Dartmouth, Nova Scotia: Home of the Ice Skate
“One of the oldest of Nova Scotia incorporated companies is the Starr Manufacturing Co. which was established in 1864 and incorporated in 1868 and is the oldest and largest skate manufacturing concern in the British Empire. While the principal output of the company is a complete line of ice skates of the most modern design, as well as roller skates, it is also engaged in the manufacture of bolts, nuts, rivets, railway spikes, axles, hinges, and other metal products such as iron fences and fire-escapes and is a jobber of bar iron, which the company uses to a large extent in the manufacture of its own products.”
- Financial Post, November 28, 1929
Yeah, just after the big stock market crash in October the Starr Manufacturing Company, makes of the best tube skates int he world was a strong and vital company. In fact even during the beginning of the end of the good times for businesses until the Second World War this vital Dartmouth, Nova Scotia plants was shipping skates and other products to “China, Korea, Japan, Australia, France, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Great Britain and various European countries as well as Newfoundland. ”
Skating to Dartmouth is like cricket to England, it grew up with the town. And it was as important an activity on Banook Lake as the huge ice sheds being loaded with thick winter ice for use in the summer. And half a blcok away was the best skate make in the world, the Starr Manufacturing Company. It was built right on top of the unused lock mechanisms and water turbine for the old Shubenacadie Canal, a mode of canal that went out when the railroad came in.
In the early 1900′s Starr introduced the Tube Skate,with a self-fastening blade that, unlike the previous buckle-on skates, were sold as a blade riveted to the boot. The boot had solid toes and thick felt tongues which were the first real skate. as we know them now. It took until 1927 before Starr partnered with boot-maker, Bauer, to have the first modern hockey skate.
The Starr Manufacturing plant was demolished in 2000 long after it stopped making the best skates in the world. However, every winter just a block away, hundreds of people from Dartmouth still skate, play hockey and just enjoy the winter on Banook Lake.
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