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Early matches of hockey were adaptations from the rules of the English game of field hockey. Play started and was renewed after each game, with a “Bully in the centre of the ground”. In the bully, the opposing centres banged their sticks together before trying to gain possession of the “ball”, or puck, positioned between…

It was agreed!  After travelling to Montreal in January of 1883 to witness the game, notable Ottawa sportsmen Jack Kerr and Halder Kirby would start a hockey club in Ottawa. And they did. On March 6 of that year, both of Ottawa’s dailies, the Citizen and the Free Press, reported that the recently-organized Ottawa Hockey…

For several years after its first public demonstration in 1875, hockey remained a curiosity, creating some puzzled attention in Montreal newspapers but none whatsoever in Ottawa papers. If anyone in the capital had even heard of the new sport, it was through word of mouth from observers who had happened upon occasional contests at Montreal…