Kingston, Ont., and Windsor, N.S., battle to be hockey's birthplace

If you visit theofficialwebsiteof thetown of Windsor, N.S., you'll see the community of 4,000 claimsthere's"near-irrefutable" evidence they're thebirthplace of icehockey.

Well, Mark Potter has his refutation lined up like a Sidney Crosby slapshot.

"Theirentire story about [being] the birthplace of hockey is really based on a reference that was written in a book of fiction," said Potter, the president of theOriginal Hockey Hall of Famein Kingston, Ont., on CBC Ottawa'sAll In ADayWednesday afternoon.

'Birthplace of hockey' copyright battle

The question of who truly owns the rights to the phrase erupted earlier this week, when thetown of Windsor brieflydropped the gloves with the Windsor Hockey Heritage Society.

The societyowns the copyright to thephrase "birthplace of hockey," even though thephrase appears on signs around Windsor and even on the mayor's business cards.

On Tuesday, the societysaid any use of the trademark would have to be approved by its board and lawyer. One day later, the twosides announced they had come to an agreement.

Which is all well and good, but it doesn't answer the question: isWindsor, N.S., really where the game was born?

Soldier's diary suggests otherwise

According to Potter, British soldiers stationed in Kingston played hockey "as early as the 1840s,"and the first written reference to the word "hockey"was made in a diary by a23-year-old lieutenant stationed there a diary now in the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa.

The town of Windsorcites the writings of Thomas Chandler Haliburton as the first known reference to Canada's game, in particularHaliburton's references to a game called"hurley" being played on a local pondin the 1810s.

Beyond the fact that Haliburton'sreferences appear in a work of fiction, Potter says there's another issue: hurley was just one of a number of "stick-and-ball" games that were popular in the 19th century, along with bandy, shinnyand shinty.

"Hurley was obviously one of the origins of the sportof hockey, but obviously wasn't played exactly like the game of hockey," said Potter.

But before Kingstoniansstart carving their own hockey-promoting slogans into municipal infrastructure, they may want to take a quick time out.

The Society for International Hockey Research, made up of hockey historians, has not said where it thinks the game started, but they note the first eyewitness account of an organized game was played in neither Kingston nor Windsor butat the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal on March 3, 1875.