Black Ice Hockey and Sports Hall of Fame conference opens today
Organizers hope to bring history of black athletes to light
By CHAD LUCAS Sports Reporter

Almost thirty years before Montreal Canadiens star Bernard Boom Boom Geoffrion was born, a black Nova Scotian named Eddie Martin was firing off slapshots in the little-known Colored Hockey League, says hockey historian George Fosty.

Martin, a baseball player-turned-skater for the Halifax Eurekas, was known for his vicious, full-windup shot in 1903 – long before Geoffrion claimed to have invented the slapshot as a youngster.

"We’re looking at (Martin) as maybe one of the early innovators of the slapshot," said Fosty, co-author of Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925.

It’s a suggestion that would be met with surprise – or maybe cries of blasphemy – by the average die-hard hockey fan. But it’s just one nugget that Fosty, a British Columbia-born writer and historian, uncovered as he dug into a dusty corner of hockey history that has gone largely unrecognized.

"There’s 300 (black) players that played serious hockey prior to 1958 that nobody knows about," said Fosty. "It’s time to say, ‘Hey, we’ve missed something here.’"

Fosty and others hope to bring some of that history to light with the first Black Ice Hockey and Sports Hall of Fame conference, running today through Sunday at Dartmouth Sportsplex.

The three-day forum will feature presenters from Herb Carnegie, a standout hockey player in the 1940s and grandfather of former Halifax Moosehead Rane Carnegie, to Arif Khatib, founder of the Afro-American and Ethnic Sports Hall Of Fame in Oakland, Ca.

A host of local athletes and authors will also be involved, and the event will conclude with the first induction ceremony into the black sports hall of fame.

Fosty, the president of the Society of North American Hockey Historians and Researchers, said his interest in Black Canadian hockey history was piqued as he pored over research for other projects. He has co-written two hockey books – Black Ice and Splendid is the Sun: The 5,000 Year History of Hockey – with his brother Darril Fosty.

"Of the 6,000 books we reviewed, there were only three references to African-Canadians," George Fosty said. "Just because of that alone, a conference like this warrants participation."

Fosty, who lives in New York, said Dartmouth is a natural location for the international conference. He considers Nova Scotia the birthplace of modern hockey and credits the local Colored Hockey League – started in 1895 by black churches looking to attract a younger flock – with several innovations that helped shape the game.

Besides Martin and his slapshot, a three-foot-six goaltender named Henry Braces Franklin of the Dartmouth Jubilee is the first documented goalie to play a down-on-the-ice style, Fosty said.

The historian admits he was skeptical of some of the stories he uncovered. But as he dove deeper into black history – the kind unrecorded by most mainstream, white historians – his outlook began to change.

"(At first) I believed it had to be wrong because it didn’t jibe with the modern interpretation," Fosty said. "But I’ve learned it’s often our traditional history that we’ve accepted that is wrong.

"I thought, ‘I’m going to start looking at this a lot more seriously. There’s obviously something here that hasn’t been addressed.’"

The conference ends on Sunday with the recognition of 50 athletes and writers who’ve helped advance black sports in North America. Thirty-five come from the hockey world, including Carnegie, former NHLer Bill Riley of Amherst and John Paris Jr. of Windsor, who coached in several pro leagues. Other inductees include boxer Buddy Daye and local writer Charles Saunders, author of Sweat And Soul: The Saga of Black Boxers From the Halifax Forum to Caesar’s Palace (1990).

The hall of fame is a virtual construct for now but Fosty envisions it as a multimillion-dollar museum, research centre and tourist attraction – and he wants to see it built here, possibly in Dartmouth or in the Prestons area.

That’s a long-term goal, he says. For now, he hopes to see the conference become an annual event and gather steam to launch a fund-raising campaign within four years.

Fosty knows some will dismiss the idea of a black sports hall of fame as a pipe dream; he’s already heard from the critics for his books that shake up the hockey status quo.

But he says these stories deserve to be told.

"This is not just a black history," he said. "This is a Canadian hockey history, this is a Nova Scotian history. There’s something here for everybody."

clucas@herald.ca