The Montreal writer, David Fennario, has written a little about the history of hockey in Canada. He points out that the rules of the modern game we know evolved from were first written down at the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, but the game had been played long before that. Fennario claims (and I have no reason not to believe him) that hockey was first played in Canada during the building of the Victoria Bridge in Montreal when local 'First Nations' workers brought their lacrosse sticks and Irish immigrant workers brought mixtures of various games played on fields. When winter hit and the ground froze, an early version of hockey was played. Rules evolved, skates developed, there's always that old story about the frozen horse droppings used as pucks, and years later someone from the MAAA finally wrote it all down.

So, from the very beginning, hockey had a mixture of cultures involved. But, much like baseball which in its amatuer days had African-American players, once the game left the immigrant work camps and started to be played by 'educated' men of the athletic clubs, it became much more restrictive.

The "Original Six," as the NHL teams from the mid 30's to the late 60's are often referred, had no black players until January, 1958 when New Brunswick native Willie O'Ree laced on the skates for the Boston Bruins.

In the minors, though, it was a different story.

Check out the section on Herb Carnegie and the Black Aces.