Several hockey historians are calling offsides on proposed legislation from the Nova Scotia government that would declare Windsor the birthplace of the game.

Speaking to the legislature’s public bills committee on Monday, Cheryl Maloney said Bill 187, the Birthplace of Hockey Act, makes some glaring omissions, most notably when it comes to the contribution her people made to the game’s origins.

“Whatever evolution of this game was, the Mi’kmaq are the common denominator,” she told MLAs.

Maloney, a Mi’kmaw matriarch who worked on a documentary about the subject with her sister April, said there are oral histories in her culture making reference to a hockey-like game well before the Windsor claim of 1810.

“We went back to 1749 where it was found that the Mi’kmaq were playing a game on ice with the roots of trees in Tufts Cove, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia,” she told the committee.

Bill reads like ChatGPT

There are examples that even predate that and connect to parts of the province other than Windsor, said Maloney.

David Jones, a Dartmouth resident who has researched hockey history since he was a boy, said the bill reads like it was “written with ChatGPT,” referring to the artificial intelligence chatbot. Jones’s father, Martin, wrote the book Hockey’s Home: Halifax-Dartmouth: the Origin of Canada’s Game.

“This wasn’t done the right way. I think it was done in a very divisive way and a way that just doesn’t speak to what we can truly do.”

Jones said there is “inconsistency after inconsistency” in the bill easily disproved using documented evidence. The Windsor claim is rooted in a work of fiction by Thomas Chandler Haliburton that refers to a game involving a ball and stick called hurley, and includes no details about using skates, hockey sticks or teams, he said.

The lack of any mention in the bill about Mi’kmaw contributions to the game — including artisans’ craftsmanship of sticks — is a missed opportunity, said Jones. He called on the government to start over and base whatever path it takes on documented evidence.

“I’m worried that the right people weren’t consulted, I’m worried that the right research wasn’t done.”

‘The game evolved in many different places’

Jean-Patrice Martel, a former president of the Society for International Hockey Research and co-author of a book on the origin of hockey, told the committee there are ample examples — all with stronger documentation than the Windsor claim — of hockey-like games having been played elsewhere, in some cases earlier.

“Our research and our book concluded that there is no single birthplace of hockey,” Martel told MLAs.

“The game evolved in many different places.”

Martel said the law as written suggests that history can be decided by politicians.

Maloney said passing the bill that’s before the House would be to “maintain a position of denial to Aboriginal rights” that the provincial government has exhibited in other ways, such as regulating lobster and cannabis sales, and not consulting on plans to increase natural resource development.

PC caucus to discuss

Hants West MLA Melissa Sheehy-Richard, who introduced the private member’s bill, told reporters at Province House that she thought the comments about Mi’kmaw connections to the game and documented early examples of hockey being played in Dartmouth were good comments, and she plans to bring the information back to caucus to discuss with her colleagues.

“It certainly wasn’t meant to be [anything] controversial. It’s just meant to be something that Nova Scotians should be proud of.”

Sheehy-Richard said she advanced the bill after learning that an earlier version introduced by the district’s former MLA, Chuck Porter, in 2008 was never passed.

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