When Times Massena correspondent Eleanor L. Dumas wrote about the Chisholm lacrosse stick factory in February 1961, she noted that lacrosse was undergoing a boom in popularity among college students and that it “now bids fair to becoming one of the major college sports.”
It was of wide interest then that nearly all of the lacrosse sticks used throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and the British Islands, according to Mrs. Dumas, came from the modest factory building on Cornwall Island, 10 miles east of Massena.
Lacrosse was invented by Indigenous people in North America centuries ago and has been popular in Canada for some time, even becoming the national game in 1867. In 1994, it was demoted to Canada’s National Summer Sport, with ice hockey moving in as the National Winter Sport.
The Chisholm factory was owned by Cornwall, Ontario, resident Colin Chisholm and Frank Roundpoint, a member of the Mohawk Tribe.
In 1961, its 17 employees made about 3,000 dozen sticks out of hickory sourced from within 100 miles of the island. An additional 10 women were employed in their homes, where they strung the cowhide mesh at the head of the sticks.
The factory was only in production in the winter, as summer heat and humidity made bending the hickory impossible without breaking it. The entire process of producing a lacrosse stick took several months, as the wood was twice placed outside to dry for two months.
Seven years after these photographs were taken, in June 1968, the Chisholm Lacrosse Stick Factory was destroyed by fire. It was later rebuilt under new ownership and enjoyed success even as fiberglass replaced wood as the most popular material for lacrosse sticks.
