As a Black and Asian hockey fan, when I first started getting into the sport, I automatically assumed that hockey was a white sport, and that it had been that way from the beginning.

However, as I dove into hockey history, I realized how whitewashed the history of hockey is. People tend to think of hockey as a white sport because that’s the history that’s celebrated, and non-white folks have been excluded in order to make hockey become a white sport.

Here are the facts:

Learning this rich hockey history has helped me feel at home as a Black hockey fan, and has helped me understand the challenges we face as we try to make hockey inclusive for everyone. 🤎

The Colored Hockey League was a Black hockey league in Nova Scotia that started in 1895. Africville began as a maroon colony but many residents had come from America on the Underground Railroad. Formed from Baptist congregations, they innovated on the rules of the game. Did you know that the first player to ever do a slap shot was Eddie Martin in the Colored Hockey League?

The Colored Hockey League was thriving but things changed when a railroad company built a line through Africville. The city of Halifax seized the land. White rink owners refused to give ice time to Black teams. The city closed the Green Market which was an open air market where Black and Indigenous folks did business. The city economically stifled Africville.

The Colored Hockey League returned in the 1920s but it was never able to reach its original peak due to racism and economic factors.

In the 1960s the city of Halifax forcibly relocated the residents of Africville.

Angela James is considered the first superstar of modern women's ice hockey.

She was a member of numerous teams in the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League (COWHL) from its founding in 1980 until 1998 and finished her career in the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL). She was named her league's most valuable player six times.

Internationally, James played in the first women's world championship, a 1987 tournament that was unsanctioned. She played with Team Canada in the first IIHF World Women's Championship in 1990, 1992, 1994 and 1997. Controversially, she was left off the team for the first women's Olympic hockey tournament in 1998.

She was one of the first three women inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008 and one of the first two inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.

Willie O’Ree is often celebrated during Black History Month as the first Black player to ever play in the NHL in 1958. But what if I told you there was another Black hockey player before O’Ree who should have played in the NHL but was excluded?

Meet Herb Carnegie.

From 1944-48, he played for Shawinigan and Sherbrooke of the semi-professional Quebec Provincial League and was named most valuable player in 1946, 1947 and 1949.

In 1948, Carnegie was given a tryout with the New York Rangers and offered a contract worth $2,700 to play in the Rangers' minor league system. However, he was offered less money than he was earning in the Quebec league and turned down all three offers made by the Rangers organization during his tryout. (they lowballed him)

As a black man playing hockey in the 1940s and 1950s, Carnegie endured his share of racism. In one notorious 1938 incident, Conn Smythe, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, watched Carnegie play as a member of the Toronto Young Rangers. Smythe is alleged to have said either that he would accept Carnegie on the team if he were white or that he would pay $10,000 to anyone who could turn Carnegie white.

In 1954, he founded one of Canada's first hockey schools, Future Aces, and through his work in training young hockey players, became a member of both the Order of Ontario and the country's highest civilian award, the Order of Canada.

He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2022 as a builder.