Sport Trivia

European immigrants brought various versions of hockey-like games to North America. Some examples are the Scottish sport of shinty, the closely-related Irish sport of hurling and versions of field hockey played in England. Where necessary these seem to have been adapted for icy conditions; for example, a colonial Williamsburg newspaper records hockey being played in a snow storm in Virginia. Both English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians played hockey on frozen rivers, lakes, and ponds using cheese cutters strapped to their boots, and early paintings show hockey being played in Nova Scotia. Author Thomas Chandler Haliburton wrote of boys from King's College School in Windsor, Nova Scotia, playing "hurley on the ice" when he was a student there in the years around 1800. To this day, "Shinny" (derived from Shinty) is a popular Canadian term for an informal type of hockey, either on ice or as street hockey.