The Vancouver Amazons are one of Canada's pioneering women's hockey teams.
Article content
The Vancouver Amazons probably weren't playing much hockey by February 1918. But the girls' team from King George High School in the West End was nervous. Vancouver Women's Hockey, Vancouver's “Senior Puck Chaser,” sent a challenge to her team.
According to the Vancouver Sun, the challenge was to “beat the Amazon Girls Club at hockey.”
Advertisement 2
Article content
Article content
The Vancouver Ladies team fulfilled their duty and defeated the Amazons 1-0 at Denman Arena. But it wasn't easy.
A Sun reporter said the Amazons played “honestly, heart-breaking, oh, blood-curdling hockey”, tearing pucks “like a cyclone” and attacking opponents during the game. He wrote that he had received “ice chops” on his “shins, feet and knees.” An opportunity arose.
The Amazons were not denied, winning two rematches and declaring themselves the “1918 British Columbia Champions.”
A team photo in the Vancouver archives shows seven players who appear to be 16 or 17 years old, and in some cases even younger. Most of them played together for several years and became BC's top women's hockey team of its era.
The peak of their success came in 1922, when they traveled to the Banff Winter Carnival to compete for the Alpine Cup, billed as Western Canada's women's hockey championship.
With his speed and skill, Amazons became a crowd favorite, even against his hometown opponents in Alberta. However, the team suffered a major blow when captain Phoebe Senkler was injured and missed the championship game against the defending champion Calgary Regents on February 4, 1922.
sunrise
Article content
Advertisement 3
Article content
State said the Regents scored on a deflection in the first period and rained down shots on Amazons goaltender Amelia Wojtevic, but she withstood the onslaught with her “eagle eyes.” Reported.
Amazons left wing Kathleen Carson sprinted up the ice in the third period and tied the game with a “clean shot.” In overtime, Carson “made another great play” and scored the winning goal.
102 years later, this week the 1921-22 Amazons team was enshrined in the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
“The timing is perfect right now as women's hockey is really exploding,” said BC Sports Hall of Fame curator Jason Beck. “One hundred years ago, B.C. and Western Canada had thriving women's teams and leagues.”
The story of the Amazons may have been scripted by Hollywood. Team members were fascinated by hockey and by Vancouver's millionaires, who won Vancouver's only Stanley Cup in 1915. So they began skating and practicing at Denman Arena, just a few blocks from the West End high school.
With fewer women's teams playing, the Amazons traveled to Banff to compete in the Alpine Cup. But it was a far cry from Denman Arena. In Vancouver, they played indoors on artificial ice. In Banff, they played outdoors on the Bow River.
Advertisement 4
Article content
“The year we won (we won) it was -30 degrees,” Beck marvels. “Comfortable Denman Going from the arena to an outdoor rink along the Bow River in minus 30 degrees is pretty extreme.”
Early February 1922 was so cold that the next year's organizers postponed the Banff Winter Carnival by several weeks. But in late February 1923, they had the opposite problem. The warm days continued, and the ice melted and turned to mud.
The Amazons ended up losing 2-0 to Ferny Swastikas in 1923. Part of the reason was that Farney assigned two players to shadow the Amazons' star scorer, a player referred to in the article as Mrs. Guy Patrick. The year before, she was Kathleen Carson. Whenever a female player of the time got married, she was identified by her husband's name.
Guy Patrick was manager of the Amazons from 1921 to 1922 and was part of the family that owned the Millionaire and Denman areas. In 1921, he organized a three-city women's championship with Seattle and Victoria, which the Amazons won.
The Amazons are also believed to have played the first international women's ice hockey game against the University of Washington on March 8, 1920, during the Millionaires' Game at Denman Arena.
The Amazons are the second women's hockey team to be inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame, joining the Rossland Ladies team, which won four BC championships from its inception in 1900 to its demise in 1918.
jmackie@postmedia.com
Recommendations from the editorial department
-
From 1914 to 1947, the Mainland Cup was the pinnacle of BC soccer.
-
Growing up on a farm near tiny Bauch, Alberta, Len Danberger fell in love with hockey. She was “lying on the prairie floor, and all we had was the radio – this was about 1944-1945-1946 – and Foster Hewitt[of Hockey Night in Canada]. I was listening to it,'' says 1984. Dumbberger 1 year old.
Article content
