Society for International Hockey Research

The Society for International Hockey Research (SIHR) is a network of writers, statisticians, collectors, broadcasters, academics and ice hockey buffs. The Society, based in Toronto, Ontario, has an international membership. The Society cultivates and encourages the study of ice hockey. The Society has been prominent in determining the origins of ice hockey.

The Society was formed in 1991. A group of 17 members attending the Canadian Association of Sports Heritage meeting at Kingston, Ontario, met in a special session with the aim of founding an organization dedicated to promoting, developing and encouraging the study of hockey, to establish an accurate historical account of the game, and to assist in the dissemination of the findings and studies derived from member research. Under the leadership of founding president Bill Fitsell, a retired journalist with the Kingston Whig-Standard, SIHR’s general objectives were: "To encourage and cultivate the study of ice hockey as an important athletic and social institution in Canada and other countries in which it was played." A six-page, 25-article Constitution, written by secretary Ed Grenda, was adopted at Montreal on May 22, 1993.

Among the charter members, also known as the "Kingston 17," were representatives from three provinces (New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario) and two states (Illinois and New York). In its fledgling year, the society membership grew to 29 and in its second year the roster of 52 could be typed on one page. SIHR's membership list today stands at more than 550, with members in all ten Canadian provinces, 31 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, plus Australia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. SIHR counts among its members a former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper.

At its 2001 annual meeting, SIHR struck a committee to examine the claim of Windsor, Nova Scotia, to be the birthplace of ice hockey. The committee's report, released in May 2002, that the Windsor proponents had not offered credible evidence that the town was the birthplace of hockey. The report expressed no opinion on when or where hockey originated.

...
Wikipedia