and hockey on the frozen ponds of BC internment camps.
The Canadian Japanese Hockey League is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year,
but the roots for the sport in the community go back many years before. Young Japanese
Canadian boys started skating and playing shinny on the frozen ponds and rivers that were
located near many of the internment camps in interior British Columbia.
For equipment, some nisei, many now in their late 70s and 80s, told me their parents
bought skates, sticks, pucks and gloves through the Eaton's catalogue. "The stuff then had to
come all the way from Toronto," remembered George Anzai.
Or they might obtain some equipment from sports stores in nearby towns. All that was
often augmented by stuffing magazines or anything they could find, under their pants to serve as shin pads.
How good did the JCs get in their hockey-playing ability? According to a CBC
movie produced a few years back, a team made up solely of JCs in their teens and early
20s beat a local town team.
Efforts to find out more about hockey in the camps have been mostly fruitless, largely
because the sport was not organized like baseball, which was very popular in the camps.
Baseball teams and leagues were organized in most of the camps. A championship of
sorts was played between them. Baseball was helped because it was
mostly organized by ex-Asahi players, who were scattered throughout the interior
camps. The Asahi team, which became famous in the Vancouver area, played home games
out of the Powell Street ball field from the 1920s to 1941.
Hockey didn't have that advantage. JCs didn't play the game when they lived
in Vancouver, largely because ther were few rinks in BC and Vancouver at the time,
and the mild weather on the west coast wasn't conducive to natural, outdoor ice rinks.
Information about JCs and hockey in Vancouver and the internment camps was
difficult to find. If anybody has first-hand information or pictures on the subjects, please contact
me. (Mel Tsuji)
