My father, Alfred M. Casselman, remembered learning to skate on a farm pond near the town of Williamsburg, Ontario, in the winter of 1912, on a pair of hand-me-down bobskates. A bob was one of the wooden runners on a bob-sleigh or bobsled. Bob also referred to the sleigh itself.
Bobskates had two wooden runners with the blade end of blunt steel, and a pair of leather straps so one could quickly attach the bobskates even to an old pair of work boots. For my father, the very word bobskate summoned long-ago Saturday afternoons when winter farm chores were done, when the cows and horses and pigs and chickens had all been fed, and he and his brothers and a couple of cousins were numerous enough to field an entire hockey team of Casselmans. Bobskates are still sold for use in teaching very young children of two or three years old to get used to the ice and learn to skate. Whether or not bobskates are best for this I leave to skating coaches and sports experts. As to the ultimate provenance of the speedy wordlet, the printed and anecdotal evidence does not permit a site-specific label. Most dictionaries settle for a locative marking of “North American.” The word may be Canadian; it may be American.
Advertisement from an Eaton's catalogue of 1925 © 2005 William Gordon Casselman
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