Paul Kitchen, Ottawa hockey historian and co-curator of 125 Years of Hockey in Ottawa, surveys hockey artifacts on display at the City Hall Art Gallery.
Stained hockey jerseys cast motionless shadows on the back wall of the City Hall Art Gallery stirring up memories of days spent practicing on a backyard pond or cheering on the home team from centre-ice seats.
These jerseys are symbols of the close ties the nation’s capital has to Canada's favourite game. This was Paul Kitchen’s goal when he proposed the exhibit – 125 Years of Hockey in Ottawa.
“We wanted to highlight the important relationship Ottawa has to this great game,” says Kitchen, a hockey historian and one of the exhibits curators.
He and his co-curator, Jim McAuley, approached City Hall in January of last year with the idea of creating an exhibit that celebrated the rich heritage of Canada’s favourite pastime, with an Ottawa spotlight.
When he realized that 2008 was the 125-year anniversary of hockey in Ottawa, Kitchen knew something needed to mark the milestone and celebrate the rich connection we all have with the great game.
Kitchen, a former librarian, lifelong hockey fan and past President of the Society for International Hockey Research, has written extensively on hockey history.
His most recent book, Win, Tie or Wrangle: The Inside Story of the Old Ottawa Senators 1883-1935, has been praised as an in-depth and detailed history of the early days of Ottawa hockey.
Kitchen says the exhibit was designed to educate and inform the public by taking them into the locker room.
He says Ottawa residents should develop a sense of pride and realize their city has a long history as a hockey hotbed.
In hockey, timing is everything, and the time was right for this exhibit, says Kitchen.
With the World Junior hockey tournament and the Bell Capital Cup underway, a hockey exhibit celebrating Canada's love of the game was a lucky coincidence, he says.
Some big-ticket items such as the Stanley Cup, the World Junior and the Bell Capital Cup trophies were on display in the exhibit, which ran from December 2, 2008 to January 18, 2009.
Allowing the public to be so close to these great hockey symbols was the key to drawing almost 8,000 residents to the exhibit.
“This kind of exhibit gives the archives a chance to showcase some of our artefacts,” says Serge Blondin, the Ottawa Archives exhibit coordinator. He says it also allows for a partnership between the archives and private collectors, who have many fascinating pieces that should be shown to the public.
Cards, game sheets, original photographs and trophies dating back to 1883 help to tell a story that precedes the Ottawa Senators of the 1990s.
Coupled with the Ottawa Archives exhibit is The Last Wooden Hockey Stick Made in Canada Project.
Having heard the news in November of 2007 that Sher-wood’s signature wooden hockey stick was going to outsource their production of wood models, teachers, parents and students at Robert Hopkins Public School took it upon themselves to celebrate the end of this 58-year tradition of Canadian-made sticks. From there, The Art and Joy of Hockey was born.
“Hockey became the school-wide issue,” says Julie Miller, Principal at Robert Hopkins.
What began as an art project with each classroom designing their own stick, soon captured the attention of the entire school.
Over 300 children from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 5 took part in the project. A selection of their hockey sticks are on display outside the art gallery.