Canada Owns the World's Oldest Basketball Court

A Fire in St. Stephen, N.B. Canada Rewrites Hoops History

Oct 14, 2024

We all know basketball’s origins --who played the first game, where and the when...but which country has bragging rights to the world's oldest hoops court.

Many sports aficionados, trivia buffs and the schmos I hoop with, assume Paris, France has the world's oldest basketball court. This, as it was there in December 1893 in the YMCA ( Union Chrétienne des Jeunes Gens de Paris) on 14 rue Trévise, that the first European basketball game was played.

This undisputed 'truism' has slowly alchemized into fact via repetition and the accretions of time, and might have continued but for a 2010 fire in St. Stephan, N.B., Canada, (pop 4,500K). A fire that sparked a major discovery.

A Phoenix from the Ashes - Beneath a Blue Carpet, Hoops Gold (…kinda')

The small fire damaged an old building. When the smoke cleared, locals began sifting through the debris, especially on the top floor. That was when sports gold was discovered! Beneath an old blue carpet lay a perfectly intact, virtually pristine wooden basketball court. THIS ONE BELOW A very old one which the fire spared by a few meters. (...technically not a Phoenix, but..)

The Old(est) Canadian Hardwood

Original Wooden Planks of the Planet’s Oldest Hoops Court **(Canada First Basketball)**

The court’s discovery quickly jogged local memories and led to the realization that it was there, on that very court on Oct. 17, 1893, that two teams took to the hardwood to play hoops...an event newsworthy enough in St. Stephen to warrant coverage by the local paper, the St. Croix Courier. Sadly, the reporter omitted the team and player names. Their identities & fates could add significantly to the scant history of basketball’s early days.

An Era Long Gone

Locals also knew the games played on that New Brunswick court occurred 2 ½ months prior to the Paris games. Both the St. Stephen court and the games played therein predate the Paris YMCA’s. And that, on the hardwood surface of it, makes the St. Stephen (N.B.) basketball court the planet’s oldest extant one. Games were played in other locales, but none of those courts remain (…for now at least…)

(Despite the popularity of the game, the court was moth-balled, spending almost a century in obscurity and in varied guises, including military recruitment center, pharmacy, dance hall, printing press, storage area, and so on).

After the Fire, The Plan

The St. Stephen community quickly grasped the historical significance of their new, oldest court, and sprang into action.

The Canada First Basketball Group Inc. was soon created to capitalize on owning a significant piece of Canadian sports patrimony. The aim is to preserve and celebrate both the court and basketball’s early presence in New Brunswick in those misty days of long-ago basketball, and perhaps add a missing page to the sports history books. Also, as the town is perched on the US border, it has a good shot at metamorphosing itself into a regional sports, tourism and learning center ground-zero.

After raising more than a million dollars to buy the building housing the old court, the Group hired Boston’s CambridgeSeven to convert the dream into reality, meaning design a future Canada National Basketball Experience Centre.

What It Might Look Like

Richard Fulton with Canada First Basketball says CambridgeSeven “jumped at the chance to get involved”. Sports DNA runs deep in CambridgeSeven — having renowned the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and has a raft of design credits spanning the US, Canada, and the Middle-East (Saudi Arabia & Kuwait).

If You Build It They Will Shoot

Plans call for restoring the original court, plus building a new one in the Centre’s new wing. Attractions will include historic exhibits, a sports museum, plus an advanced Digital Family Interactive Play & Learning Center with augmented and virtual reality experiences along with other immersive and static attractions. Also proposed is an international 3-on-3 basketball competition.

Transforming impressive designs into reality takes cash. In this case some $18 (CDN) million, says Richard Fulton. Fulton is undaunted and utterly confident of meeting and surpassing the funding goal. He says the group will realize its goal within a few years. “There is a widespread interest in and support for this unique initiative”.

BACK IN PARIS…meanwhile, not only does that Parisian court still exist (or sorta’ does, as its currently in redevelopment, see below) but was in continuous use for its 130-year plus history. Thus, one can’t be blamed for thinking Paris s home to the oldest hoops court. But....

Yet, clearly stated on the Paris ‘Y’ website is this judiciously crafted note…“The Paris YMCA is today the oldest basketball court in its original state...” However, given the Paris Y’s current renovations, this may change and Paris Y will have a restored court, just like St. Stephen.

The Wrap: Canada and France possess uniquely precious historical treasures - ones whose import resonates far beyond the realms of basketball and sports. Like virtual time machines they have the power, like an aging closet of ancient amber-coated specimens, to magically whisk us back to the sport’s germinal stages – the wooden veneered tiles, the hanging baskets, the squeak as rubber soles pivot on wood...the thwack of the ball on wooden planks...all offering a momentary peek into an early intoxicating era.

Perhaps some future AI App will allow us to watch, even chat with those bygone players, a la ‘Field of Dreams’, or, who knows, maybe even virtually sub in for someone?

Until then each country should be thrilled with possessing an invaluable bona-fide sports treasure linking us to those early, misty chapters in basketball’ amazing history.

Not too shabby for some wooden planks, a oddly shaped ball and two peach baskets, eh?

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