The Forgotten Era of the Colored Hockey League

Most baseball fans are aware, at least to some extent, of the existence of the Negro Leagues. In 2020, the MLB even added the Negro League stats to count as MLB stats incorporating the leagues into one essentially. Few hockey fans know of the existence of the Coloured Hockey League of The Maritimes, however. The CHL was the hockey equivalent of the Negro Leagues, but the hockey community has largely unrecognized its history.

The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes was an all-black hockey league founded in Nova Scotia. Four Baptist Leaders founded the league to get people to come to church initially. The founders, Henry Sylvester Williams, James Robinson Johnston, James A.R. Kinney and James Borden, advertised the league as "come to church and play hockey." From that original sentiment, the league took off and became immensely popular in eastern Canada. There were 12 teams and over 400 players across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island at the league's peak.

Founded in 1895, the CHL predated the Negro Leagues by 25 years and was one of the first organized all-black sports leagues. The CHL changed how hockey was played forever and still has an enormous impact on the game today. Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eurekas is credited with inventing the slapshot in 1906. Back then, it was called the baseball shot due to the similarity of the swinging motion. The CHL is also credited for first incorporating the butterfly position for goaltenders. The butterfly is when goalies drop to their legs to make a save, standard practice in the modern-day NHL, but it originated from the all-black league. The white leagues that predated the NHL and ran simultaneously as the CHL banned goalies from dropping to their legs, the "black style" of hockey prevailed and made its way into the game today. There was no official rule book to the games other than the Bible. What ended up happening is the game became much faster and more physical and set trends for what we would see in the NHL years later.

As expected, the league faced tremendous operation challenges as there was deep-seated racism that they had to battle. Black players were not allowed on the ice during the "white league season," so the CHL had to operate on rinks during less-than-ideal ice conditions in the springtime after the white players had finished up their season. The season would run in eight weeks from January to early March, when the ice surface became unplayable. Each team was only able to play about six games or so per season.

The league grew tremendously from the original four founders trying to encourage more black people to come to church, but some original facets stayed the same. There was no formal schedule for the 12-team league. Teams would challenge other teams through ads in newspapers and telegrams. The sporadic games actually drew larger crowds than the white leagues and were more popular in the area.

Legal battles regarding the expanded rail service in Halifax, N.S. spurred a dispute between the population of Africville, a Black community in Halifax, and city officials. A five-year legal battle took place over the proposed railroad land annexation. During the ongoing dispute, rink owners stopped allowing black players to use the ice until late March when it became too warm to maintain the natural ice. The CHL eventually folded in 1911 due to this. However, in 1921 three teams reformed the league, the Truco Victorias, Africville Seasides and the Halifax All-Star Team. By this point, the NHL had been formed (1917), and the CHL received much less attention. Teams came and went sparingly, and by 1930 the league had folded entirely for the last time.

Memories, records, and honors with the CHL had been mainly nonexistent for the past 90 years, with a few exceptions. A book, Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925, was published in 2004, and aside from sparing articles, there was not much more coverage until 2020.

Last season the NHL honored the 125th anniversary of the CHL with a game in Ottawa, ON. Players ranged from pee-wee kids to retired NHL players. Every player was a descendant of an escaped United States slave. They played a two-period game between the Halifax Eurekas and Dartmouth Jubilees, both former CHL teams, with Halifax winning 7-6.

A week before the game took place, the Canadian Post took a big step in honoring the Colored Hockey League by creating a stamp featuring CHL players and the CHL championship. 1.4 million stamps were made for Black History Month in 2020, and while a stamp is just a small piece of paper, it goes on to be more. The CHL stamp will now be in every stamp book in Canadian history, cementing the league in Canadian history as it has been widely underrepresented in the past century. The stamp was just a first step but a needed one to celebrate this primarily forgotten and under-recognized hockey league.

I recommended watching Soul on Hulu to learn more about the Colored Hockey League's history or black people involved in hockey. A compelling documentary about being black in the hockey world is a must-watch for all hockey fans.