Be a part of history!
If you go to the Tulameen-Princeton hockey game tomorrow night (Saturday, December 28), you’ll be joining in a long tradition. Besides that, “Hockey is the swiftest game played and has a peculiar fascination.”
I clipped this event poster from the Tulameen and District Fire Department page on Facebook last night, and wondered just how long the Tulameen-Princeton hockey rivalry has been going on.
Here’s what I found:
The first Princeton-Tulameen hockey game was played on December 21, 1911. The Similkameen Star (Wednesday, January 25, 1911) reported that although the Tulameen-Granite Creek team lost 7-4 to Princeton, the “public await the next match with interest and hope to see the plucky Tulameeners in better luck.”
On February 14, 1911, the “plucky Tulameeners” lost the next game as well. The final score being 5 – 0 in favour of Princeton. The Star reported that this was likely because the Tulameen team had “had very little practice since the last match with Princeton.” (The Similkameen Star, Wednesday, February 15, 1911, page 1).
However, a week later, on home ice, the Coalmont-Granite Creek-Tulameen team scored two goals for the win! The Similkameen Star reported this in a short paragraph on Wednesday, March 1, 1911:
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An early hockey game in Princeton – an undated photograph of hockey being played on or near Bridge Street. It may well have been at the Owl Skating Rink, which opened in 1908.
Does anyone have any ideas about when this photograph may have been taken? Or who the players might be?