Women on Ice

Women on Ice is the first book to focus upon the vibrant world of women’s ice hockey in western Canada during the First World War and the 1920s. The Vancouver Amazons, with their championship laurels and their association with hockey’s famous Patrick brothers, were the most famous, but were only one of a number of women’s hockey teams that met during the annual Banff winter carnivals to compete for the women’s ice hockey championship of western Canada. With the support of more than three dozen photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, Women on Ice follows the fortunes of the Vancouver women as they encountered teams from Victoria and New Westminster and the powerful squads from Calgary and Edmonton — teams that deserve to be legendary, but are now largely forgotten. Also profiled are teams from what was the geographic heart of women’s hockey in British Columbia until the First World War, the Kootenays, as well as some of the dominant teams of the postwar years from Alberta. The curious decline of women’s hockey in the 1930s consigned to obscurity the history of these and of all women’s teams in western Canada. Women on Ice attempts to rescue some of that fascinating history.