed regional teams.

The genesis of the Coloured Hockey League (CHL) came from the actions of four men: Pastor James Borden of Dartmouth Church; James A.R. Kinney, a Cornwallis Street Church layman and later the first black graduate of the Maritime Business College of Canada; James Robinson Johnston, first black graduate of the Dartmouth University law program; and Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian law student at Dalhousie University and later the founder of the first Pan-African Conference (1900).

The roots of organized Black hockey are found in baseball. By the mid-1880s, all-Black baseball clubs were established throughout Nova Scotia as well as other parts of eastern Canada. Clubs competed as so-called “barn-storming” teams touring the Canadian countryside. Clubs became year-round semiprofessional sports organizations with many of their members becoming two-sport athletes. The Africville Sea-Sides, Truro Victorias, Charlottetown West End Rangers, Amherst Royals and Hammond Plains Moss Backs are some examples of Black teams that played two sports all year round (Baseball and Hockey).

The league was organized as a challenge cup system, with the previous year’s winner retaining the title of champion, while contending teams vied to earn the right to compete for the title. It was a structure akin to that of a boxing championship. Due to overt racism, teams were only permitted arena access after the white leagues were finished with their seasons. As a result, official league games were generally conducted between late January and early March, at which point the natural arena ice would become too poor to conduct matches. Due to a limited eight-week playing window, championships included only the select three or four top regional teams participating in a half dozen games each in order to determine top honours.

 Games were played with no official rules other than the Bible. The result was, ironically and unintentionally, a more physical and innovative style of hockey. By all accounts, championship matches were on par with best of the white teams. Fast-moving and robust, innovations such as a goaltender dropping to his knees to stop a puck and an early form of the slapshot were pioneered decades prior to white professional hockey league play — in which both such actions were prohibited. Due to the overt racism in Canada, coded words and oral history derived from the experiences of American slavery and the Underground Railroad and the principles and teachings of American Black leader Booker T. Washington (the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and a believer in the concept of racial equality through racial separation) were also incorporated into the unofficial rules of the games.

The meteoric rise of the CHL reached its zenith between 1900-05, when games often out-drew those of white counterparts. Attendance reached as high as 1,200 spectators for the Inter-Provincial Maritime Championship between the CHL champion Africville Sea-Sides and the Charlottetown West End Rangers in Halifax. Ironically, because of the success of the league, and white hatred/ racism/ jealousy, the following year, in 1906, was the beginning of the league’s quick decline. Due to a legal battle over expanded rail service to the port of Halifax in the first five years of the 20th century, many hockey players and their families in Africville, the Black community in north-end Halifax, were at odds with provincial and city officials over a proposed railroad annexation of their land. Some of the white rink owners refused to rent out their hockey rinks to the league or to any Black teams. Other rink owners agreed to only do so in late March when the natural ice surface was already beginning to melt. Local newspaper coverage of the league also disappeared virtually overnight, with only one article penned between 1905-06. With a poor playing surface slowing the game and no means of promotion, the league was forced to move back onto the local ponds, effectively killing the CHL as an economic and social Black movement. The last recorded newspaper account of the league during this era appeared in 1911. The league tried to continue in one form or another, but by 1930, with all the original church and intellectual organizers were by this time deceased, the league disappeared from history.

Twenty-five years before the Negro Baseball Leagues in the United States, and twenty-two years before the birth of the National Hockey League, the Colored Hockey League would emerge as a premier force in Canadian hockey and supply the resilience necessary to preserve a unique culture which exists to this day. Unfortunately, their contributions were conveniently ignored, or simply stolen, as White teams and hockey officials, influenced by the Black league, copied elements of the Black style or sought to take self-credit for Black hockey innovations.

SOURCES:

  1. The Canadian Encyclopedia

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/coloured-hockey-league

  • Amazon summary of the book: Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored League of the Maritimes 1895-1925

Further Reading

  • George and Darril Fosty, Tribes: An International Hockey History (2013);  George and Darril Fosty, Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925 (2004);  Colin Howell, Northern Sandlots: A Social History of Maritime Baseball (1995);  William Humber, Diamonds of the North: A Concise History of Baseball In Canada (1995); Jim Hornby, Black Islanders (1991).

Notes: It is interesting to note that the first white professional hockey league in North America did not form until 1902.

Race and Ethnicity in the National Hockey League: The NHL was established in 1917, but did not have its first Black CANADIAN play in it until 1958 (On January 18, 1958, Willie O’Ree became the first Black Canadian to play in the NHL). Playing with the Boston Bruins, he was also the first NHL player of African-descent.[12]) . Ironically, the NHL’s first non-white player was Chinese American, who played in 1948, and the first indigenous player played in the NHL in 1953. The first AFRICAN AMERICAN to play in the NHL was Val James was the first African American player to play in the NHL. James signed his contract with the Buffalo Sabres in 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NHL