Cricket
- Origins in Canada
- New sport on campus
- Height of popularity
- Demise
Origins in Canada
In Canada, the sport of cricket, like baseball, was unique in that it developed first in cities and towns, instead of at universities. When cricket did arrive at Mount Allison in the late 1860s, villages and towns like Amherst, Dorchester and Sackville already had their own teams, and these became Mount Allison's main competitors.
Cricket was one of the most organized team sports in Canada before Confederation. It was brought to Canada from Britain by British officers stationed at garrisons across Canada, but mostly in Montreal, which had served as the headquarters of the British imperial forces since 1814. In 1843, the elite and exclusive Montreal Cricket Club was formed. Like other sports brought over from Britain, such as rugby football, cricket was competed under a ‘gentlemanly’ code of conduct, and was thought to instill patriotism, self-control and manliness among its participants. When reporting on a game between the Sackville and Moncton cricket clubs in September 1869, The Borderer and the Westmorland and Cumberland Advertiser newspaper (2 September 1869) said, "The Moncton Club bore their defeat like genuine cricketers -- gallantly, manfully."
In some parts of Canada, especially in larger urban centres, the bourgeois nature of cricket led lower and working class citizens to more locally grown sports like baseball and lacrosse in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ironically, in Atlantic Canada, it was the working class citizens in smaller communities such as Stellarton, Springhill and Amherst, Nova Scotia that continued to support cricket well into the turn of the century. In August 1869, a local newspaper proclaimed that cricket was "all the rage" across the Maritimes.
Mount Allison [Male Academy?] cricket team, ca. 1886
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