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The world’s oldest known hockey stick now belongs to the Canadian Museum of History.
The museum in Gatineau announced Friday morning it has acquired the 180-year-old Moffatt stick from Mark Presley, a 47-year-old Nova Scotia social worker, who bought it in 2008 for $1,000. The museum paid Presley $300,000 for the artifact.
“Hockey is Canada’s game,” Mark O’Neill, the museum’s president and CEO, said in a media release announcing the acquisition. “We developed it and we cherish it like no other country in the world.”
The Moffatt stick, he said, is a “unique and powerful link to the sport’s earliest days. We look forward to sharing this cultural treasure with Canadians.”
Presley, who was present for Friday’s announcement, brought the short-handled, long-bladed stick to Ottawa Thursday and handed it over to museum officials.
According to tests done at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., the stick was hand-crafted from a single piece of sugar maple between 1835 and 1838 near North Sydney in Cape Breton.
It was made by a member of the Moffatt family and has the initials “WM” carved into its blade, believed to represent William “Dilly” Moffatt, who was born in 1829. He and other family members are thought to have played hockey with it on nearby Pottle Lake in the mid-19th century.
The stick was a Moffatt family heirloom until the early 1980s, when a family member, the late Charlie Moffatt, gave it to North Sydney barber George Ferneough, who displayed it for more than two decades, perched atop a sled, on a wall in his barbershop.
After Presley bought the stick in 2008, he visited Charlie Moffatt, then 92, to learn more about its history. He then took it to researchers at Mount Allison, who used tree-ring aging to determine its age.
Once they had established that it was the world’s oldest known hockey stick, some speculated it could be worth up to $2 million. In 2001, another hockey stick, carved around 1852 and known as the Rutherford stick, sold on eBay for $2.2 million.
That prompted grumbles from Ferneough, who told the CBC in 2011 he felt ripped off. “I think I should get a little cut,” he said at the time.
Presley put the stick up for auction on eBay twice last year but decided not to sell it despite offers that reached $100,000. Worried that the stick might leave Canada, the museum then began the negotiations that led to its purchase.
The museum plans to display the stick in its Canada Hall, a new permanent exhibit now being prepared that will showcase Canadian history from prehistory to the present. The exhibit will open July 1, 2017, in time for Canada’s 150th birthday.
dbutler@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/ButlerDon
查看原文...
The museum in Gatineau announced Friday morning it has acquired the 180-year-old Moffatt stick from Mark Presley, a 47-year-old Nova Scotia social worker, who bought it in 2008 for $1,000. The museum paid Presley $300,000 for the artifact.
“Hockey is Canada’s game,” Mark O’Neill, the museum’s president and CEO, said in a media release announcing the acquisition. “We developed it and we cherish it like no other country in the world.”
The Moffatt stick, he said, is a “unique and powerful link to the sport’s earliest days. We look forward to sharing this cultural treasure with Canadians.”
Presley, who was present for Friday’s announcement, brought the short-handled, long-bladed stick to Ottawa Thursday and handed it over to museum officials.
According to tests done at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., the stick was hand-crafted from a single piece of sugar maple between 1835 and 1838 near North Sydney in Cape Breton.
It was made by a member of the Moffatt family and has the initials “WM” carved into its blade, believed to represent William “Dilly” Moffatt, who was born in 1829. He and other family members are thought to have played hockey with it on nearby Pottle Lake in the mid-19th century.
The stick was a Moffatt family heirloom until the early 1980s, when a family member, the late Charlie Moffatt, gave it to North Sydney barber George Ferneough, who displayed it for more than two decades, perched atop a sled, on a wall in his barbershop.
After Presley bought the stick in 2008, he visited Charlie Moffatt, then 92, to learn more about its history. He then took it to researchers at Mount Allison, who used tree-ring aging to determine its age.
Once they had established that it was the world’s oldest known hockey stick, some speculated it could be worth up to $2 million. In 2001, another hockey stick, carved around 1852 and known as the Rutherford stick, sold on eBay for $2.2 million.
That prompted grumbles from Ferneough, who told the CBC in 2011 he felt ripped off. “I think I should get a little cut,” he said at the time.
Presley put the stick up for auction on eBay twice last year but decided not to sell it despite offers that reached $100,000. Worried that the stick might leave Canada, the museum then began the negotiations that led to its purchase.
The museum plans to display the stick in its Canada Hall, a new permanent exhibit now being prepared that will showcase Canadian history from prehistory to the present. The exhibit will open July 1, 2017, in time for Canada’s 150th birthday.
dbutler@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/ButlerDon
查看原文...
