Career
He was posthumously inducted into Canada"s Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. Jacks moved to Canada with his family in 1920 and in 1935 became the assistant physical director at the West End Young Men’s Christian Association in Toronto. A year later, he invented floor hockey.
Jacks initially worked at the West End Young Men’s Christian Association in Toronto but in 1948 was asked to become director of parks and recreation for the city of North Bay, Ontario.
He was instrumental in developing the first Northern Ontario Playground Hockey Association (NOPHA) which encouraged youth to play hockey on outdoor rinks. Ringette was created to both address and remedy two ongoing problems: the observation and criticism regarding the Northern Ontario Recreation Directors Association (NORDA)"s tendency to place most of its time, resources, and focus on running sports programs aimed at the male population to the exclusion of the female population, and the association"s continual lack of success in gaining and maintaining participation in the two winter based team sports available to girls at that time: broomball and girls ice hockey.
