HIGH ACHIEVERS: Basketball advocate Leo Doyle discovers Ottawa staged first-ever game in Canada

By Martin Cleary

The next time you’re in downtown Ottawa and can spare a minute or two, head to the northeast corner of O’Connor and Queen streets.

Today, you’ll be in the shadow of the towering Sun Life Financial Centre building with the Parliament LRT station under your feet. But 131 years ago, you would have been in the presence of one of the most important athletic landmarks in Ottawa sports history.

Inside the YMCA building on Oct. 3, 1892, a group of public servants – one team from the Post Office Department and the other team from the Government Printing Bureau – were playing the first recorded basketball game in Ottawa.

Three days later, the first women’s game of basketball was held on the same YMCA court.

Leo Doyle, founder of the not-for-profit Ottawa Basketball Network, took that historical nugget one significant step farther, when his research discovered the men’s game was actually the first-ever basketball match played in Canada.

In a well-documented, recent submission, Doyle sent his information to Library and Archives Canada, which verified and accepted his evidence and will update its files about that initial game. Doyle added Library and Archives Canada will give him full credit for the update.

It was originally believed the first basketball game played in Canada took place in the fall of 1892 at St. Stephen, N.B. But Library and Archives Canada found new evidence that game didn’t happen in the Maritime community until Oct. 17, 1893.

St. Stephen, however, holds the distinction of having the oldest existing basketball court in the world, which was made in 1893. Canada First Basketball is planning to build a basketball museum to pay tribute to the old court.

Basketball was introduced to the world in Springfield, Massachusetts, on Dec. 21, 1891, by James Naismith, who was born in the Bennies Corners community of Ramsay Township near Almonte.

Naismith explained his 13 rules of basketball to nine players at the YMCA International Training School at Springfield College and away they went, trying to toss a leather ball into a large, circular peach basket. Three Nova Scotia players and Thomas Duncan Patton of Montreal were Naismith’s student-athletes from Canada.

When Doyle heard Library and Archives Canada had accepted and confirmed his findings that Ottawa staged the first-ever basketball game in Canada, he was thrilled. And the timing was perfect.

“I was overjoyed. I was pleasantly surprised,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“I discovered that by accident. There was an article on the Library and Archives Canada website that made reference to the first basketball game in Canada in the fall of 1892 in St. Stephen, N.B. By accident, I discovered they were building a museum for basketball in New Brunswick and they said the first game was in 1893.”

Doyle brought this to the attention of Library and Archives Canada in his presentation about Ottawa playing host to the first game in Canada. A Library and Archives Canada official told Doyle his “evidence was much more compelling.”

On Thursday, the inaugural World Basketball Day will celebrate the 132nd anniversary of the invention of basketball by Naismith on Dec. 21, 1891. New York University professor David Hollander first proposed the idea of a World Basketball Day and took his idea to the United Nations General Assembly.

On Aug. 25, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution to create World Basketball Day as a time of observance for what has become the second largest sport on the planet. Basketball is the only team sport to have a day named in its honour.

Doyle was part of advocacy groups supporting Hollander, and Bob Rae, Canada’s UN ambassador, also was instrumental in creating an “opportunity to continue to use basketball as a tool of community building, peace and development,” notes a press release from Doyle.

“Ottawa was Canada’s first basketball community and the Ottawa Basketball Network was happy to play a key role in creating World Basketball Day,” the press release continues. “It did so by getting support from Canada’s UN Ambassador Bob Rae.

“In addition to OBN, the collaborative international effort to create World Basketball Day included officials in the governments of Canada, the Philippines, and Japan and Professor David Hollander of New York University.”

The Philippines, which was co-host to the 2023 FIBA Men’s World Cup Basketball Championship, led the charge to earn UN adoption of World Basketball Day and about 80 countries signed-on as co-sponsors.

Doyle, an Ottawa Shooting Stars executive board member responsible for community relations, said he will celebrate World Basketball Day quietly with coaches at an Ottawa sports bar. In the future, he would like to develop a program for the day.

Ottawa’s Bertha K. Davis is thought to have played a key role in her hometown playing host to the first basketball game in Canada. She was the fiancé of Patton, who made regular train trips to Ottawa from Montreal and stayed at the YMCA.

It’s believed Patton planted the basketball seed in Ottawa. Patton and Davis married Oct. 25, 1893, moved to Winnipeg and returned to Ottawa in 1905 to lead a major YMCA expansion. Besides being missionaries, they also brought basketball to Calcutta.

The first basketball game in Ottawa and Canada was played on Monday, Oct. 3, 1892 and reported on by the Ottawa Journal in its Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1892 edition. Herbert Sheridan Campbell was captain of the Post Office Department team, while William J. Binks held the same role for the Government Printing Bureau squad.

In November, 1892, Campbell travelled to Montreal to referee one of the first games in that city. Binks had a long career in YMCA basketball, serving as team captain.

Here is a portion of the Journal report about the newest game on the Ottawa sporting landscape:

“The goals are baskets hung one at each end of the gymnasium at a height of 10 feet. The object of the play is to deliver the ball into the basket of the opposing team. The players are lined up the same as in football.

“The ball is not kicked, but batted and thrown with the hands. The time of play is two 15-minute (periods) with five minutes of rest between. The game, which was a good one and intensely interesting, resulted in a draw, each team having scored one goal.

“A very large number witnessed the game and from the rounds of applause given seemed to enjoy it immensely. The game is a good one and affords much pleasure as well as excellent exercise. This game will be added to the attractions of the gymnasium during the winter months and should prove a great source of entertainment.”