RNSHS Public Lecture – Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019
Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019 — 7:30 p.m., Nova Scotia Archives
“The Home of Cricket”: The Sport of Cricket in Pictou County, to 1914
John G. Reid, Saint Mary’s University
Abstract:
Insofar as cricket forms part of Nova Scotia’s historical memory in the 21st century, it is often imagined as an imperial sport played primarily by a gentlemanly social elite that consisted largely of recent English immigrants or by military and naval officers. Although this image has some limited validity when applied to Halifax, it is manifestly inaccurate elsewhere in the province. Cricket, in reality, was played primarily by settlers of at least the third generation, and the social composition of the many cricket clubs distributed throughout the province was varied and complex. This lecture will investigate the particular cricket culture of Pictou County during the ‘long’ nineteenth century (to 1914), including the emergence of provincially dominant teams in Stellarton and Westville that had their roots in the extended history of cricket in the county’s coal-mining towns and villages.