The fight for a sustainable professional women's hockey league has long spanning implications. One is to not see women be prematurely forced from the game. That's an issue that women and girls have faced in hockey for more than a century.
In 1981, it was a problem facing 11-year-old Heather Kramble. The assistant captain of the Transcona Pirates stepped on the ice on February 17, 1981, knowing it could be the final game of her career. Following that game, the Greater Winnipeg Minor Hockey Association suspended Kramble.
The reasoning was simple: girls were not permitted to play on a boys team in Winnipeg, or for that matter, on boys teams in much of Canada. A little over a week prior on February 8, 1981, Kramble, a defender, was suspended by her own association, the Transcona Minor Hockey Association. Her team, and her coach refused to abide by the ruling. That's why following that February 17 game, the Greater Winnipeg Minor Hockey Assocaition also suspended her coach, Jerry Hartwell, and forced her team to forfeit the game.
"They have no right to suspend her. We've done nothing wrong in the way of registration and she's a paid up member of the club," Hartwell told The Winnipeg Sun at the time.
With no girls organization in Winnipeg, Kramble and three other girls playing in the area, were all banned.
Following their suspension, the 10 boys on Kramble's team said they would not return to the ice as members of the league without her.
"Our team is behind her 100%," Hartwell said in an article published by The Vancouver Sun.
The issue made its way to Winnipeg city council, where council asked the association to allow girls to play. They also discussed the possibility of banning the association from using Winnipeg city rinks should they refuse to allow girls to play. The Attorney General and Canada's sports Minister, along with Canada's Minister for the status of women all attempted to intervene, by the Winnipeg association and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association refused to budge. The fight continued.
"The girls are not eligible to participate in the program and the coaches are suspended," said Russ Farrell, the Greater Winnipeg Minor Hockey Association's president in an interview with The Winnipeg Sun. "The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association and the Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association are in complete agreement that our position is correct."
A women's league did exist in the province at the time featuring five teams, but the players were all in their late teens and 20s. Farrell stated they would support the existing league to help form a league for girls alone.
Kramble wasn't the only Manitoba girl suspended, nor was Jerry Hartwell the only coach. Mac Rousseaux, coach of the Waverley Heights Wings, was suspended after he played 15-year-old Paula Brasier in a game following her own suspension.
"It's a bunch of crap," Rousseaux told The Winnipeg Sun in a February 23, 1981 article. Rosseaux said he would appeal to Manitoba and Canada's governing bodies, but would not change his stance on playing Brasier when he attended his disciplinary hearing with the Greater Winnipeg Minor Hockey Association.
"They already had their minds made up," he said. "You were supposed to say something they like to change their minds. I wouldn't say I wouldn't play Paula, so I'm out. I told them it was blackmail."
Kramble had moved from ringette to hockey because she enjoyed the challenge. "'I like hockey better than ringette. It's harder, but I like it better, so it's easier," Kramble told The Toronto Star.
"She's like any one of us boys. The rules are stupid," said one of her young teammates. "If she wants to play, let her play."
But it was a difficult pill for the 11-year-old and her family to swallow.
"It's been a hard week. She's been pretty down," Kramble's mother Elaine said. "We're pretty disappointed in the whole situation. We feel that really the persons who are getting hurt the most are the girls."
The fight for Heather Kramble, Paula Brasier, 12-year-old Bernice Chartrand, and 13-year-old Lorin McLachlin in Winnipeg became a catalyst for change. While the organizations upheld their bans, the pressure from the City of Winnipeg, Canadian government officials, parents, players, and advocates forced the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association to examine their practices. Due to the pressures, by spring, a resolution was set, and on May 24, 1981, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association endorsed the formation of a women's hockey council to supervise women's hockey in Canada. The following day, at the opening of the Association's annual meeting, the council was approved, and a seat on the Association's board of governors was reserved for a representative of the women's council.
"There has been hot and cold interest for a number of years in helping to establish women's hockey," said CAHA president Murray Costello in an interview with The Canadian Press. "We felt we should take an active role in making it happen."
The following year in 1982, the first ever women's hockey national championship took place. The first Shoppers Drug Mart Women's Nationals, with the winners taking the Abby Hoffman Cup, the runners up earning the Fran Rider Cup, and the third place team receiving the Maureen McTeer Trophy was hosted in Brantford, Ontario. That season Ontario's Agincourt Canadians won the title, with the Edmonton Chimos finishing second and Titan de Montréal taking third. Dawn McGuire, who won two gold medals with Canada at the inaugural 1990 World Championship and following 1992 World Championship was MVP of the first national championships. She was also named the top defender and MVP of the first World Championships.
The issues for girls hoping to play boys hockey did not disappear until another young player, Justine Blainey took the Ontario Hockey Association to the Ontario High Court of Justice, Ontario Human Rights Commission, and later the Ontario Court of Appeal. Eventually it was ruled that banning women and girls from playing in a league with men and boys violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as they discriminated based on sex.
It was an opening that led to many things. Kramble's fight in 1981 sparked action by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and the subsequent creation of a national championship and women's hockey council. In 1987, the winners of the now thriving national championships, the Hamilton Golden Hawks, represented Canada at the first unofficial World Hockey Tournament, and three years later, the first World Championship took place in Ottawa, Ontario.
From a fight in Manitoba, to the organization of a national council for women's hockey, to a national title, and world competition, the resistance of Heather Kramble and her coach sparked national change, and opened the door for the growth of women's hockey in Canada.
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