In Ontario, Beachville’s field of dreams defies the myth of baseball as an American pastime

If you squint just right, you can almost see it. Way back before this was a church yard, back when it was just a meadow behind the long-gone blacksmith’s shop, players would gather here to swat a calfskin ball with a stick of wood.

If baseball in Canada has sacred ground, then this long, sloped lawn in southwestern Ontario might just be it. It was here, in 1838, that one of the first documented games of the sport was played in North America. While it may seem like a sleepy farming community today, Beachville, Ont.’s place in the game’s early history defies the narrative that baseball is somehow exclusively an American pastime.