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Did you know …

that the world’s largest hockey stick is in Duncan, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island? The 207 foot, 32 ton wooden stick once adorned the entrance to Vancouver’s Expo 86. Duncan has been home to the colossal stick since 1988 and has been trying for the past 20 years to get it recognized officially in The Guinness Book of World Records as the planet’s largest. Recently, the town succeeded in its quest, though perhaps that has something to do with the fact that British Columbia billionaire Jimmy Pattison now owns the Guinness World Book Company, publisher of the famous record tome.

Who drew up the first recorded rules for organized hockey?

James George Aylwin Creighton, a McGill University student, a Halifax native, and the captain of one of the teams that played the first indoor hockey game in Montreal, has the distinction of drawing up the first recorded rules for organized hockey. He accomplished this feat in 1873, and the rules were published in the Montreal Gazette on February 27, 1877, after a series of four games between Creighton’s Metropolitan Club and the rival St. James Club held in Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Creighton’s rules, now called the Montreal Rules, likely derived from the earlier Halifax Rules. They are, in many respects, quite similar to the rules of field hockey.