Blind Hockey was invented at the W Ross MacDonald School for the Blind in Brantford in 1936, and really became a sport with the founding of the Toronto Ice Owls Blind Hockey Team in 1972. For over 70 years the game was played recreationally in cities across Canada using a variety of different rules, formats, and adapted pucks. The game of Blind Hockey was extremely provincial, existed only in Canada, and resembled nothing like the thriving international parasport it is today.
In 2009 Canadian Blind Hockey was founded under our former name “Courage Canada Hockey for the Blind.” We operated as Courage Canada from 2009 until 2016, when we formally changed the name of the organization to “Canadian Blind Hockey” to better reflect the vision, mission, and operations of the organization. By establishing a national sports organization for Blind Hockey we were able to truly change the game, and create a parasport that leaves a strong Canadian cultural legacy worldwide and have:
- Standardized and codified the rules and adapted puck for the parasport of Blind Hockey
- Founded the world’s first tournament for the sport: the Canadian National Blind Hockey Tournament which has been held annually since 2013
- Introduced more than one thousand children who are blind or partially sighted to skating and Blind Hockey through our field trip programs coast-to-coast
- Expanded participation in the sport from adult only to all ages, including children and youth divisions at tournaments, and children and youth only teams
- Exported our great parasport to the United States and helped them grow from a single American player in 2013 to more than ten teams and hundreds of players as of 2019
- Created the Canadian National Blind Hockey Team Program and defeated team USA to win the first ever International Blind Hockey Series in 2018 where we achieved one of the founding goals of the organization!
