A group of 17 members attending the Canadian Association of Sports Heritage meeting at Kingston, Ontario, met in a special session with the aim of founding an organization dedicated to promoting, developing and encouraging the study of hockey, to establish an accurate historical account of the game, and to assist in the dissemination of the findings and studies derived from member research.

Under the leadership of founding president Bill Fitsell, a retired journalist with the Kingston Whig-Standard, SIHR's general objectives were: "To encourage and cultivate the study of ice hockey as an important athletic and social institution in Canada and other countries in which it was played."

SIHR's membership list today stands at more than 550, with members in all ten Canadian provinces, 31 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, plus Australia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales.

[1] At its 2001 annual meeting, SIHR struck a committee to examine the claim of Windsor, Nova Scotia, to be the birthplace of ice hockey.

The database includes statistics dating back to the 1886–87 season for various professional, semi-professional and amateur male and female leagues.

[4] In 2008, the Society launched a campaign to raise funds to erect a monument to hockey pioneer James George Aylwin Creighton, whose grave in Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery remained unmarked.