New Brunswick group hopes to foster pride in basketballs Canadian roots – New Brunswick [Video]

The rise in patriotism prompted by the U.S. president is renewing focus on everything Canada has given the world, and a small New Brunswick mill town wants people to know the sport of basketball belongs on that list.

A brick building nestled between an empty lot and a sports bar in St. Stephen, N.B., is claimed to house the world’s oldest surviving basketball court, with records of a game being played there on Oct. 17, 1893.

For years, locals have been trying to get the site properly recognized and converted into a museum, and now there is hope that the surge in Canadian pride will make the dream a reality. It is time, they say, for Canadians to have a new shrine to the sport invented by Canadian-born James Naismith while he was an instructor at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass.

“A Canadian invented the game, and the world’s oldest court where the …