The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL) was an all-black

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

league founded in

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...

in 1894, which featured teams from across

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

Maritime Provinces The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...

. The league operated for several decades lasting until 1930.

History

The league was founded in 1895 in

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Halifax is the capital and most populous municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the most populous municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of 2024, it is estimated that the population of the H ...

by a group of four black

Baptist Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

leaders and black intellectuals: Pastor James Borden of Dartmouth Church, James A.R Kinney, lawyer and community leader James Robinson Johnston, and lawyer and Pan-African organizer Henry Sylvester Williams. The league was constructed to attract young black men to Sunday worship with the promise of a hockey game between rival churches after the services. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, "with the influence of the Black Nationalism Movement—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 Black Canadians () are Canadians of full or partial Afro-Caribbean or sub-Saharan African descent. Black Canadian settlement and immigration patterns can be categorized into two distinct groups. The majority of Black Canadians are descendants ...

." Among the teams in the league were the Halifax Eurekas, based in Halifax, and the Amherst Royals, based in Amherst. At its zenith, the league had teams in seven communities in Nova Scotia and one in Prince Edward Island, the West End Rangers from The Bog in Charlottetown. With as many as a dozen teams, over 400 Black Canadian players from across Nova Scotia,

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

and

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is an island Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. While it is the smallest province by land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

participated in competition.Martins, Daniel
Hockey historian credits black player with first slapshot
, CanWest News Service, January 31, 2007 The Colored 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. This practice was not permitted elsewhere until the formation of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

in 1917. It is also claimed that the first player to use the

slapshot A slapshot (also spelled as slap shot) is a powerful shot in ice hockey. Its advantage is a high-speed shot that can be taken from a long distance; the disadvantage is the long time to set it up as well as its low accuracy. It has four stage ...

was Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eureka in 1906.

Legacy

In January 2020,

Canada Post Canada Post Corporation (, trading as Canada Post (), is a Canadian Crown corporation that functions as the primary postal operator in Canada. Originally known as Royal Mail Canada (the operating name of the Post Office Department of the Can ...

issued a

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the f ...

featuring the 1906 champion Halifax Eurekas to commemorate the history of black hockey players in Canada. The history of the league is profiled in Darril Fosty and George Fosty's 2004 non-fiction book ''Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925'', 2014 book ''Tribes: An International Hockey History'', which expands on their previous work, and in

Hubert Davis Hubert Ira Davis Jr. (born May 17, 1970) is an American college basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball, North Carolina Tar Heels men's team. Before his coaching care ...

's 2022 documentary film ''

Black Ice Black ice, sometimes called clear ice, is a coating of glaze ice on a surface, for example on streets or on lakes. The ice itself is not black, but visually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it and light to be ...

''. The history of the league, including its destruction and the destruction of its black community in

Africville Africville was a small community of predominantly African Nova Scotians located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It developed on the southern shore of Bedford Basin and existed from the early 1800s to the 1960s. From 1970 to the present, a pro ...

by the Halifax government trying to expand their railway, is also visited in

Canadaland Canadaland is a Canadian podcast and also the name of a company founded by Jesse Brown in 2013. The original podcast covered Canadian media and media criticism. At one time the company produced other weekly or monthly podcasts covering a range ...

's Hockey #2 — "The Birth of Black Hockey"

References

{{Reflist Defunct ice hockey leagues in New Brunswick Defunct ice hockey leagues in Prince Edward Island History of Black people in Canada Defunct ice hockey leagues in Nova Scotia * Sports leagues established in 1895 Sports leagues disestablished in 1930 Black Canadian organizations Black Canadian culture in Halifax, Nova Scotia 1895 establishments in Nova Scotia 1930 disestablishments in Canada

History

Legacy

See also

References