The beginning of women on ice…Women’s Hockey history pre-1900
Women have been skating, and playing hockey for centuries. The first recorded instance of women skating came in 1395, when a Dutch teenager named Lydwina and her friends “fastened on their skates” and traversed the canals in the Netherlands. Following her death in 1433, Lydwina was dubbed the patron saint of ice skaters.
Skating continued among women in Europe in various forms. In particular, it was an activity embraced by aristocrats and royalty. In 1687, the Princess of Orange, also known as Queen Mary, began skating. The Princess of Orange was often seen “with iron pattins on her feet, learning to slide, sometimes on one foot, sometimes on the other.” Women were also noted in the diaries of English naval member and Member of Parliament who noted the Duke of York, later King James II skating in London’s St. James’ Park saying that “…many brave women and girls were among them, who did slide with much skill.”
Lady Dufferin brings her skates to Canada
In North America, women originally played shinny, which was described as “a hockey-like ball game played on a field or on ice in winter.” In fact, shinny was often considered a women’s game. Originally, Indigenous versions of the game were played without skates. Later however, skates were added, which is why the stick and ball game is widely considered a precusor to hockey.
Those skates, as they relate to women on ice, were brought to Canada in 1872 with the arrival of Hariot Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood. Better known as Lady Dufferin, she came to Canada with her husband Frederick, who was Canada’s third Governor General. The duo built the first skating rink at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. Rideau Hall is the official residence of Canada’s Governor General, and it’s where Lady Dufferin became described as a “keen skater herself.”
Lady Dufferin was followed by Princess Louise Caroline Alberta. She’s both the namesake for Lake Louise, and the Canadian province of Alberta. An early feminist, Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, arrived in Canada in 1878 when her husband, John Campbell, was named Canada’s fourth Governor General. Princess Louise enjoyed skating at Rideau Hall along with other winter activities like tobogganing, and it was a passion shared by other member’s of her house. One of those individuals was the daughter of Princess Louise’s lady-in-waiting. The daughter, Marie Evelyn Moreton, would many years later return to Rideau Hall as the wife of Canada’s 12th Governor General. At that time, she would be known by a name synonymous with hockey, Lady Byng.
Before the turn of the century, however, women would move from skating as a leisurely pastime, to skating with hockey sticks in hand competitively. This transition also occurred at Rideau Hall. In 1888, Lord Frederick Stanley was appointed the sixth Governor General of Canada, bringing with him his family. His wife, Lady Constance Villiers followed the line of women who promoted skating in Ottawa, regularly hosting skating parties at Rideau Hall’s outdoor rink. In 1889, the Stanley family, including daughter Isobel, attended the Winter Carnival in Montreal, taking in their first game of organized hockey between the Montreal Victorias and Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. As the Montreal Gazette reported, Lord Stanley expressed “his great delight with the game of hockey and the expertness of the players.” Only three years later, Lord Stanley donated the Stanley Cup.
Isobel Stanley becomes the first
Shortly after seeing the sport for the first time herself, 14-year-old Isobel Stanley picked up a stick, put on her skates, and played hockey. It was on the rink at Rideau Hall that women’s hockey was officially born. As historian Brian MacFarlane wrote, “There is firm evidence that he [Lord Stanley] and Lady Stanley played a significant role in the development and growth of women’s hockey—simply by creating an environment in which the game could be enjoyed in a casual manner by men and women alike.”
On March 8, 1889, at the new Rideau Skating Hall, an indoor arena, Isobel Stanley’s Government House hockey team defeated the Rideau Ladies in what was considered by many as the first formal game of women’s hockey. Many years later, Stanley’s name would don the NWHL and later PHF’s championship trophy, known as the Isobel Cup. On that trophy was an inscription that read “The Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy Cup 1875-1963. This Cup shall be awarded annually to the greatest professional women’s hockey team in North America. All who pursue this Cup, pursue a dream; a dream born with Isobel, that shall never die.”
The hockey “fad” spreads to America
By 1898, the “fad” of speed skating in hockey skates was taken up by women in New York City Soon, it was hockey itself. “So popular has the hockey skate become among the women members of one of the aristocratic clubs that not long ago a regular hockey team was organized among the smart set, and frequent practice is indulged in,” wrote the North Loup Loyalist on April 29, 1898. “These women practice their hockey game “between sessions,” and not even a sheriff could get into the structure during the sacred hours devoted to their play.”
The game was spreading outward from Ottawa, sending tiny arteries of the sport in all directions. In Canada, the diffusion of women’s hockey followed the inclusion of women in post secondary institutions. Teams at the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, McGill University, Mount Royal University, and the Calgary Collegiate Institute all launched teams in the 1890s. At McGill, by 1984, women “were granted four hours of ice time per week on the indoor rink providing three men were on duty to guard the entrances. No male students were allowed to become involved and the players had to be comfortably and warmly dressed.”
In 1894, women at Queen’s University founded a team known as the “Love-me-Littles.” The team’s name reflected “the lack of acceptance by men at the university of a women’s hockey team.” As the Queen’s College Journal noted in February of 1895, the team not only played against other women’s teams, but challenged the men’s hockey team for equal footing. “[T]he members of the Love-Me-Little (girls) hockey team of Queen’s College are thinking of challenging the Varsity Hockey Club to a friendly game.” It was understood that their enthusiastic practise was held with a view to a match with Divinity Hall, but the Archbishop and the two Patriarchs, thinking of the disastrous follies of their own youth, sternly reprimanded the ambitious sports of the flock, and sent them to bed with a warning never to think of it again.”
It took longer for women’s hockey to secure its place in the United States. Field hockey preceded ice hockey in many American institutions. Constance Applebee introduced field hockey for women at Harvard University in 1901. Slowly, like shinny to hockey in Canada, field hockey migrated from grass to the ice in the United States.