The lost hockey teams of Toronto

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Hockey in Toronto isn't all about the NHL. Kids in Toronto have been playing Canada's game on frozen ponds and home-made rinks for more than a century.

These pictures, taken from around 1910 to the mid 1960s show school, city park, and recreation centre teams, usually in the east end, and feature young players across a range of ages. Some have uniforms, others play in plain clothes with cricket pads and gloves as their only measure of protection against slapped pucks.

One picture captures the touring "Fast Ojibway Indians" and the "Great Cree Indians" teams, who visited Toronto in 1928 during a 2,200-mile cross-country motor coach tour.

From the professional world, there's the Toronto Arenas a short-lived Stanley Cup-winning precursor to the Toronto St. Patricks, who became the Maple Leafs in the 1920s, and some images of the Army Daggers and Royal Canadian Air Force teams from the 1940s.

Those squads feature players whose wonderful names could only be from the wartime period, who all sound like friends of your grandparents: Buddy Glover, Buck Jones, Lloyd Finkbeiner, Herb Mortimer.

The handful of action shots capture the scrape and clatter of pick-up games at Christie Pits Park (when there still were pits,) Riverdale Park, and the University of Toronto campus.

You can almost feel the pinch of the crisp winter air. Not long now.