Group Looks To Honor Hockey’s ‘Founding Father’
23/02/2009 16:15
A group of hockey history enthusiasts -- with the high-profile endorsement of Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- has been given permission to erect a long-overdue memorial at Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery in honour of the "founding father" of modern hockey, who lies forgotten there in an unmarked grave.
But the bid to pay tribute to former Senate law clerk James Creighton, the man credited with codifying and spreading Canada's favourite game from Halifax to Montreal to Ottawa in the late 1800s, has momentarily stalled for want of a few thousand dollars to purchase a commemorative marker.
"We're close to our goal, but we're still looking for donations," said Len Kotylo, past president of the Toronto-based Society for International Hockey Research.
"There's nothing there at the moment," he added.
"We're looking to put up a modest marker, date of birth and so on, maybe one sentence about his role in the history of hockey -- and a couple of crossed sticks."
The society's co-founder, Bill Fitsell, author of How Hockey Happened, says the oversight appears to be the result of the fact that Creighton's wife died just a week after he did, at age 80, in 1930. The couple had no children.
"We're hopeful of seeing something installed and dedicated this year," he said.
More from the Edmonton Journal.
SWIVEL HIPS SAYS:
As I said yesterday, there seems to be a real ‘fascination’ throughout the world right now with the origins of hockey, who has the oldest hockey stick and who was hockey’s ‘founding father.’