From the back cover of "On the Origin of Hockey"
The debate about the origin of hockey appears to be as old as
the debate about the origin of species, though if we compare the
number of pages dedicated in every day's newspapers to hockey and
those dedicated to animals and plants, the relative importance of
each quickly becomes obvious (well, to hockey fans at least).
Hockey historians have been looking for the smallest piece of
evidence that would reveal the secrets of the origin of hockey.
However a wealth of evidence is available - as soon as one starts
looking in the right place. This book does not present a new theory
based on slivers of evidence. It is a presentation of known facts
about the origins of hockey, based on tens of thousands of words,
from hundreds of sources, written about hockey played on the ice,
with skates, before Montreal's first recorded game.
Carl Giden is a medical doctor who has been researching the
origins of hockey for more than two decades. He made news in 2008,
together with Patrick Houda, when they announced their discovery of
a reference to ice hockey played in 1839 on Chippawa Creek (Niagara
Falls, Ontario).
Sports journalist Patrick Houda has also been researching the
origins of hockey for over two decades and teamed up with Giden on
several projects since the mid-1990s. It was the two of them who,
from Sweden, wrote biographies for the main Canadian pioneers of
hockey, including the eighteen players who participated in the
first recorded game played in Montreal, in 1875.
As a member (past president) of the Society for International
Hockey Research, Montreal-region-based Jean-Patrice Martel was most
impressed by the findings of Giden and Houda, and always pleaded
that they should publish them. The trio finally teamed up to
produce this book, with the hopes of reinvigorating the debate on
hockey's origins and setting it on sound foundations.
"