Brian I. Daly - Canadas Other Game: Basketball from Naismith to Nash

Y THE GAME WAS CREATED

With a thundering crack, the ice gave way under the hooves of two horses that were steps away from the shore of the Mississippi River, which separated Almonte, Ontario, from Ramsay Township south of Canadas capital of Ottawa. Young James Naismith watched in horror as the steeds plunged into the freezing water, thrashing wildly, their sleigh of valuable wheat teetering on the edge of the hole. The boy realized that it was all his fault he could have taken the long way around the river to lead the horses to a crossing, but instead he decided to take a shortcut across the fragile ice.

He was just a child, but the horses were his responsibility, and now it was up to him to save them. As the two beasts began to sink, Jim grabbed the reins and pulled with everything he had, managing to get one horse back onto the ice. Still yanking on the reins, his knuckles turning white in the winter cold, the hardy young orphan dragged the other massive animal to safety as well. The load of hay also stayed on the ice and was saved great news for his financially strapped family.

James led the soaking horses to the riverbank. It was only when he sat down to catch his breath that he noticed someone had witnessed the entire drama without intervening. It was his Uncle Peter, who had raised the orphan as his own from the age of nine.

I saw my uncle standing back in the trees, watching me, Naismith wrote years later. I never knew how long he had stood there, but I am sure that he was there before I had pulled the horses out.

It was a sign of the times, a common scene in a long-forgotten era when children were expected to pull their weight, and often much more, to make ends meet in a 19th-century Canadian society that was far less affluent than today. But James Naismith saw the near-death incident as a learning experience. The use of our own initiative was great training for us boys, and prepared us to meet our future problems.

Naismiths independence bred resourcefulness and creativity when life challenges might have otherwise seemed insurmountable. His tough upbringing also taught him to stick to his guns when others tried to railroad him into changing his mind.

It was that strength of resolve that led Naismith to invent the game of basketball as part of a Christian ministry to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through sports. His unorthodox career choice bucked convention and alienated friends and family members, but now millions of basketball players around the world can thank Dr. Naismith for shaking off his doubters and choosing innovation over tradition.

Toughness was practically bred into Naismith, who came from a long line of Scottish immigrants who settled in Canada at the British governments suggestion in the early part of the 19th century. While earlier Scots immigration waves focused on Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, the growing opportunities in Upper Canada (now Ontario) attracted these newer arrivals. They represented a wide cross-section of the lowland and highland Scottish population, and came from a variety of walks of life. Some were poor farmers and craftsmen, while others were businessmen and other professionals. Whereas previous waves of Scottish immigrants spoke Gaelic, the latter group was largely
English-speaking.

The stream of Scots became a full-blown wave by the middle of the 19th century. Some 170,000 Scots crossed the Atlantic between 1815 and 1870, and many settled along the Mississippi River south of Ottawa in Lanark County. The Presbyterian Protestant faith was an important part of the lives of these immigrants, and they established a number of churches and schools in Upper Canada and elsewhere.

Naismiths maternal grandparents, Robert and Annie Young, were among a group that settled in the southern part of Lanark County, in a town called Bennies Corners, in 1852. Robert and Annie had made the transatlantic trip with daughter Margaret, then 19, and the Scottish settler family soon grew with the addition of seven more children.

Just a year after Margaret Young arrived in Canada, 18-year-old John Naismith also made the trip across the pond from Scotland to Canada. But unlike Margaret, John travelled alone while his parents stayed back home. The teenager settled with his Uncle Peter near Almonte to work on a farm for several years.

The Youngs and the Naismiths didnt cross paths right away, but that changed around 1857 when John Naismith started a building contracting business after apprenticing as a carpenter. He partnered up with Robert Young, whose daughter Margaret caught his eye. John and Margaret married in 1858 and settled near the Young family home in Bennies Corners.