William George Beers

William George Beers (1841 to 1900) was a Canadian dentist known as the father of modern lacrosse. As a teenager he joined the Montreal Lacrosse Club in 1856, and at seventeen he was chosen as goalkeeper for a Montreal exhibition team that played a match before the Prince of Wales. In 1860 he began to codify the first written rules of the modern game, which set among other things the use of a rubber ball, a field length of 200 yards, twelve players a side and a match won by the first side to five goals or a lead of three. He created the Canadian National Lacrosse Foundation in 1867, published Lacrosse: The National Game of Canada in 1869, and led exhibition tours of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1876 and again in 1883. Away from the field he founded Canada's first dental journal and served as founding dean of the Dental College of the Province of Quebec.