A Picture of a Baby Cat With a Lacrosse Stick and Ball

A lacrosse game with the 1867 touches

As Montreal prepares to re-enact a 150-twelvemonth-old match, a craftsman explains what goes into a stick that volition be used.

Mary Ormsby Characteristic reporter

Sat., March xi, 2017 iv min. read

Article was updated Mar. xv, 2017

Every bit Montreal prepares to re-enact an 1867-style lacrosse game, craftsman Alf Jacques explains what goes into a stick — including the spirit of the tree.

A game from 1867

Montreal hosts the 150th Anniversary of Lacrosse Celebration, June 16-eighteen, to showcase the game'south indigenous history, culture and development to modern sport as part of Canada's 150th birthday festivities.

A scripted re-enactment of an 1867-fashion lacrosse game — using the 19th-century rules of Montreal dentist George Beers — with players (students from Kahnawake) dressed in authentic clothing is an event highlight. The game takes identify June 17 on McGill University's lower field in downtown Montreal. This field was used by the Montreal Lacrosse Club and the Kahnawake Mohawk in the early 1870s.

Wooden sticks

Six stickmakers from across the Iroquois Confederacy will supply the hand-made forest-and-mesh sticks for the re-enactment. Doing the crafting: Alf Jacques of Onondaga Nation (about Syracuse); Ron Patterson, Oneida (east of Syracuse); Richard Big Kettle, Seneca (due south of Buffalo); Travis Gabriel, Mohawk from Kanesatake Mohawk Territory, near Oka, Que.; Preston Jacobs, Mohawk from Kahnawake, Que.; and Mitchell Sticks, a Mohawk visitor from Akwesasne, Ont.

The sacred tree

"Hickory is a sacred tree in our civilisation," said Alf Jacques, 68, a stickmaker for 55 years. Before a hickory is cutting down, tribute is paid.

"You lot give thanks for the tree. Give thanks the Creator for the tree," said Jacques, an Onondaga Turtle Clan fellow member. "When you make the lacrosse stick out of this living tree, the energy and the spirit of that living tree is transferred into the lacrosse stick (and) to the person who's using it . . . It's not only a chunk of wood from the lumber yard. Information technology'south more precious."

Onondaga Nation men are cached with their traditional lacrosse sticks so they tin can play the Creator's game in the spirit world with their ancestors, Jacques said of the Onondaga legend.

Axe and wedges

Jacques chooses a shagbark hickory with a direct trunk. No knots or limbs for the first 3 metres off the forest floor. Such a tree is at least 100 years quondam, weighs almost 90 kilograms and is carried from the woods past hand. (Jacques carries hickory nuts with him, planting seeds for new trees whenever he's in the forest.)

In Jacques' workshop, he splits the tree into eighths — sometimes sixteenths — using a wooden mallet, axes and wooden wedges. The lengths, still bearing bawl, are hung for at least one month to dry out.

Angle woods

The lengths of wood are and so steamed under carpets atop a 1,000-litre drum filled with h2o for most 45 minutes to an hour. The wood needs to be pliable for Jacques to bend the top almost in the shape of a question marking into the lacrosse head shape. A wire is slid over the shaped head to hold it in place while it'due south dried for another half-dozen months.

Carving

Jacques learned the stickmaking craft from his father, Louis. For decades, Jacques used his dad'southward draw knife, made in 1832, to remove bark and to carve the stick to its final form. When the bract became as well sparse, he bought another antique knife — also stamped every bit made in 1832.

"It's a good weight and when you lot're using a skillful knife, yous understand they were made with the carver in mind," Jacques said.

Finishing touches

More than steaming. The stick is steamed to straighten the handle and balance the piece. Final trims are made. Holes are drilled by paw into the head shape (no measuring needed: "I've been doing this a long time; I know where they go," Jacques said) to later weave in the mesh pocket and rawhide "wall."

Jacques chugalug-sands the stick, signs and dates it. He burns in his logo before the unabridged piece is varnished and ready for the woven pocket.

Rawhide

Jacques buys a large raw salted cow hide that he cleans of tissue and fur then soaks until it's soft. He has a "hole-and-corner" process to turn the hide into a skinny, unbroken string that'southward nearly 600 metres long. He spins it onto spools and later hangs it, criss-crossing his barn, to stretch and dry.

The hardened rawhide must exist moistened before Jacques can weave information technology into a "wall" that bridges the small opening between the head and the handle of the wooden stick. (Aluminum sticks have self-contained plastic heads.) Once the wall is established (the rawhide volition harden again), Jacques threads in mesh — using nylon and leather strands — to give the stick its pocket. The one-of-a-kind sticks sell for up of $300.

Correction – March fifteen, 2017: This commodity was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said stickmaker Travis Gabriel is from Oka, Quebec. In fact, Gabriel is from the Kanesatake Mohawk Territory, located near Oka. Incorrect information was provided to the Star.

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2017/03/11/a-lacrosse-game-with-the-1867-touches.html

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