With an emphasis placed on hard work, commitment, determination, skill and heart, the game has taught us much about ourselves, our attributes and our shortcomings.

 Generally though, the important social connections to the game of hockey are thought of as a new development.

 The pedestal we carefully place hockey high upon is a modern creation, one conjured up by the workings of round-the-clock media coverage and specialty, hockey-centered cable channels.

 But the reality is, the game of hockey spoke volumes about our communities and our beliefs long before the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was conceived of, and long before oversized goaltending equipment and player lockouts began to turn us into skeptics.

 In Lunenburg County, there has been a rich hockey tradition. While the debate over the origins of the modern game of hockey rages on - some parties advocating for 1850s Halifax, others for 1870s Montreal - what is clear is that within a few short years of the game's popularity taking off, it found a home here on the South Shore.

 In Bridgewater, both junior and senior men's teams became popular attractions in the 1890s. At first, contests were played on the ice of the LaHave River itself. On the eastern bank near the periphery of the community, each winter as the river froze, a makeshift arena known as the Matchbox was built on the ice.

 The haphazard habitat made the perfect home for not only those early hockey enthusiasts, but also recreational skaters, who would take to the river with their clunky, dull skates strapped to their shoes.

 By the late 1890s, the local hockey scene had evolved somewhat and out of the haze skated a pair of powerful men's senior hockey teams, one in Bridgewater, and the other in Lunenburg, known as the Victorias.

 While Bridgewater and Lunenburg both waged on-ice wars against competition from other communities across the province, there was little doubt that a highly anticipated contest between the Lunenburg County rivals was preferable to a less entertaining contest against other hockey clubs, such as a Milton squad from neighbouring Queens County.

 The rivalry between Lunenburg and Bridgewater was special, too, in that it ignited the spirits of not just the townsfolk living in each community, but also those from throughout the surrounding villages. Frequently, during the height of the hockey season, special evening trains were arranged along the old Nova Scotia Central Railway line from Bridgewater to Lunenburg to allow residents of Mahone Bay, Blockhouse and other points along the route to take in the ballyhooed contests.

 The 1898/99 season, and a spirited three-game series stretching from February into March of the new year, proved to be particularly memorable.

 In late February of 1899, Bridgewater was still coming to terms with the annihilation of the town's business district at the hands of the Great Commercial Street Fire. While businesses had begun the work of finding new bases of operation, life was still some distance from returning to normal.

 The dedication and perseverance needed to rebuild Bridgewater in those early months of 1899 made the weekly hockey exploits of the men's senior hockey team all the more important.

 Under normal circumstances, the team garnered plenty of attention in Bridgewater as it was, but after having survived the trauma of the Commercial Street fire, the early spring's hockey contests took on added meaning in 1899.

 Not only was hockey a means of escape from the charred remnants left by the fire for a distraction-starved audience, but the series was also a way of demonstrating that Bridgewater, no matter the odds it faced, would rise once again.

 The first game of the series went in Lunenburg's favour, as they coasted to a 5-2 victory. The second game of the set, on February 22 in Bridgewater, sparked much debate. A number of players on both clubs were replaced in favour of more talented "recruits" from the surrounding countryside.

 This raised the ire of Bridgewater's supporters, in particular, who thought the manoeuvre to be unfair. But the issue of replacing players became even more cause for concern after a number of the scratched Lunenburg players decided to show up in the stands for Game 2.

 A report of the game in the LaHave Gazette the following week declared that the Lunenburg players had "marred the game by hollering like hoodlums." They also helped to incite some nasty play on the ice.

 Early in the game, Smeltzer, one of the Lunenburg players, injured one of the Bridgewater skaters with an elbow to the face, and in the dying minutes of the contest, the very same Smeltzer was responsible for starting a fight with Bridgewater's Keefler.

 The unpleasantness of Game 2 sparked much discussion throughout Lunenburg County, and set the stage for a heated third game after the Bridgewater club scored a 4-1 win in the second contest, with Keefler scoring one goal and Waterman, who had replaced Young at forward for Bridgewater, scoring three goals in the game's second half to secure the win.

 Sadly for the Bridgewater team, on the following Tuesday the third game did not go as its patrons had so dearly wished it would.

 Vigorous pressure from Bridgewater returned little in the way of results, as they could only manage to sneak one goal behind Mack, the Victorias' keeper. Ultimately, Lunenburg would score two goals in the first half and three in the second to coast to an easy series victory, taking the final game of the three-game set by a 5-1 score.

 There the matter might have rested, were it not for an article published the following week in the Lunenburg Argus, which publicly slighted the skill of the Bridgewater players in comparison to their Lunenburg rivals and also accused several of the Bridgewater players of trying to intentionally injure their opponents.

 Perhaps the most damaging comment in the piece, however, referred to the equipment the Bridgewater players used, as the author made fun of the "Acme" skates several Bridgewater players wore because they could not afford quality skates, like the players from Lunenburg wore.

 The article was met with rebuke in Bridgewater.

 A letter to the Bulletin's editor, C.J. Cragg, complained that the accusations levelled at the Bridgewater senior men were out of line, and that the only misstep the Bridgewater team had made was in consenting to play the third game of the series against "a team like that which composed the Lunenburg Victorias."

 The author of the letter, who signed his letter simply as "Onlooker," felt that it was improper for anyone from Lunenburg to unnecessarily chastize the Bridgewater team after the Victorias had proven their worth in winning the series.

 But Cragg, in an editorial in the same edition of the Bulletin, went even further, suggesting that Lunenburg's disdain over the series loss was linked to feelings of inadequacy stemming from the government's decision to split the courthouse proceedings between the two power centres some five years earlier.

 "All good law-abiding and decent citizens of both towns must, therefore, reject the publication in the Argus last week of the article headed 'Hockey,'" Cragg wrote. "It is just such actions as this that engenders bad feeling, and the Argus should be thoroughly ashamed to be the vehicle used … to open up old sores and prejudices."

 Fortunately for the well-being of all concerned, the rapid arrival of spring in March of 1899 prevented any further hockey challenges between Lunenburg County's two vying shiretowns.

 In the decades that followed, the club names would change - the Lunenburg Victorias eventually became the Falcons, and the Bridgewater senior men became the Hawks - but the passion of the young men playing for their hometown teams never faltered.

 The two sides battled many times for the local senior crown in the 1920s and 1930s, and with each year came a new group of hockey players, all of them familiar with and driven by the storied on-ice rivalry between the two towns - a rivalry which came into its own during that fateful series early in 1899.

 Sources: The Bridgewater Bulletin; The LaHave Gazette; Chambers, Sheila, Joan Dawson and Edith Wolter, "Historic LaHave River Valley: Images of our past"; Diamond, Dan (Ed.), "Total Hockey."

Written and researched by Patrick Hirtle.