STICKS, BALLS, AND RAILWAY TIES: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ON THE RESEARCH AND WRITING OF THE HISTORY OF

By

BARBARA K. ADAMSKI

Integrated Studies Project

submitted to Dr. Carolyn Redl & Dr. Angela Specht

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

November 2010 Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 1

Table of Contents

Abstract!...... 2

Keywords!...... 2

Preamble!...... 3

Background!...... 6

History of !...... 18

History of lacrosse in !...... 32

Conclusion!...... 44

Appendix 1!...... 50 Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 2

Abstract

The history of the of lacrosse is difficult to trace, largely because documentation of the sport’s development is relatively sparse. In addition, many contradictions exist within the currently available documentation. As is the case with many historical accounts, accuracy is dependent upon several factors, such as researcher/ narrator bias, public sentiment, resources available at the time of research, and others.

This autoethnography discusses the author’s own experiences in the researching and writing of “truth” surrounding the , both as a freelance writer producing narrative non-fiction for general-interest magazines, and as a Master’s student completing a degree in integrated studies and therefore subject to many of the constraints of academic writing.

The essay delves into the history of lacrosse in British Columbia and explores how a game originally popular in what was then known as Upper Canada ventured to the country’s west coast, as well as the challenges the author faced in researching and documenting that voyage.

Keywords academic writing, autoethnography, British Columbia, creative writing, lacrosse, history, narrator bias, transcontinental railway Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 3

Preamble

The process of researching and writing a paper for an academic audience differs from the process of writing a creative non-fiction piece for a general audience. For one, creative non-fiction allows the writer a greater degree of flexibility, particularly when it comes to inserting the writer or the writer’s personality into the work. Kim Etherington, in Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Our Selves in Research, discusses some of the constraints involved in academic writing, constraints that in her opinion sometimes make academic texts a dull read. For example, Etherington notes that academic research is very much an impersonal activity, and that many researchers distance themselves from their work. This, in turn, can create a distance between the writer and his or her audience, which can have a negative effect on the reader’s experience. As Etherington writes,

“Without sight of the person at the heart of the work I feel no relationship with the writer, even if I am interested in the topic (25).

Etherington points to a significant difference between the genres of academic and creative writing: the creative writer, particularly if writing for publication as opposed to writing for oneself, strives to make a connection to his or her reader. While academic writers also strive to make a connection with their readers, their focus is more on accurately and objectively presenting facts, statistics, and results of experiments, depending, of course, on each individual researcher’s field of study. With creative writers, facts are still important, but equally important is the telling of the story. Creative non- fiction writers often become a part of the story through their voice and through their Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 4 interaction with characters and settings. Academic writers, on the other hand, try to be objective, to go unnoticed, often through the use of the passive voice and by citing the works of their colleagues rather than discussing their own thoughts or displaying ownership of their thoughts. For example, in many fields, writers are discouraged from using the first-person pronoun.

My final project for completion of the Master of Arts in Integrated Studies

(MAIS) program is an interdisciplinary look at the history of lacrosse in through the framework of creative writing and with particular consideration to the narrator reliability, the degree to which the reader can trust the narrator (Coulter & Smith,

577–590). If I am to question other narrators, however, I must question my own reliability as narrator, for I believe that all writers bring biases into their work.

My essay takes the form of an autoethnography, which Sarah Wall, in the abstract to her paper, “Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography,” defines as “an intriguing and promising qualitative method that offers a way of giving voice to personal experience for the purpose of extending sociological understanding” (38). She also cites

Sparkes, who says that authoethnographies are “highly personalized accounts that draw upon the experience of author/researcher[. . .] (21). Through documentation of my own experiences as a researcher and writer of lacrosse history, I hope to add to the current body of literature on lacrosse, particularly with regard to “modern lacrosse,” which was developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century and was relatively unchanged until the sport moved indoors in the 1930s and became known as “.” Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 5

Some academics believe that autoethnography and personal narrative are one and the same. Others, writes Wall (citing Holt, 2001 and Sparkes, 1996), “use autoethnography as a means of explicitly linking concepts from the literature to the narrated personal experience” (39). She goes on to describe examples of autoethnography as being used

as a way of telling a story that invites personal connection rather than

analysis (Frank, 2000), exploring issues of personal importance within an

explicitly acknowledged social context (Holt, 2001; Sparkes, 1996),

evaluating one’s actions (Duncan, 2004), or critiquing extant literature on

a topic of personal significance (39).

This autoethnography discusses my own experiences in the researching and writing of “truth” surrounding the history of lacrosse, both as a freelance writer producing narrative non-fiction for general-interest magazines, and as a Master’s student completing a degree in integrated studies and therefore subject to many of the constraints of academic writing. My essay delves into the history of lacrosse in British Columbia and explores how a game originally popular in what was then known as Upper Canada ventured to the country’s west coast, as well as the challenges in researching and documenting that voyage.

My autoethnography straddles the fence between personal narrative and a more formal academic writing style, which often created internal conflict for me, for I constantly had to weigh the pros and cons of using footnotes versus citations, of a reader- Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 6 friendly style as opposed to a formal academic style that avoids the first-person pronoun.

In the end, I compromised, relying on footnotes as much as possible, but including a proper reference list to assist in verification of quotations and to provide avenues for further reading. My style in this essay is not as casual as accepted in a consumer magazine, but is, I hope, reader-friendly and interesting to the non-academic reader, while still meeting the requirements of the MAIS program.

Background

In 2005, I pitched a story on lacrosse to a Canadian magazine, The Walrus. I knew very little about the sport at the time. What made my idea timely (and therefore salable) was the fact that the city of , where I live, was contemplating removing the original, somewhat-dilapidated, wooden lacrosse floor that was built in the 1930s during box lacrosse’s heyday, and replacing it with a more modern surface. The community was outraged, and a group was formed to raise money to replace the planks of the only wooden lacrosse floor still existing in Canada. To flesh out my pitch, I added other “facts” about the sport of lacrosse. I was given the assignment based on that query and began to conduct my research.

It wasn’t long before I discovered several myths about lacrosse, many of which have survived to this day. I realized that my original query was based upon a mythical history of the sport, and that even several encyclopedia entries on lacrosse reflected these inaccuracies. For example, it is often erroneously reported that French missionary Jean de

Brébeuf gave the sport its name because of the stick’s similarity to the bishop’s crosier. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 7

The journals in which he allegedly documented that “fact,” however, mention nothing of the sort. Furthermore, crosse is merely French for “stick,1” as in crosse de

(hockey stick), and the word itself predates Brébeuf, as does the phrase jeu de la crosse2

(game of la crosse). My discovery of this and other inaccuracies led to my writing a newer version of The Canadian Encyclopedia’s entry on lacrosse as well as other lacrosse-related entries, such as “the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame” and “Lacrosse

Sticks.”

I encountered many challenges in researching the history of lacrosse—and still do. One of the greatest challenges arose from the fact that there is very little documentation of the game prior to W. George Beers’ Lacrosse: The Game of Canada.

But Beers, an avid lacrosse fan who did much to both document and promote the sport, sometimes fell victim to his own biases.

Of course, there is a certain level of bias in every form of writing, even in primary sources. As Etherington, citing Crotty, observes, “Personal views and beliefs do, however, guide our choices between paradigms and methods, as well as our topic of research and what we intend as our purpose” (25). The inability of researchers and writers of all genres to escape bias poses a particular challenge for anyone who is writing history.

1 W. G. Beers mentions says the following about the meaning of “la crosse”: “When the French first saw the game they gave it the name of La Crosse, the bat…” Beers, W. G. (1869). Lacrosse: The National Game of Canada. : Dawson Brothers, 76.

2 The term appears in the sixteenth-century text Gargantua by French satirist François Rabelais. There, “la crosse” could refer to any number of stick games played at the time. There is no way of knowing for sure, since Rabelais merely lists the term (and many other terms) without providing a definition or context. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 8

Heather Robertson, in Writing from Life: A Guide for Writing True Stories, acknowledges that being in print does not necessarily make something factual: “It is common for heirs and executors to destroy, annotate, and edit the private papers entrusted to their care [. . . ] Government documents show bias; the minutes of a meeting may omit most of what was said” (22). Indeed, the very decision of what to cut from research is in itself a form of bias, as is what we choose as a topic, what questions we choose to ask, and more. As Robertson states, “We all ask different questions, and relate to people in different ways; a story will be influenced as much by a writer’s presence and personality as by the subject matter. The truth ‘as I see it’ is about the best we can do” (115). In effect, no writer is immune to bias.

Lee Gutkind says that we writers must “strive for the truth” and “be certain that everything [we] write is as accurate and honest as [we] can make it” (xxx). Gutkind discusses the fact that even if writers have good intentions, their adherence to “fact” is only as strong as their sources: “Journalists (and historians, anthropologists, attorneys, etc.) rely on sources—documents and interviews and testimonies to assure truth and accuracy—but how do they know if the documents are accurate or the witnesses’ perceptions valid?” (xxiii).

Academic essays and creative non-fiction differ not only in their written presentation, but also in how their facts are researched. For example, writers of magazine articles and books are often, though not always, encouraged to include themselves in the stories they write. And even if a writer does not appear as a character, or as the narrator Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 9

“I,” the writer still strives to insert his or her personality into the piece, usually through the use of a distinctive voice.

In “Easier Said than Done,” Wall notes the reluctance of those in the academic community to accept the insertion of oneself in academic writing. In her study, she was asked to justify the use of her personal experience, her memories, as data. She writes, “It seems that unless data about personal experience are collected and somehow transformed by another researcher, they fail to qualify as legitimate” (2008, 45). She points to an interesting phenomenon in the academic community in which autoethnography, the writing of one’s own experiences, is not seen to be as valid as having another researcher document those same memories:

“[I]f a researcher had interviewed me about my experiences as an adoptive

mother and had recorded and transcribed it, it would have legitimacy as

data despite the fact that both the interview transcript and my

autoethnographic text would be based on the same set of memories (45).

With creative writing, and in particular its sub-genre of personal narrative, it is perfectly acceptable to document one’s experience, one’s memories. To what extent one must document those experiences and memories is less a criterion of the genre than it is a reflection of the publication’s particular guidelines.

Robertson discusses her personal reaction to writing from different genres: “I also ignore writing that has a vocabulary and formula as its own, a code almost unintelligible to outsiders. These literary subcultures include commentary, Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 10 scholarly articles, government documents, and corporate publications” (2, 3). She does, however, acknowledge that “Some scholars do break the academic mould” (3).

David Bartholomae would, I imagine, be quick to refute Robertson’s negative opinion of academic writing, for he sees a great variety within the genre and finds the term “academic writing” difficult to define. As he says in “Writing with Teachers: A

Conversation with Peter Elbow”:

Most discussions like the one we are about to have begin or end by fretting

over the central term, academic writing. It is clear that this is not just a

contested term, but a difficult one to use with any precision. If, for

example, it means the writing that is done by academics, or the writing

that passes as currency in the academy, then it is a precise term only when

it is loaded: academic writing—the unreadable created by the

unspeakable; academic writing—pure, muscular, lean, taut, the language

of truth and reason; academic writing—language stripped of the false

dressings of style and fashion, a tool for inquiry and critique (1995, 62).

However difficult it may be to define academic writing, there are still certain expectations of those in the field. In Etherington’s book, Becoming a Reflexive

Researcher: Travellers’ Tales, she includes the following comment by a sociologist she had emailed:

Re: reflexivity—I take your point wholeheartedly—but try explaining that

to the PhD examiners! My first submission had stuff about how I got

interested, lots on the process (including stuff or pen and ink vs. the word Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 11

processor), why I like stories, etc. But it wasn’t academically appropriate!

So it went out (35).

The above comment illustrates perfectly the stringent constraints of the academic genre, such as the need to cite other academics to support an argument.

Writing creative non-fiction, on the other hand, is supposed to be fun “if only in a monastic or masochistic way,” according to Robertson (11). She elaborates by saying that writers should achieve satisfaction in watching sentences build into paragraphs, and paragraphs into pages. And even research “should be so much fun you don’t want to stop” (11). As one who often gets lost in research— in a very positive way—I wholeheartedly agree.

Another main difference between academic writing and creative non-fiction is the process of writing itself. Robertson notes, “Writers work in different ways. Some make detailed outlines, others, like me, jump in. Some forge ahead to complete a rough draft, then edit, revise, and rewrite; I rewrite as I go” (38). I can personally relate to

Robertson’s comments. I find that I can work with an outline for an academic essay (in fact, sometimes I find that I can’t work without one), but when it comes to creative non- fiction, once I emerge from the deep sea of research, I forge ahead. This MAIS paper was particularly challenging for me. Its length, which is several times that of the longest feature article I have ever written, made it impossible for me to work without an outline.

The fact that it is for an academic audience and must fulfill the requirements of the MAIS program at Athabasca University was another reason for me to wear an academic hat Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 12 much of the time. However, the fact that it’s an autoethnography/personal narrative means that I must look at the constraints of those genres3 as well.

Academic writers do not have to worry about the storytelling aspect of their writing. Says Robertson,

A few academic historians can transform their research into superb stories;

some refuse because they fear distorting the facts, or prize obscurity, and

others fail because their prose is polluted by jargon, or they haven’t a clue

how to go about structuring a story (135).

Whatever the academic writer decides, publication is likely not based upon achieving a delightfully flowing narrative, but rather on presenting data and a methodology that will pass a peer review.

One of the more challenging aspects about writing creative non-fiction is that the story itself changes often during the process. While an academic essay might focus on theses, topic statements and conclusions, the creative piece might meander a fair bit before it settles on a certain path. And knowing where to start the journey is a major dilemma. Says Robertson,

Once you find the right entry point, one thing should lead to another: a

diary will suggest a newspaper obituary, which mentions the names of

other people, whose memoirs you find in the library, which has books full

of photographs, and so on and so on. If this doesn’t happen, you’re starting

in the wrong place (144).

3 These genre constraints will be discussed in more detail in the section that follows. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 13

This describes quite accurately my own process of researching and writing lacrosse, which appears to be a never-ending process. For example, the following line from the

Canadian Lacrosse Association’s website led me to go off on several tangents: “One such reference occurs in Scribner’s Monthly, Volume 14, May–October 1877. ‘The game of

Lacrosse, which was adopted as the national game of Canada on the 1st of July, 1859, the first Dominion Day.4’” My initial concern? Canada’s first Dominion Day was in 1867, so what was the author of the quote (who, I later discovered, was Beers) talking about? This discrepancy led me to the discovery that the “national game” myth was likely a mere publicity stunt5 and led me to question other facts in the Canadian Lacrosse Association’s article.

Beers, often referred to as the “father of modern lacrosse,” was a Montréal dentist, a lacrosse goalie and, according to one historian, “a flaming lacrosse evangelist” (Morrow, 1989, 70, citing P.L. Lindsay, 1972). A strong patriot, Beers was driven by a desire to organize and promote his version of the game, and make it the national game. In the preface to his 1869 book, he wrote:

The following pages are designed to extend a knowledge of the game of

Lacrosse, to systematize its principles and practice, and to perpetuate it as

4 http://cla.pointstreaksites.com/view/cla/about-42/the-sport-of-lacrosse/lacrosse-canada-s- national-sport. 14 Apr. 2006.

5 Lacrosse was not recognized as a until 1994 (which the Canadian Lacrosse Association article acknowledges), when Kamloops MP Nelson Riis introduced Bill C-212, a private memberʼs bill declaring hockey the national sport, resulting in much debate and the formal establishment of hockey as the nationʼs official winter sport and lacrosse the official summer sport. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 14

the National game of Canada. Until the appearance of my brochure,

published in 1860, there had never been any attempt made to reduce the

game to rule. It was barren of laws, and goal-keeper was the only player

with a definite name and position.

I feel in duty bound to own to the parentage, while apologizing for the

publication of the little book referred to, which was issued, without any

revision, during my absence from the city. Notwithstanding the fact that it

was extensively plagiarized, I trust it will be regarded, by any who had the

misfortune to buy it, as one of those productions of youth, which, in

maturity, we would fain disown (v–vi).

Beers certainly does allow his voice to come through in his writing, and would that I could get my hands on that brochure, I imagine it would be quite a read. In Beers’ defence, however, I have to address the issue of the word “national.” It is highly likely that Beers is speaking in the vernacular of the time, and using “national” to refer to what our country, Canada, was in that era. Beers writes:

I believe that I was the first to propose the game of Lacrosse as the

national game of Canada in 1859; and a few months preceding the

proclamation of Her Majesty, uniting the Provinces of Canada, Nova

Scotia and New Brunswick, into one Dominion, a letter headed “Lacrosse

—Our National Field Game,” published by me in the Montreal Daily

News, in April, 1867, was printed off and distributed throughout the whole Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 15

Dominion, and was copied into many of the public papers [. . .] On the day

which created the greater part of British America a Dominion, the game of

Lacrosse was adopted as the national game6, and it was appropriate and

auspicious that this should be so. The fact that it was to be the national

game, spread throughout the country, and gave it popularity in districts

where it had never been seen or heard of before, and where other sports

had been played for years. Suggestive as the spread of the game is of its

attractiveness, it must also suggest happy ideas of the patriotism of Young

Canada (58).

Note that Beers admits that his motive was to perpetuate the game of lacrosse as the national game.

The August 26, 1875, issue of The Canadian News and Dominion Review: A

Chronicle of Opinion and Events of Interest to the Colonist, the Emigrant, and the

Capitalist, a newspaper about Canada for those in Great Britain, questioned Beers’ use of the word “national” with regard to lacrosse being Canada’s “national sport,” writing the following: “Mr. W. G. Beers, goal-keeper of the Montreal Lacrosse Club, is on his way to

England to make preparations for the proper display of his Canadian national pastime (if the word national can be applied to what comes from a province) in this country” (1).

6 There is no record of such a proclamation, as researched by Member of Parliament Jack Roxborough. Beers claimed that parliament agreed to such on July 1, 1867, but Roxborough found that parliament did not convene until the following November (Fisher, 2002, p. 241). Lacrosse did not appear on the record as a national sport until 1994, when it became the official summer sport. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 16

The aforementioned analysis on Beers is an example from my own research and writing of how the creative process meanders, as Robertson suggests, and how a story

(and indeed stories, for I have written a few pieces on the history of lacrosse) can go off in many different tangents. In academic writing, this process is usually not acceptable

(although its level of acceptability would, of course, vary with the field of study).

Despite major differences between creative non-fiction and academic writing, the two genres do share some similarities. In science-based academic articles, researchers develop a hypothesis on which they base their studies. There is even a level of bias in the choosing of a hypotheses and in the testing of it. Skov and Sherman (1986) discuss the strategy of confirming one’s hypothesis at the information-gathering stage:

Two kinds of hypothesis-confirmation strategies were considered. The first

of these concerned evidence being sought to the extent that it is more

likely under the hypothesis being tested than under the alternative. The

second kind of hypothesis-confirmation strategy refers to the tendency to

ask questions that will have the effect of making the hypothesis under test

appear to be true (93).

In many ways, writers of narrative non-fiction also set out to prove or disprove their own preconceived notions about a topic—or so they should. Unfortunately there are many writers who choose to leave out anything that does not further their own argument or support their story angle. According to Attfield and Dowell, who studied journalists’ information-gathering processes, Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 17

Campbell [1997] refers to an angle as a “perspective that dominates a

story.” In [Attfield and Dowell’s] study, research and writing was reported

as always being guided by an angle. It was described as a “thrust” or

“driving force” of an assignment—the new “twist” or “hook” that directs

the story. An angle was also described as a proposition or statement (192).

An angle is a hypothesis, if you will. This constrasts to a more traditional, inverted- pyramid style of writing—still used for many news items, as opposed to features—in which the most important information is given at the beginning of the article.

In my own research regarding the history of lacrosse, I hypothesize a connection between the sport’s history in western Canada and the laying of western Canadian section of the national railway.7 In searching for such connections, I had to allow myself the flexibility to follow the facts, if indeed there are facts to follow. As is the case with much of lacrosse’s history, there is little documentation, although there are allusions to a connection between the railway and the sport’s migration to western Canada, and the timeline itself supports such a theory.

Ultimately, I consider the validity of the information-gathering processes of other sources carefully and am aware of their biases. I keep at the forefront the fact that my

7 Several amalgamations of smaller rail companies ultimately led to the development of the Canadian Pacific Railway. One such smaller railway was the Canadian Northern Railway, for which Donald Mann, after whom lacrosseʼs most prized trophy is named, worked. For more information on the history of the CPR, see http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm? PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0001322 20 Oct. 2010. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 18 own research and documentation may be biased, for what I leave out, intentionally or otherwise, may be as or more relevant than what I record.

History of lacrosse in Canada

In writing my story about the history of lacrosse, I started where many present- day writers begin: the Internet. The Internet allows researchers to access a variety of information from a number of different sources. It is, however, not without its downside, what Attfield and Dowell refer to as the “perceived potential for information overload and concerns over information authority” (190). One advantage that the Internet did provide me, however, was a quick way to verify the presence of contradictory information, which helped me home in on those areas that required further research.8 For example, The Canadian Lacrosse Association’s website stated that Jean de Brébeuf

“recorded observations of a lacrosse game in 1683.” The World Indoor Lacrosse website, however, stated the following very obvious error: “The earliest European record of

Lacrosse dates back to 1863, when the French missionary Jean-de-Brébeuf wrote of seeing Native people playing a game with sticks and a ball. He called it Ala crosse because the sticks reminded him of the Bishop’s crozier or Acrosse.”9 The Canadian

Lacrosse Association’s website has the same erroneous date and a similar story on a different page of their website. And while discrepancies such as these led me to track

8 I should mention at this point that my use of the Internet was not limited to the use of popular search engines such as Google. My searches included newspaper archives accessed through paid subscriptions to sites such as Paper of Record (paperofrecord.com), online archives of microfiched original texts, such as canadiana.org, and many other sources.

9 http://www.worldindoorlacrosse.com/Doc/history.htm (website no longer active) Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 19 down the original writings of Jean de Brébeuf, which happened to be in 1636, a quick

Google search of the terms “acrosse” and “crozier” conducted in September of 2010 generated several links to articles that publish variations on the myth that I first encountered in 2006. For example, the Ministry of Health and Sport website says the following: “Fun Fact: The earliest European record of lacrosse dates back to 1636 when the French missionary, Jean de Brébeuf wrote of seeing a game played with sticks and a ball in southeastern Ontario. He called it ‘la crosse’ because the sticks reminded him of a bishop’s crozier or Acrosse.”

In my initial quest to find the truth, I contacted Library and Archives Canada to discuss the discrepancy in dates with them. I received a lengthy list of a variety of dates associated with Brébeuf’s witnessing of a lacrosse game, ranging from 1636 to 186310.

Library and Archives Canada then put me in with Laura Bonikowsky, associate editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia, which by that point was only available online. My request to Bonikowsky was as follows:

In your entry on lacrosse, it is written: The Indian term for the original

game was baggattaway, derived from the Ojibwa word pagaadowewin or

“ball.”

Could you please tell me where you obtained this information? I have

found several translations for the term baggattaway, but yours is the only

one I have found that means ball and refers to the word “pagaadowewin.”

10 See Appendix 1 for a copy of this email. Reproduced with permission. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 20

Interestingly, in my research I found a glossary of Ojibwa terms that

translates “packettywaun” as “to beat or bruise.” I see strong similarities

between the two words, and am wondering if perhaps you do as well. My

source for this translation is Long, J. Voyages and Travels of an Indian

Interpreter and Trader, 1791, page 196.

Also, please note that Brebeuf’s writings are from the year 1636, not 1638

as is written in this same entry. See http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/

PageView/94031/0407?id=89a37faae811

This email formed the starting point for a detailed dialogue (both via email and over the phone) between Bonikowsky and me regarding several inconsistencies in the presentation of the history of lacrosse. We debated the meanings of the First Nations words for lacrosse, what Brébeuf did or didn’t see in 1636, and the date itself, both via email and over the telephone. In one email message, Bonikowsky wrote12,

I’ve seen several references to the Brébeuf text as the source of the 1636

date reference, and wonder if people have actually read it. I haven’t read

the entire text, but have read some of the material before and after the

excerpt. I’ve had it translated and reviewed and I just am not convinced it

means he saw a lacrosse game in 1636.13

11 Email correspondence dated Sunday, May 07, 2006, between an editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia and me.

12 Email messages from Laura Bonikowsky are reproduced here with her permission.

13 8-May-06, at 5:03 PM Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 21

I replied with the following:

I’m inclined to agree with you on the Brébeuf text, although the

subsequent page or two does describe some sort of game. Maybe the

difference between modern and “original” lacrosse is so great that there

isn’t much of a connection at all. Even the crozier connection is dubious

(as it pertains to Brébeuf). The earliest sticks were round at the end if I

correctly recall drawings at the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame. I’ll have

to go back and check again. The crozier-like shape may be a more recent

incarnation (“recent” being relative). I’m also really intrigued by a

possible connection between lacrosse and the ancient Irish game of

(alluded to but disregarded by Beers).14

We also discussed Beers and his bias. Wrote Bonikowsky, “When it comes to the lacrosse entry, it’s hard today to overlook Beers’ bias, but at the time our entry was originally written (1980s) Beers was a great resource.”15 By the end of this discussion, we decided on the possibility of my updating The Canadian Encyclopedia’s entry on lacrosse. I’m sure if the author of the original file had not retired; however, he would have the opportunity to revise and update his work based on more current literature. It was not that he did a poor job researching the article, but that history sometimes changes with the times. As Bonikowsky had written in an earlier message to me,

14 Monday, May 08, 2006 7:00

15 8-May-06 , at 5:03 PM Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 22

Anthropological study of the First Nations has advanced considerably in

the last few decades, including in the areas of language and culture. The

definitions of words and language construction are much more clearly

defined now, as is the interpretation of cultural practices. We are

researching not only Brébeuf’s work with the Ojibwa but the accepted

translations of words.16

It was at that point that I myself realized that history is never really stagnant. It changes with narrator, researcher, public sentiment, and available resources.

My own research into the history of lacrosse in Canada, though by no means the final say on the matter, touched upon some of the mythical aspects of the sports history and supported some of the beliefs that seemed mythical but were not, such as Queen

Victoria’s journal entry of June 26, 1876, in which the Queen says of lacrosse, “The game was very pretty to watch”17 Some other stories are a bit trickier to verify either way, for they started out undocumented, passed orally through the generations. One such story is of Pontiac’s Rebellion, in 1763, in which the Ottawa chief reportedly staged a game of lacrosse to distract British soldiers and gain entry to in what is now known as .

During my research, I pieced together bits of information regarding other ball- and-stick games, in particular hurling and . Interestingly, it was Beers who first

16 8-May-06, at 12:27 PM

17 Royal Archives—extract from the Queenʼs journal as published in The Letters of Queen Victoria 1870-1878 Vol II, edited by George Earle Buckle. Note that I did not view the original diaries of Queen Victoria, but received a copy of the relevant section of the aforementioned book from the assistant archivist at the Royal Archives. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 23 prompted me to entertain the idea that lacrosse may not have originated with the

Canadian First Nations after all. In the opening chapter to his book Lacrosse: The game of Canada, Beers writes of the discussion he had with a traveling companion, Hon. Thos.

D’Arcy McGee:

The subject of conversation turned upon Lacrosse, prompted by the sight

of a Crosse on the rack overhead; and Mr. McGee first suggested to my

mind the resemblance between the national game of Canada and the Irish

game of Coman, or trundling. Some time after, a communication appeared

in a Port Hope paper, by a writer holding the identity of origin of the

Indian and Irish races with the Phoenicians, and ingeniously attempting to

show sufficient resemblance between Lacrosse and Coman to make a

plausible argument for his theory (3–4).

It becomes apparent to the reader that Beers has his own mind made up regarding the origins of lacrosse, perhaps hoping to prove his own hypothesis:

The former part of the proposition involves scientific questions hardly

within my province to discuss, but it seems rather far-fetched. If this

ethnological view be correct, it would scarcely seem possible that the

game of Lacrosse should now be almost the only prominent remnant of the

Phoenician origin of the Indian race. Were I inclined like the Irishman who

traced his genealogy into the Ark, and the locality of Paradise to his potato

patch, which he was irreverently offering for sale, I might enter into Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 24

archaeological researches, and build up theories from my hypothesis; but

this would only lead me astray (4).

Despite his biases, however, Beers’ book still provides great insight into how and by whom the game of lacrosse was played in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Beers acknowledges that lacrosse might be just one of many ball-and-stick games that developed over the centuries, but he dismisses those similarities as “coincidences”:

It is quite possible that there should be resemblances between Lacrosse

and Coman, as between any game of ball played with a bat. In “Strutt’s

Sports and Pastimes” may be read some very close coincidences but

nothing to prove their identity. The writer aforesaid hinges his conclusions

greatly upon the present resemblance between the sticks used in both

games; but the original crosse was not the present shape, and had no more

resemblance to a trundling bat than a cross-bow has to a “Snider” [a type

of rifle] (4–5).

Beers then concludes in a not-so-scientific manner, that the Indians18 should be given credit for inventing the game:

The Indians may justly be awarded the credit of having invented the game

of Lacrosse, as well as the snow-shoe, toboggan, and bark canoe; and

unless some archaeologist can prove that it was played by the extinct races

of a cultivated and superior type of humanity said to have existed on this

18 I chose to use the word “Indian” here over the present-day term of First Nations, solely to remain true to the original text. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 25

continent long before the advent of the Spaniards, it is only fair that they

should have the honor (5).

I, however, would like a little bit more proof than what Beers was willing to settle for.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if I will ever get that.

Thomas Vennum, an American historian who has researched lacrosse extensively, laments the fact that there are so few records on the history of the sport and questions the validity of the few records we do have, saying that the early European accounts have hampered reconstruction of a history of Indian lacrosse by describing it in relation to their games: “Attempting to inform their readers back home, [the Europeans] invariably related this strange ‘New World’ game to various European stickball games with which they were familiar, but which employed unquestionably different techniques” (69–70).

Some of the examples that Vennum lists are trap-ball, , , and even tennis.

While Vennum discounts many of these games, he does not do so very strongly. I am not convinced that there was no European influence on early game of lacrosse. On the other hand, I am also not in a position to assume or assert that lacrosse stems from a

European ball-and-stick game, although I do believe that it is a hypothesis that certainly merits more research.

Vennum does, however, mention a ball-and-stick game that colonists from France are reported to have introduced to Quebec:

Some sports scholars have traced the origins of the name [of lacrosse] to

an early French folk game called (var. choule), which Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 26

French colonists had brought to Quebec. In the fourteenth century, soule

was first played with curved sticks, and possibly colonists saw some

resemblance between the Indian racquet and their own sticks (71).

It is not clear to me, however, whether Vennum is saying that the colonists were comparing soule to lacrosse in the fourteenth century, or whether later colonists were comparing lacrosse at a later date to the fourteenth-century sport of soule.

In addition, there is even more to the history of lacrosse than I had previously imagined. After I had already submitted my stories to The Walrus and The Canadian

Encyclopedia, a writing colleague of mine alluded to a Viking connection to the game of lacrosse. Obviously curious, I asked him the source. It turns out that Bill Bryson, in Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, wrote about such a connection:

The rules of lacrosse are uncannily like those of a game played by the

Vikings, including one feature—the use of paired team-mates who may

not be helped or impeded by other players—so unusual, in the words of

one anthropologist, “as to make the probability of independent origin

vanishingly small” (6).

The Viking ball-and-stick game that Bryson is referring to is most likely knattleikr, a game that dates back to approximately 800 AD. Whether or not Bryson is correct, his observation that the likelihood of independent origin of the sport of lacrosse is very small is worth noting. As with many inventions, it is not uncommon to have similar creations Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 27 appear almost spontaneously in different parts of the world. But what I like about

Bryson’s hunch is the fact that, even if it were to be true, it would not discount the fact that some think that lacrosse is a descendent of hurling, or shinty, or iomáin19, or some other game played in Scotland and Ireland, for the traveled there before coming to Canada.

Then again, there is the possibility that lacrosse was passed to the Vikings from the First Nations of North America, as hypothesized by George and Darril Fosty. In their book, Splendid is the Sun: The 5,000 Year History of Hockey, they discuss a 1904 article,

“Old Ball Games of the Norsemen” (“Nordboernes Gamle Boldspil”), in which

Norwegian historian Ebbe Hertzberg points to similarities between the ancient Norse ball-and-stick game of knattleikr and lacrosse. Fosty and Fosty write that, according to

Hertzberg, the games were the same and were evidence of early contact between the

Norse and the tribes of the Americas, something they disagree with, saying,

Perhaps, Hertzberg would have been more correct if he had concluded the

opposite; that knattleikr was a game adopted by the Norse from their

contact with the Indians. Archaeological evidence suggests the game of

lacrosse dates back to at least c. 800 AD20. This is well before the first

Norse expeditions to America (45).

19 Encyclopaedia Britannica states that iomáin (hurling) dates back to the 13th century BC. hppt:// www.britannica.com/eb/article-9041603?query=hurling&ct=eb

20 The authors of this piece provide no source for this information. It appears in a timeline on page 9 of their book. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 28

In any case, the Fostys acknowledge a certain level of validity of Hertzberg’s claims, saying that his arguments “have continued to stand the test of time and to conclusively link the two games” (45).

In 1914, Hovgaard also addressed the issue of similarities between knattleikr and the Native ’ version of lacrosse. Hovgaard acknowledges that earlier research showed some similarities between the two sports, such as the pairing of opponents of equal strength, but that also differences exist, especially with regard to the implements used, and concludes the following:

On the whole, the evidence brought to light by a study of these games

favors the theory that lacrosse came to the Indians through the Norsemen,

but we find nothing in the sagas to show that such frequent and intimate

intercourse, which this theory presupposes, took place between the two

peoples. If, then, we are to accept this theory, we must admit, as suggested

at the end of the foregoing discussion, that a blank chapter exists in the

history of the Norse Greenlanders. The facts which have so far come to

light concerning these games, although interesting and remarkable, stand

isolated and unexplained, and must, therefore, await further elucidation

before we can assert that a connection exists between knattleikr and

lacrosse” (276–277).

This Viking connection to the game of lacrosse fascinates me and is definitely something

I would like to research in greater detail in the future. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 29

The history of hockey can also shed some light on the history of lacrosse, for the two sports are intertwined in many ways. Fosty and Fosty provide great insight into the development of hockey and, in doing so, provide insight into the history of lacrosse as well. There is, however, great bias in their writing, as evidenced by the following quotation:

We will never know who invented hockey. We will never understand the

full story of the game’s past. But we can at least, given the limited

information we possess today, learn to appreciate the impact this sport has

had on cultures, societies, and history. Hockey is not just a game. Hockey

is the first game (16).

What is interesting, however, is that the entire premise of Fosty and Fosty’s book is based upon those ball-and-stick games that were the precursor to hockey, so how can they make the claim that hockey is “the first game”? In fact, when reading the book, I found most of their theories could be just as plausible if one were to substitute “lacrosse” where Fosty and Fosty wrote “hockey,” for the history of ball-and-stick games is the same. For example, the authors write that, based on the Phoenicians’ secret knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean north of Gibraltar and on their advanced trade network, “it is reasonable to assume [that] the Phoenicians were one of the great ambassadors of ancient hockey” (22) and, that sometime between c. 1800 BC to c. 1300 BC, they very likely introduced the concept of a ball-and-stick game to the ancient tribes of Ireland and Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 30

Britain, where the game “took on a violent form and was recorded in The Irish Annals under the name hurley” (22).

A game deriving from an earlier form of a game does not mean the two are the same thing any more than saying an ape is the first human. Elsewhere the two provide another theory, in which “lacrosse”—or any other ball-and-stick game—may be substituted for “hockey,” or more specifically in this case, “.” They discuss a theory of a possible Roman link to ice hockey, which they deem “practical given the

Roman love of team sports and competition, as the Romans were major innovators in the development of stick and ball games” (27). They then elaborate on the Romans’ innovations in ball-and-stick games, saying,

[I]t was the Romans who invented the cambuca or chole21 stick, a three

and a half foot shaft with a curved blade. Borrowing from the Egyptians,

the Romans also adapted the use of a lightweight ball, incorporating horse

hair, feathers and linen into the lining of the leather, allowing the ball to be

hit harder, to roll faster, and to be hurled skywards rather than merely

passed along on the ground. They called this new form of play Pila

Paganica—a complex reference to the games of cambuca and chole being

played on the ground using sticks and small goal posts (27).

So while Pila Paganica appears to resemble lacrosse more than it does hockey and cambuca/chole seems to resemble hockey (and in particular ) more than

21 It is interesting to note the similarity between this word and the French word for a similar game, choule. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 31 it does lacrosse, there is no way that Fosty and Fosty can accurately claim that hockey is the first sport. In fact, earlier in their book, they describe another sport as “hockey-like,” which is not necessarily the same thing as hockey. The hockey-like game they refer to is

Pukku-Mikku, a game was designed to honour the rebirth of man and creation. They describe ancient Sumerian writings of the game of Pukku-Mikku “being played on a flat dirt surface using a curved stick and a circular hollow wooden ring” (20). What they describe, however, is a game that is hockey-like (as well as -like) but is not hockey. They then elaborate on the game’s evolution, making the game sound more like golf, but they do not provide enough information on the game itself; they merely speculate:

It would be the Egyptians who would eventually transform the game

utilizing a small ball in replacement for a hollow ring. The first written

record of this modified change appears in an Egyptian religious text

inscribed on the walls of a tomb from the 6th century BC. It reads “Hit the

ball to the field of Apis” (20).

While I find the research by the Fostys rather fascinating, I feel that they are not the most reliable of narrators for they fail to recognize that not all of the sports they research are hockey, nor are they definitely the precursors of hockey. Still, Fosty and Fosty’s research does provide insight into ball-and-stick games—and ball games in general—played around the world at various times in the past several thousand years. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 32

History of lacrosse in British Columbia

The history of lacrosse in British Columbia is not quite as difficult to trace as the history of lacrosse in Canada or in the world, but there are still gaps and discrepancies in many historical accounts. How did the sport of lacrosse journey to British Columbia?

Beers notes the presence of lacrosse west of Ontario, back in 1869, but provides few details. As well, he writes the following as a precursor to that information:

In the report on the Exploration of the country between Lake Superior and

the Red River Settlement, it is stated, that the Indians “do not scruple to

jump over the fences and run through the ground crops if their ball in a

game of ——— is driven in that direction.” The blank may be interpreted

as “Lacrosse” (30).

Why Beers feels that the blank may be interpreted as lacrosse is a mystery to me. Then again, why a blank exists in the report rather than the name of the sport itself is equally mysterious.

Fosty and Fosty, citing David Wynecoop, discuss records of a ball-and-stick game at Colowesh Bottom (now known as Lake Celilo, Oregon), along the Columbia River, in the early 1800s: “The various tribes would come together and play an ancient form of hockey, similar to that of today’s Scottish shinny, ‘on a mile-long stretch of beach using a wooden ball and long, curved sticks of vine maple’” (36). In this account, however, there is no mention of netting or webbing in the sticks, so the game described is not likely the

Iroquoian version of the game of lacrosse. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 33

Fosty and Fosty also state that the tribes of the Columbian were closely aligned with the Interior Salish tribe later known as the Thompson Indians. They discuss the writings of James Teit, who wrote about the First Nations group in his 1898 book, The

Traditions of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia. In his account, Teit describes a ball-and-stick game in which one variation of the game uses netted sticks. But what Fosty and Fosty declare is a bit problematic: “What James Teit had witnessed was not a game similar to lacrosse but rather a game that was a forerunner to lacrosse” (37).

This is very odd, for at that point, ancient lacrosse had been played in Canada for several centuries, and Beers’ rules of modern lacrosse had already been developed on the eastern side of the country. And, in fact, organized lacrosse had been played in Victoria,

Vancouver, and New Westminster for about a decade prior to the publication of Teit’s book. Because of this, it is rather unclear what Fosty and Fosty mean by the Thompson

Indians’ version of the game being a forerunner to lacrosse. In any case, Teit himself refers to the lacrosse sticks that he saw as having “nets similar to those of lacrosse sticks” (37). If what he saw were indeed a forerunner to lacrosse, he would not have made such a comparison nor used the term “lacrosse.” In fact, the Fostys’ claim is so outlandish, I wonder if perhaps the error is typographical. Perhaps they mean

“descendent” rather than “forerunner.22”

22 What the Fostys also did not include, but what I found in a chapter written by Teit that is quite similar to the content the Fostys include in their book, including identical illustrations, is that Teit bluntly states that the game he witnessed “was similar to that of ʻlacrosseʼ” (Teit, J. [1900]. The Thompson Indians of British Columbia. In F. Boas (Ed.), Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, page 277). Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 34

Another theory of the origins of lacrosse mentions the sport’s similarity to the

Mesoamerican ball-and-stick game. Again, the proponents of this theory are George and

Darril Fosty, who claim that the First Nations of British Columbia had long had ties to other tribes in North America:

The Indians of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest traded

extensively with other tribes, including those of the American Northwest

and Northern Mexico. Far from isolated, theirs was a world of economic

and cultural interaction over great distances, the likes of which were not

replicated again in North America until after the completion of the first

Continental railroad” (33).

Citing Paul Cheesman, the Fosty brothers describe the Wupatki Ruins near

Flagstaff, Arizona, where ancient Indian tribes gathered to exchange culture and knowledge (33). There lie the remains of a ball court that resembles the ancient ball courts of Mexico and South America. But video reenactment of the game, shown on the website “The Mesoamerican Ballgame” (www.ballgame.org), shows that the game is more like in nature—no sticks are involved—and is played in a stone court, so the Fostys’ claim that this sport is connected to lacrosse in British Columbia is rather tenuous. Fisher says that the connections between the Mesoamerican ball game and other ball games of the drainage system are unclear:

The tradition of the Mesoamerican court game did diffuse to the

Southwest, but whether the game eventually spread west, north, and east

and was distilled into distinct games through the continent’s extensive Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 35

trade network is a subject of speculation. If this premise is correct, the lack

of large city-states akin to those found in Mesoamerica may explain why

the ball games of eastern North America morphed into games with many

different forms and the elaborate Mesoamerican game did not remain

intact (13).

Fisher, it seems, is quite certain of the originators of lacrosse, the (6). He claims that modern lacrosse “is a direct descendent of only one of the many ‘traditional’ ball games” (18), and states that “it was middle-class Anglo-Canadians from Montreal and Mohawk Indians from the nearby Caughnawaga reserve whose cultural exchange led to the birth of modern lacrosse” (18).

Cleve Dheensaw is one of the few writers on the history of lacrosse who mentions a link to the railway. “Field lacrosse23 spread west as the nation moved west,” he writes in his book Lacrosse 100: One Hundred Years of Lacrosse in B.C. (11). “Lacrosse came to

B.C. with Canada and with the CPR. It accompanied Easterners coming across, bearing not or bats, but strange looking contraptions called lacrosse sticks” (12).

Unfortunately, Dheensaw doesn’t cite a source for this particular bit of information, so it is difficult to judge its validity.

Fisher is at the cusp of mentioning a link between the development of the transcontinental railway and the expansion of modern lacrosse when he writes, “The birth

23 was the only form of the game played until the 1930s, when box lacrosse was invented. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 36 of modern lacrosse reflected the construction of a transcontinental Canadian national identity rooted in imperialistic Anglo-Canadian attitudes toward the New World environment and its native inhabitants” (10). Although Fisher doesn’t outright say

“railway” or “railroad,” his choice of words would lead many Canadians to think of the national railway. What’s interesting, however, is that Fisher is American and has likely not grown up with the myth of the CPR that historian Daniel Francis discusses in

National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History, so Fisher’s wording may be coincidental. In fact, it could be that my frame of reference of attempting to link railway expansion to lacrosse expansion has indeed caused me to link two ideas that the author had no intention of linking. However, the timeline of the building of the railway and the migration of lacrosse westward across the country are too close to be coincidental. In fact, the promotion of the two seems to be closely linked as well.

Francis discusses the government’s promotion of Canada to Great Britain as follows:

The railway preceded settlement, it did not follow it, which meant that

once it was completed, there was no one to ride on it. In 1885, the great

boom in prairie settlement was still a decade in the future, and almost

nobody had any reason to take a train ride across the country. Faced with

the challenge of paying for itself, the CPR did two things. First of all, it

developed an immigration program for the Prairie West, and secondly it

began a campaign to convince travellers that western Canada, and

particularly the Rocky Mountains, were attractive tourist destinations. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 37

Both objectives could only be achieved by creating a favourable image of

western Canada and marketing it to the world. So the CPR embarked on a

mammoth selling job, which succeeded beyond its wildest dreams (2).

The development of lacrosse communities in Western Canada in the late 1800s also seems to coincide with the railroad construction.24 In 1871, , , became home to the Prince Rupert Lacrosse Club, and in 1906, a team from Souris,

Manitoba, played in the championship against the Montreal Shamrocks.

According to a June 25, 1884, article in the Calgary Herald archived at the Glenbow

Museum25, that area’s first lacrosse match, between the police and the citizens, was scheduled to be played on July 1 of that same year. As well, Morrow bluntly ties lacrosse to the railway, stating, “lacrosse’s ‘last spike’ of institutionalization was driven in the same year as the more celebrated last spike of the national railway system in

1885” (1992, 245).

According to a timeline posted on the British Columbia Lacrosse Association’s website, lacrosse was played in Victoria as early as 1883, corroborated by a photo available at the BC Archives26. Other early photos include a lacrosse team from

24 An exception to this is alluded to in the journals of Alexander Mackenzie, who noted in his late- eighteenth-century journals that Isle a la Crosse in Saskatchewan gets its name from “the game of the cross, which form[ed] a principal amusement among the natives” (69). No further information on the sport is provided.

25 NA-789-16 Glenbow Archives.

26 BC Archives; Call Number: F-08803; Catalogue Number: HP024349; Photographer/Artist: Spencer and Hastings; Date: 19 Feb 1883; Accession Number: 193501-001. http:// www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-14C093A/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_81/f_08803.txt Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 38

Revelstoke from an unspecified year,27 Kamloops in 1903,28 and an established team— sporting uniforms—from Rossland, BC, as early as 1904.29

One British Columbian team that confuses the issue of lacrosse being directly tied to the development of the railway, however, is that of a First Nations Community in Nass

River, BC (near Kitimat), an area not served by rail. The BC Archives has a photo from the 1890s of this team, the Kincolith lacrosse club,30 but there is next to nothing on record about the team. Closer inspection of the uniforms worn in the photo reveals the name

“Shamrocks,” so it is possible that the sport had some affiliation with the Irish missionaries, Robert Tomlinson and William Henry Collison, who were in the area at that time.

One of those missionaries, Collison, documents life in Nass River during the latter part of the nineteenth century in his memoir, In the Wake of the War Canoe. He provides some insight to the route that many settlers took from the eastern part of Canada to the west in the 1870s:

The Union Pacific Railroad had but lately been connected with San

Francisco [from Chicago], and much of it was as yet in the rough. As the

27 BC Archives, Call Number: B-00535; Catalogue Number: HP027933; Title: Revelstoke lacrosse team; Accession Number: 193501-001; http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-466F836/cgi-bin/ text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_102/b_00535.txt

28 BC Archives, Call Number: B-01870; Catalogue Number: HP030619; Title: Kamloops Stars Lacrosse Team, 1903; Date: 1903; Accession Number: 193501-001; http:// www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-466F836/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_103/b_01870.txt

29 BC Archives, Call Number: B-05222; Catalogue Number: HP037350; Title: The field lacrosse team from Rossland; Date: 1904; Accession Number: 193501-001; http:// www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-466F836/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_106/b_05222.txt

30 BC Archives, Call Number: E-07878; Catalogue Number: HP088091; Title: Nass River; O.M.S. Kincolith lacrosse team; Date: 189—; Accession Number: 198406-006; http:// www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-466F836/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_79/e_07878.txt Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 39

bridge over the Mississippi was only in process of construction, the

passengers had to leave the train and walk over a temporary bridge, as it

was considered unsafe to remain in the cars (40).

Once travellers arrived in San Francisco, they had to wait for a twice-monthly steamship to Victoria (41), and, after their arrival in Victoria six days later, had to wait for the sole small trading vessel that sailed north from Victoria (42).

What is missing from Collison’s memoirs, however, is any mention whatsoever of a ball-and-stick game being played by the natives at the time of his arrival, so we are no further ahead in finding out how and when lacrosse came to be played in that small, isolated community. Given the timelines of the westward migration of lacrosse both in

Canada and in the United States, as described in the next section, it seems rather plausible that lacrosse followed the same trail as the western settlers rather than being an isolated incident of lacrosse as an indigenous sport in Nass River, BC.

Modern lacrosse moved southward to the United States during the late 1860s and early 1870s, with the migration of some Canadians, according to Fisher (52), where the sport “attracted few followers from outside the affluent classes” (53). Fisher also claims that the Mohawk Indians from Caughnawaga and Saint Regis were also instrumental in promoting the game in the United States, through the creation of a “mobile entertainment industry based on the exhibition of ‘Indian shows, lacrosse contests, and traditional Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 40 dancing as well as the sale of baskets, beadwork, and carving.”31 By the late 1870s, lacrosse had become “a permanent fixture in metropolitan New York,” (53) and by 1885, lacrosse clubs had formed in several U.S. cities where Canadians had settled, including

Detroit, Chicago, and San Francisco, according to J.A. Hodge, Jr., who published an article entitled “Lacrosse in the United States” in an 1885 issue of Outing: An Illustrated

Monthly Magazine of Recreation. In that article, Hodge, Jr. also writes that “lacrosse began to get a footing in the West only three years ago, but with characteristic Western push, forty or fifty clubs have already been organized” (670). Thus it appears that modern lacrosse reached the western coast of both Canada and the United States at approximately the same time. Whether the sport moved simultaneously on either side of the border or not, however, is unclear. And while I’ve heard reference to an old newspaper article that states that some of those who worked building a transcontinental railroad in Canada travelled with lacrosse sticks, I have not been able to locate proof of the assertion.

What initially led me to establish a connection between lacrosse and the railway was the fact that the national trophy for lacrosse was donated by master railway builder

Donald Mann in 1910. It would seem that there would be some motivation behind the donation of such a prestigious gold cup, whether it be a fondness for or even participation in the sport or acknowledgement of a relationship between the sport and the building of the railway. Unfortunately, I uncovered nothing on Donald Mann’s motivation for donating a trophy, despite having looked through historical books on the development of the Canadian railway, newspaper archives, sports chronicles and more. The closest I

31 Fisher, page 53. Here, Fisher provides a footnote to David Blanchard, “Entertainment, Dance and Northern Mohawk Showmanship,” American Indian Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1983): 2–26. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 41 managed to get was the following from a sports coach/scout’s website, “Alberta has a rich history of lacrosse without many people even knowing it. Mannville, Alberta is actually named in honour of Donald Mann whose name also graces the most sought after trophy in Senior Box Lacrosse.”32 While it is common knowledge the trophy’s name is eponymous, the assertion that Mannville is named after Donald Mann is not even corroborated on the town’s website, although the town definitely has strong links to the

Canadian Northern Railway, which Donald Mann worked for. Because of this, unfortunately, I am presently unable to prove my hypothesis.

Despite my lack of proof that lacrosse’s expansion to western Canada is directly linked to the development of the trans-Canadian railway, I have no doubt whatsoever that the railway was instrumental in the maintenance of a competitive environment on the local British Columbian lacrosse scene. After all, clubs did have to travel in order to compete33.

Interestingly, inter-city rivalry between the Victoria and New Westminster lacrosse teams reflected the rivalry that was initiated by discussions between Victoria and mainland communities of where to put the terminus for the trans-Canadian railway, as documented in the Mainland Guardian, a newspaper based in New Westminster, BC. In the November 16, 1870, issue of the paper, an article regarding a meeting on the

Dominion Railway discusses the following motion, among others:

32 http://ridleyscouting.com/alberta.html

33 Fisher writes, “But the growth in the numbers of clubs and registered athletes gave rise to a desire for interclub competition [. . .] Unfortunately for the clubs, however, costly railway trips for away-from-home games made it difficult for all players to defray their own expenses” (35). Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 42

That this meeting of the inhabitants of the city of New Westminster, most

strongly deprecate the agitation at present carried on by the people and

Press of Victoria regarding the terminus route of the transcontinental

railway, believing to be hurtful to the cause of Confederation, and tending

to create a sectional feeling which at this important epoch in the history of

the colony ought not to exist.

A November 23, 1870, article, entitled “Victoria Again,” discusses “Victorian greed,” stating that “no concessions, however liberal, will ever satisfy the Victorians,” while a

February 15, 1871, article, “The Victorian Terminus Agitation,” states, “The idea of making an out-lying Island the terminus of a railway for a colony possessing the number of square miles which form the areas of British Columbia, was an absurdity on the face of it” (1).

This rivalry between the communities was also apparent in the game of lacrosse.

When the British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association (BCALA) was formed in

1890, three teams were involved: Victoria, Vancouver and New Westminster. Writes

Dheensaw: “The rivalries between the three clubs was intense and remained that way between lacrosse fans of the three cities well into the 1960s and 1970s.” (12). It was this rivalry that led to the New Westminster Salmonbellies getting their name, according to

Stan Shillington in an article on the British Columbia Lacrosse Association’s website. As

I later documented in my article for The Walrus,

According to local lore, riled-up Vancouver fans called out “Get their

salmon bellies!” during a game between the two cities. The barb was in Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 43

reference to New West’s once-prominent canning industry and the team’s

red jerseys. Rather than taking it as an insult, the team revelled in their

new name and subsequently added the image of a fish to their jersey (30–

31).34

While Vancouver no longer has a lacrosse team, the rivalry between the New

Westminster Salmonbellies and the continues to this day, surpassed perhaps only by the rivalry between the Salmonbellies and the Adanacs.

Despite the fact that nobody knows for certain whether or not the field version of lacrosse is a Canadian sport, box lacrosse truly is a sport made in Canada. In the 1930s, to maximize use (and profits) from vacant hockey arenas during the summer months, the sport was moved indoors. And, according to Dheensaw, “at least some sources give credit to a British Columbian” (16). The anecdote Dheensaw shares in his book is that of an old-time Vancouver player, Jim McConaghy, who’d read a newspaper account of a slightly different version of lacrosse being played indoors in Australia. “Strangely enough,” he writes, “the story turned out to have no shred of truth in it whatsoever, but some old-timers insist that it gave McConaghy the idea to go to the Canadian Amateur

Lacrosse Association in 1931 with the idea for box lacrosse” (16). The British Columbia

Lacrosse Association’s (BCLA) website, while acknowledging Dheensaw’s story, states the following: Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 44

Although its origins are somewhat shrouded, Box Lacrosse was first

played about this time. Some maintain that the game just naturally

evolved around 1929 or 1930 in Ontario when some lacrosse players in

Ontario noticed hockey rinks sitting empty in the summer and moved in

just to shoot the ball around.35

In any case, McConaghy, has never been officially recognized as being the founder of box lacrosse, so there is no way of knowing whether Dheensaw’s anecdote is true or not, like many other aspects of lacrosse’s history.

Conclusion

One of the most important discoveries I made during this autoethnographic journey into the history of lacrosse in Western Canada is the fact that historical research is never black and white. “Facts” are not so much truth as they are hypotheses that may or may not ever be proven.

As a researcher whose own theories may be proven wrong somewhere down the road, I have come to realize that even seemingly incorrect hypotheses and information can help build the canon of literature surrounding the history of the sport of lacrosse.

What’s more, historical tangents that may or may not be correct, such as the connection to the Viking game of knattleikr, for example, may lead other researchers to make conjectures along equally tangential paths and perhaps to find more truths about the history of the sport. So, while I like to think of myself as a stickler for the facts, I have

35 http://bcla.centraldesktop.com/spirit2/doc/1957064/w-BriefHistoryOfLacrosseInBritishColumbia Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 45 evolved into a researcher who is perhaps a bit less judgmental about the work of those researchers who have gone before me. I am aware that they may have had biases, and that’s okay. After all, the desire to find out more about a particular topic or area of interest is in itself indicative of a bias.

As researchers, when we don’t find something ground-breaking, the best we can do is compile the “facts” as we believe them to be, contribute to the greater body of literature, and hope that one day we will be proven either right or wrong. And either outcome is equally fine—although our egos would obviously prefer it if we were proven right—for, either way, we have provided the scaffolding upon which those who follow can continue to build upon the historical research. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 46

Works Cited

Adamski, Barbara K. “An Upstream Battle: One of Canada’s Oldest Lacrosse Clubs Attempts to Reclaim History.” The Walrus. May 2005: 30–32. Print.

“A Lacrosse Timeline.” British Columbia Lacrosse Association. http:// bcla.centraldesktop.com/spirit2/doc/1942279/w-HistoryOfLacrosse. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

Attfield, Simon, & Dowell, John. “Information Seeking and Use by Newspaper Journals.” Journal of Documentation 59.2 (2003):187–204. Print.

Beers, W. George. Lacrosse: The National Game of Canada. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. 1879. Revised version. Print.

Bonikowsky, Laura. “ Re: TCE Site Information Request.” Messages to the author. 8–10 May 2006. Email.

Brébeuf, Jean. Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1636 envoyée au R. Père provincial de la Compagnie de Jésus en la province de France. (1636). http://www.canadiana.org/view/94031/0407. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.

Buckle, George Earle. (ed). The Letters of Queen Victoria 1870–1878 Vol II. 2002. Photocopy provided by the Royal Archives.

Canadian Lacrosse Association. National Summer Sport. http://www.lacrosse.ca/ nationalsport.asp [link no longer active; moved to http://cla.pointstreaksites.com/ view/cla/about-42/the-sport-of-lacrosse/lacrosse-canada-s-national-sport]. Web. 14 Apr. 2006.

Collison, W. H. In the Wake of the War Canoe. http://ia700102.us.archive.org/7/items/ wakewarcanoe00collrich/wakewarcanoe00collrich_djvu.txt. Web. 29 Oct. 2010.

Coulter, Cathy A., & Smith, Mary Lee. “Discourse on Narrative Research: The Construction Zone: Literary Elements in Narrative Research.” Educational Researcher, 38.8 (2009): 577–590. Print.

Dheensaw, Cleve. Lacrosse 100: One Hundred Years of Lacrosse in BC. Victoria, BC: Orca, 1990. Print.

Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Travellers’ Tales. London: Jessica Kinsley Publishers, 2004. Print.

Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Our Selves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Print. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 47

Fisher, Donald M. Lacrosse: A History of the Game. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Print.

Fosty, George, & Fosty, Darril. Splendid is the Sun: The 5,000 Year History of Hockey. New York: Stryker-Indigo, 2003. Print.

Francis, Daniel. National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1997. Print.

Gutkind, Lee, ed. In Fact: The Best of Creative Non-Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2005. Print.

Hodge, J. A. Jr. “Lacrosse in the United States,” Outing: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation 7.1 (1885): 665–676. Print.

Hovgaard, W. (1914). The voyages of the Norsemen to America. The American- Scandinavian Foundation.

“Hurling.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d. http://www.britannica.com/eb/ article-9041603?query=hurling&ct=eb. Web. 30 Oct. 2010.

“Kamloops Stars Lacrosse Team, 1903.” Photograph. 1903. BC Archives. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

“Lacrosse.” Calgary Herald. 25 June 1884. Glenbow Museum. http://ww2.glenbow.org/ search/archivesPhotosResults.aspx. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

Lavallée, Omer. “.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, n.d., http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.comindex.cfmPgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA000 1322. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

Mackenzie, Alexander. The Journals of Alexander Mackenzie: Exploring Across Canada in 1789 & 1793. Torrington, WY: Narrative Press, 2001. Print.

Morrill, William Kelso. Lacrosse. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1952. Print.

Morrow, David. “The Institutionalization of Sport: A Case Study of Canadian Lacrosse, 1844–1914.” International Journal of the 9.2 (1992): 238–251. Print.

Morrow, David. A Concise History of Sport in Canada. , ON: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 48

“Nass River; O.M.S. Kincolith lacrosse team.” Photograph. 189–. BC Archives. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

Ridley Scouting Services. Finding Your Future Star or Your Opponent’s Weakness. http:// ridleyscouting.com/alberta.html. Web. 29 Oct. 2010.

Roberts, Milton R., & Weyand, Alexander M. The Lacrosse Story. Baltimore, MD: H. and A. Herman, 1965. Print.

Robertson, Heather. Writing from Life: A Guide for Writing True Stories. Toronto, ON: M & S, 1998. Print.

“Revelstoke Lacrosse Team.” Photograph. n.d. BC Archives. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

“The Adjourned Meeting of the Local Railway.” Mainland Guardian, 16 Nov. 1870: 3. Print.

“The Victorian Terminus Agitation.” Mainland Guardian. 15 Feb. 1871: 4. Print. Sparkes, Andrew C. “Autoethnography and Narratives of Self: Reflections on Criteria in Action.” Sociology of Sport Journal, 17 (2000): 21–43. Print.

Shillington, Stan. “Down Memory Lane: Salmonbellies: A Sports Legend. British Columbia Lacrosse Association. http://bcla.centraldesktop.com/spirit2/doc/ 1942298/w-NewWestminsterASportsLegend. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

Spencer and Hastings. “Lacross [sic] team, left to right; W. Wadhams; A. Cameron; A.D. Crease; W. and R. McDonald; Captain M. Walker; R. Finlayson; H. Smith; T. Bryden; Hugo Beaven; William Beaven; R. Harvey; Christ Church Cathedral in the background, Victoria.” Photograph. 19 Feb. 1883. BC Archives. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

Skov, Richard B., & Sherman, Steven J. “Information-Gathering Processes: Diagnosticity, Hypothesis-Confirmatory Strategies, and Perceived Hypothesis Confirmation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22 (1986): 93–121. Print.

Teit, James. The Thompson Indians of British Columbia. In F. Boas (Ed.), Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 1900: 277–278. Print.

“The field lacrosse team from Rossland.” Photograph. 1904. BC Archives. Web. 21 Nov. 2010.

“Topics of the Week.” The Canadian News and Dominion Review: A Chronicle of Opinion and Events of Interest to the Colonist, the Emigrant, and the Capitalist 18(865), 26 Aug. 1875: 1. Print. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 49

Vennum, Thomas Jr. American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Print.

“Victoria Again.” Mainland Guardian, 23 Nov. 1870: 2. Print.

Wall, Sarah. “Easier Said Than Done: Writing an Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 7.1 (2008): 38–53. Print.

Weber, Christine, producer and director. Lost kingdoms of the Maya. [video excerpt]. A National Geographic Special, 1999. http://www.ballgame.org/sub_section.asp? section=2&sub_section=4 Web. 29 Oct. 2010. Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 50

Appendix 1

On 5-May-06, at 12:27 PM, REFERENCE (LAC-BAC) wrote:

To: Barbara Adamski Our Reference No.: 1-10544

Dear Ms. Adamski:

Thank you for your request concerning the date when Father Jean de Brébeuf witnessed a game of lacrosse.

There are various dates given for this event on websites and in publications. Here are some examples:

1683 Canadian Lacrosse Association http://www.lacrosse.ca/nationalsport.asp

Schrodt, Barbara. Sport Canadiana / [B. Schrodt, G. Redmond, R. Baka] -- : Executive Sport Publications, c1980. -- 224 p. : ill. ; 22 x 28 cm. -- ISBN 0919035000 (pbk.) - P. 105. --AMICUS No. 1668217

1863 Canadian Lacrosse Association http://www.lacrosse.ca/know.asp

1636 McGill Lacrosse http://www.mcgilllacrosse.com/about.html US Lacrosse http://www.uslacrosse.org/the_sport/index.phtml http://www.scottish-lacrosse.org.uk/History/index.htm

Cuddon, J. A. (John Anthony), 1928-. The international dictionary of sports and games / J. A. Cuddon -- New York : Schocken Books, 1980, c1979. -- xxviii, 870 p. : ill. ; 29 cm. -- ISBN 080523733X - P. 492. -- AMICUS No. 934261

Culin, Robert Stewart, 1858-1929. Games of the North American Indians / Stewart Culin -- New York : Dover Publications, 1975. -- 846 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. -- ISBN 0486231259 - P. 589. -- AMICUS No. 17525

Jetté, Maurice. - "Primitive Indian Lacrosse : Skill or Slaughter?" -- Proceedings of the Second World Symposium on the History of Sport and Physical Education : May 31-June 3, 1971, Banff, Alberta, Canada -- [Banff?, Alta. : s.n.], 1971. -- v, 279 p. ; 36 cm. - P. 107. -- AMICUS No. 6737915

The Jesuit relations and allied documents : travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791 / edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites -- New York : Pageant, 1959. -- 73 v. in 36 : ill. ; 23 cm. - P. 185. -- AMICUS No. 2397770

1637 Fisher, Donald Mathew. Contested ground [microform] : North American cultures and the history of lacrosse / by Donald Matthew Fisher – Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1997. -- 6 microfiches. - P. 17. -- AMICUS No. 18471276

Sticks, Balls, and Railway Ties—Adamski 51

Dheensaw, Cleve, 1956-. -- Lacrosse 100 : one hundred years of lacrosse in B.C. / Cleve Dheensaw -- Victoria, B.C. : Orca Book Publishers, c1990. -- 120 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. -- ISBN 0920501451 - P. 11. -- AMICUS No. 9316168

1638 Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm? PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004453 [Note that this url now links to my revised version of the article.]

Since Jean de Brébeuf died in 1649, it is unlikely that neither 1683 nor 1863 is the correct date. The date (1638) in our Erratum (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/bulletin/015017-9911-20- e.html) was likely taken from the Canadian Encyclopedia.

1636 is the year given to the original text of the letter that you found in Early Canadiana Online (http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/PageView/94031/0407?id=3abaa3b6d0c8c5cd) and therefore we will be considering making a necessary change to our text in the Erratum.

Please also note that I contacted the Historica Foundation of Canada, the publisher of the Canadian Encyclopedia, and the Canadian Lacrosse Association so that they can consider making changes to their texts.

Lastly, the following websites about lacrosse may be of interest to you:

CBC Archives http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-41-824/sports/lacrosse/ Living Traditions http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Traditions/English/lacrosse.html Aboriginal Innovations http://www.schoolnet.ca/aboriginal/handbook/arts_lacrosse.html Games of the Plains Cree http://collections.ic.gc.ca/games/ball/lacrosse.html E-lacrosse http://www.e-lacrosse.com/na.htm Sports and Recreation http://www.civilization.ca/orch/www07g_e.html

We hope that you will find this information useful.

Regards,

Phanlert Panaram Reference, Genealogy and Consultation Division Library and Archives Canada