Premier Stephen McNeil announces support of up to $3 million for the Windsor Hockey Heritage Centre, in Windsor, N.S. on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016. The facility will include an ice rink, indoor track and a museum. Windsor claims title to the birthplace of hockey. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Republished January 30, 2016 - 2:57 PM
Original Publication Date January 30, 2016 - 12:00 PM
WINDSOR, N.S. - The Nova Scotia government has announced up to $3 million for the construction of a hockey heritage centre in Windsor N.S., which has long claimed to be the birthplace of hockey.
Greg Kelley, president of the Long Pond Hockey Arena Society, said the Windsor Hockey Heritage Centre will celebrate Canadian hockey and bring the world to the small Nova Scotia town where the sport was born more than 200 years ago.
"Windsor is the cradle of hockey. We want to build a shrine to the game that can be celebrated by hockey fans around the world," said Kelley in a phone interview on Saturday. "We just want a place like Cooperstown, which celebrates baseball in the U.S. We want a place that we can call our Doubleday Field, and it's Long Pond."
Premier Stephen McNeil made the funding announcement Saturday on Long Pond in Windsor, where students from a local college developed the game around 1800. Kelley says several boys went to the pond and adapted the field game of hurley for ice.
The province says the building will include an ice rink, sports fields, indoor track and a hockey history museum.
McNeil said the centre will reaffirm the province's longstanding connection with one of the country's favourite sports.
"It will become more than just a hockey arena and training facility. It will become a mecca for hockey fans globally," said McNeil on Saturday. "The idea is to build a facility that can be used by lead athletes and locals alike, but also to bring people into the heritage aspect of the game."
The society also plans on asking the federal government for funding and will try to raise the rest of the $14.7 million needed to build the facility, said Kelley
They're aiming to open the Windsor Hockey Heritage Centre in Sept. 2017.
— By Aly Thomson in Halifax.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2016