24 October 2009
Ottawa, Ontario
Often considered the “father” or inventor of organized ice hockey, James George Aylwin Creighton played a foundational role in popularizing and codifying the game in the 1870s and 1880s by bringing the game indoors and formalizing its rules. Captain of the first regular ice hockey club to be formed in Canada, Creighton is also credited with organizing the world’s first indoor hockey game at Montreal’s famed Victoria Skating Rink on March 3, 1875. The match generated city-wide interest and gave rise to the formation of other ice hockey teams and to the rapid development of the modern game.
Creighton developed a love for sports while growing up in Halifax, where an exciting early version of ice hockey was played on the region’s frozen ponds and lakes. Having moved to Montréal in 1873 to pursue a career in civil engineering, Creighton introduced other athletes in the city to the game he had played in his youth, leading to the historic contest played at the Victoria Skating Rink. Montréal’s The Gazette notified the public of the game ahead of time and reported its results, making it the first recorded indoor ice hockey game played before spectators. Creighton’s squad won 2-1.
Creighton’s role in the expansion of ice hockey extended beyond the inaugural indoor public game of 1875. He went on to organize and advertise other matches and had a leadership role in the formation of an inter-provincial ice hockey association in Toronto in October 1875. He is also widely believed to have authored the first known published rules for the game in 1877, drawing his inspiration from the game he played as a Halifax youth, as well as from existing English rugby and field hockey rules.
When he moved to Ottawa to take up his appointment as Law Clerk to the Senate of Canada – a duty he fulfilled for an extraordinary 48 years – Creighton helped organize a team made up of young political elite, including two of Lord Stanley’s sons. The team was the Rideau Hall Rebels.
Ironically, Creighton never claimed for himself the pivotal role in the development of ice hockey that historians have since attributed to him. The furthest he would go was to write, in a letter to his former Rebels teammate Alfred Ward, that his greatest sporting honour was to have been the captain of the first regular hockey club formed in Canada, Montréal’s Metropolitan Club in 1877.
