The University of Toronto women's lacrosse team is starting the new season by brushing up on some history. Last week, they were treated to a presentation by famed Onondaga stick maker Alf Jacques, courtesy of head coach James (Jim) Calder, who shares a bond of friendship and a number of Sport Hall of Fame inductions with Jacques.
Alf Jacques demonstrates how to carve a wooden lacrosse stick, while coach Calder looks on
"I've played this game my entire life. I played at all levels, all over the world and as I got older, I got more and more interested in the history and culture of the game. I was very fortunate to meet faith keepers and stick makers from various First Nations and they were kind enough to share a lot with me," said Calder, who has written two books on the history and culture of the game.
"We are now at 60 countries playing this game worldwide, well on our way to being an Olympic sport, and it's very important for the essence of the game to be maintained as we experience this new growth. This game goes back thousands of years and it's very important to know its roots."
The team learned that before becoming a sport 150 years ago, lacrosse was a medicine game treated as a gift from the Creator to be played for enjoyment and the healing of all people.
"Sometimes a thousand people turned out for a game. You couldn't even see the ball," shared Jacques.
Alf Jacques presented wooden lacrosse sticks, some of them a 100 years old
Growing up on the reserve, he played lacrosse with wooden sticks, as was the tradition, but he couldn't afford one of his own, so he had to borrow from his father and brother. His dad suggested they make their own, so they did. Over time, they got better at it and made hundreds more sticks, then thousands more, all by hand. But, by the 1970s, the wooden sticks were replaced by plastic ones. Although they scaled down their operations, Jacques and his father continued to make the traditional sticks for the medicine game.
"I never gave up," said Jacques, who now has 57 years of experience making sticks. "I never want to be the last stick maker, just the best," he said with a chuckle.
Lacrosse player Caitlin Downs gets a lesson in carving wooden lacrosse sticks by Alf Jacques
Jacques, who is part of the turtle clan, presented the team with dozens of wooden sticks used over time in lacrosse and other stick and ball games played by First Nation tribes across the North American continent. Nearly a 100 years old, some were older than the team, he observed.
"It was cool to see all the different varieties of the wooden stick, the different styles and meshes I didn't know about before," said third year commerce student Caitlin Downs, now in her third year of playing on U of T's women's lacrosse team.
"Seeing how the game has aged just by looking at the sticks, how it differs between tribes and countries, was very interesting."