No one likes to be called names, and no one likes to feel excluded. In 1937, the Calgary Grills women’s hockey team experienced both of those issues, one they were able to overcome, and the other ended their season.
As it relates to insults, sometimes when it comes from an opponent, it serves as bulletin board material to motivate a team. Perhaps the most famous incidence of those came in 2002 when reports emerged that Team USA had a Canadian flag on the floor of their dressing room at the Olympics. Although the claim was later debunked, it served as motivation for Canada, who won gold.
65 years before that occurrence however, came what is perhaps the first example of bulletin board material in women’s hockey, involving the Calgary Grills and Edmonton Co-Eds. Representing the University of Alberta, The Calgary Albertan said the Edmonton Co-Eds “squad is one of the strongest ever brought together at the Capital city. It includes on its lineup several former stars of the Red Deer Amazons, the club that for several seasons ruled women’s hockey in this province.” The Red Deer Amazons dominated women’s hockey in Alberta shortly after their founding in 1926 until the middle of the decade.
“The team is rated an exceptionally fast skating outfit that should give the local grills the toughest opposition they can expect from any quarter this season,” The Calgary Albertan concluded.
That opposition not only included on-ice competition, but a mental component when word got out that the Edmonton Co-Eds had allegedly hurled an insult at the Calgary Grills. The Grills were in their third season of play, but their first year competing in provincial competition, and were a team who Calgary fans believed were tops in the province of Alberta.
In a February 9, 1937 article in The Calgary Albertan, the paper ran an article title “Girl Pucksters Mad: Local Lassies Called “Sissies” by Co-eds.” That was it, the bulletin board material the Calgary Grills needed. According to The Calgary Albertan, the Edmonton team called the Grills “sissies” and at the same time, claimed themselves as provincial champions, “and dared the world, Calgary Grills especially, to prove them otherwise.”
As the paper wrote, “Most of the Grills carried a clipping of the “sissie” story with them Monday night as they went through a workout in preparation for a game with Co-Eds at Victoria Arena Thursday night. They kept getting madder and madder all through the practice until manager Tommy Kolt had to call it a day and tell them to wait until Thursday.”
When game day arrived, it was the Calgary Grills who walked away as the Alberta champions, beating the Edmonton Co-Eds 2-1. As the Calgary Herald said the day after the game, “Spurred on, doubtless, by the report that their rivals had dubbed them “sissies” and regarded them as an easy mark, the Grills proved their ability, even in their first year of organized hockey, to wrest the trophy from the team that has held it for the past three years.”
Helen Stone opened the scoring for Edmonton before Dot Waring equalized. The game was tied until with 25 seconds left in the game, Helen Nicol scored what would stand as the clinching goal for the Calgary Grills.
The teams would meet twice more before the season was out, this time for the Alpine Cup at the Banff Winter Carnival. This time it was Calgary’s star netminder ‘Peewee’ McKenzie who shut the door recording a pair of shutouts, beating the Edmonton Co-Eds 1-0, and then tying them 0-0 to earn a total goals victory over Edmonton. As the Edmonton Journal wrote following the Carnival, “The Edmonton team found McKenzie in the Calgary net too agile for them, although they had most of the play.”
Believing they had won all they could in the west, next came the feeling of exclusion. Determined to continue their season, the Calgary Grills, who had defeated the Calgary Tigerettes for the city title, followed by the University of Alberta’s Edmonton Co-Eds for the provincial crown and what they believed was a western Canadian title, wanted to challenge the Preston Rivulettes for the Dominion title.
“In possession of all trophies within reaching distance Grills have set their caps for a Canadian championship series,” The Montreal Star reported in late February, 1937. “They are working out daily in hope of traveling east for a shot at the title.”
Before Calgary could make it to Preston, however, there were other obstacles to face, all unknown to the team at the time. As Dominion president Myrtle Cook wrote in her column, “In The Women’s Sportlight” for the Montreal Star, the Calgary team still had to face Manitoba’s champions, “Calgary girls are reported warming up for the Dominion final which is to be played in the east this year– they hope to earn the Manitoba and western titles and earn the jaunt east.”
The Dominion title the previous year, which was to be played for between Preston and Winnipeg was defaulted due to the costs of travel. The final was not played, with money to blame. 1937 was shaping up to be worse.
In the days following Cook’s article touting the Calgary Grills as potential challengers, she sent correspondence to the Grills telling them they would only be eligible if dues were paid. “Do you intend entering dominion playdowns,” she wrote. “If so Alberta branch must pay fees due association. Rules provide western winners come east this year raising own expenses which are to be first charge against play-off gates. Kindly advise intentions.”
Despite the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association operating since 1933, many in Alberta were unaware of such a requirement, nor of a provincial association who could pay such a fee. There was a divide between the provinces, and teams, and a lack of overarching organization in women’s hockey. As the Canadian Press wrote on March 17, 1937, “Association fees owing from a non-existent association to an association unheard of here threatened…to disrupt the carefully-laid plans of Calgary Grills to challenge for the Canadian Women’s Amateur Hockey championship.”
Tommy Kolt, manager of the Grills immediately responded to Cook with confusion. “What D.W.A.H.A.? What Alberta branch and what fees? We have amateur cards and western titles…What have you got to do with it all? If you come in some place, please advise me of all the details.”
The following day however, word from the east came saying the Preston Rivulettes would guarantee the Calgary Grills $1400 for expenses to travel to the championships. Kolt however, remained concerned by the Dominion’s request for fees, saying “he fears that if the Grills must pay the fees they will be unable to make the trip east.” As it turned out, no such guarantee from Preston was made to Calgary for financial support.
Myrtle Cook clarified the situation in her column on March 19, 1937 saying that Manitoba had declared the Winnipeg Olympics as provincial champions and that Manitoba is “are affiliated, and in good standing” with the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association.
“The would seem to put the Calgary team behind the eight ball,” Cook wrote in The Montreal Star. “The D.W.A.H.A. is at present in the throes of straightening out the western tangle and attempting to qualify the Alberta team through proper association.”
“If Calgary does not affiliate then the Winnipeg team will proceed into Canadian final as western champions,” Cook continued.
While Calgary started to communicate with the Winnipeg Olympics, the Grills continued to find themselves confused by the association’s to which they were supposed to become members having already won the provincial title, and what they thought was the Western title at the Banff Winter Carnival.
According to The Calgary Albertan, the Calgary Grills received another telegram from Dominion president Myrtle Cook that the paper called “mostly unintelligible to several people who tried to figure out what it meant.” The team also received a telegram from Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld, treasurer for the Dominion requesting $10 for affiliation and stating the Dominion Women’s Amatuer Hockey Association had not held meetings representing all regions. The Grills pushed back hoping the communicated arrangements they’d already put into place to play Preston would be honored, alleging Winnipeg had already defaulted earlier in the year, including from the 1936 Dominion final. The Grills announced to newspapers they would not be paying the Dominion until more information was provided. As Kolt wrote in a response to Rosenfeld, “We want to play for the Dominion title. We haven’t enough money to buy it in a committee room.”
The situation continued to become more confused as communication made its way back and forth across Canada. When the Preston Rivulettes officially won the Eastern Canadian title, also by default, they again extended an invitation to the Calgary Grills.
Despite however, previous claims from Calgary that Preston had promised to guarantee $1400, the Rivulettes, who under the Dominion rules at the time were not obliged to guarantee finances, refused the guarantee, instead offering Calgary 70% of gate receipts to help cover their anticipated costs. It was not sufficient for Calgary, nor, as Cook maintained, would Calgary be eligible until they affiliated with the Dominion’s association.
The message remained clear from Dominion president Myrtle Cook that even if Calgary affiliated, they’d still be required to play the Winnipeg Olympics for the right to travel east as the Western champions.
Following this news, and further communication, Tommy Kolt told The Calgary Albertan “that he was becoming more fed up every day with what he said were apparent attempts of (Cook) to prevent Grills from getting a Canadian playoff.” According to Kolt, Cook had stated that Kolt and the Grills would be hearing from their lawyers if he continued to ask questions about organization of the Dominion association.
Within hours of that story running, Kolt and the Calgary Grills decided to drop out of contention calling the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association demands “impossible.”
“In retiring for the winter the Grills are sticking to their claim that they are western Canada champions by virtue of their tournament victory at Banff,” Kolt said to the Canadian Press, “And the team also feels that it has a moral claim on half the Canadian championship.”
The mess received stern objection from Ontario’s Alexandrine Gibb, who was paramount in aiding the Preston Rivulettes foundation, and in developing women’s sport across Canada.
“While the ice melts, women hockey executives are doing a real job of fiddling,” Gibb wrote. According to Gibb, the situation and financial guarantees were an item voted on by western representatives, and that Ontario did not have a say in the matter, nor representation at the most recent Dominion meeting.
“If the D.W.H.A. had been on their toes through western and eastern Canada,” Gibb wrote in an April 2 edition of her “No Man’s Land of Sport” column in The Toronto Star, “they would have realized when a championship didn’t materialize last year that their paying and playing rule would not work. It stared them in the face…they couldn’t declare a champion…but on they went this year with the same ridiculous money rule still on the books.”
“We are now on our way fast nowhere,” Gibb continued, “Let’s fold it up…the D.W.H.A…let Mr. Kolt and his unaffiliated Calgary team come east. There is no benefit being derived from being a member of D.W.H.A…certainly not for Ontario.”
Perhaps it was no coincidence that with Ontario and Alberta, Canada’s most active women’s hockey provinces denouncing the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association, that 1937 would be Cook’s final season at the helm, as she stepped down with Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld, an Ontario representative, taking over as president the following year.
Money ruled in 1937 as the Montreal Maroons were defaulted a spot in the Eastern finals after they tied the Summerside Crystal Sisters in a one game, and the Crystal Sisters couldn’t afford to play another game. Preston was then defaulted the Eastern title after Montreal defaulted due to finances from playing a series against Preston. In the West, the Winnipeg Olympics were deemed Western champions due to the fact they’d paid a $10 fee to the Dominion, while the Calgary Grills had not. As Tom Moore wrote on April 9 in The Calgary Albertan, the association “used up so much energy keeping the Calgary Grills out of a Dominion series that they made a mess of the eastern playoffs…”
Eventually Winnipeg would travel to Galt, Ontario to play the Preston Rivulettes. They fell 3-1 in the opening game of the series in front of 2,500 fans, and lost game two 4-2 in font of 3,106 fans handing Preston what is likely the most hotly disputed Dominion title Lady Bessborough Cup history.
At a later meeting at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld pled with the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association to give a modest grant to the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association to ensure a national title could be competed for each year, but was abruptly turned down by president Cecil Duncan.
Preston won the following two Dominion titles, before the Association ceased operations following the 1940 season with finances and World War II as culprits to blame.
Following the rollercoaster 1937 season, the Calgary Grills didn't return to the ice. Instead, the vast majority of the roster moved to play for the Calgary Chinooks. The Chinooks beat the Red Deer Amazons and other teams that season, but were ultimately eliminated by the Edmonton Blizzards, who were powered by a handful of former Edmonton Rustlers stars including the game's premiere defender in the era, Eleanor Tufford .
Through their fight being called “sissies” to standing their ground against Canada’s women’s hockey governing body, the Calgary Grills had a tumultuous 1937 season. While the title remains Preston’s in the history books, Calgary’s moral claim remains.
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