The iceing on Dartmouths cake

Winter in Nova Scotia means outdoor fun. Now that December is here, we find ourselves thinking about snowmen, sleds, forts, skating and hockey.
When your great-great grandparents were children, and continuing until the early 1950's, Dartmouth was known as the "ice emporium." The two to three month ice harvest was a booming business here.
Big blocks of ice were cut from Lake Banook and Lake MicMac and hauled by horse-drawn sleighs to ice houses and ice stores where they were sold to families to keep their food fresh and cold. Some ice was even exported to New England.
With so much thick ice on our lakes, ice sports were as popular more than 100 years ago as they are now. In 1861, John Forbes, a foreman at Dartmouth's Starr Manufacturing Company, invented Starr ACME Club spring skates, which were sold all over the world. Before that, skates were just wooden blades with metal runners, strapped to the skater's boots.
The self-fastening Starr skates were made of steel and attached securely to the skater's boots with a mechanical lever. They were also styled differently for men and women, and adapted to various ice surfaces.
In the meantime, the Mi'kmaq were hand- carving beautiful, strong hockey sticks (called hurley sticks at that time) from hornbeam trees. People in other parts of the country heard about these sticks and asked Dartmouth's Mi'kmaq to make some for them. The Mi'kmaq prototype is still used today, except that the blade was made shorter and wider in 1920.
Dartmouthian, Martin Jones, in his book Hockey's Home: Halifax/Dartmouth - The Origin of Canada's Game, has written a strong argument that Dartmouth is actually the birthplace of hockey (also called wicket and ricket), a distinctly different game from lacrosse and hurley.
Jones gives evidence that hockey was invented and played on the Dartmouth lakes by opposing teams of eight using a wooden puck, before it was played anywhere else in the world.
Dartmouth is still a big name in ice sports because of a succession of professional hockey stars from here, most recently our own Sidney Crosby from Cole Harbour.
Remember to send your questions about anything that interests you to smartypantsjw @gmail.com
Jacqueline Warlow, mother of three, grandmother of six, writer and retired educator, lives in Dartmouth.