Thunder Bay is a hockey city. Yet in terms of Ontario hockey, Thunder Bay is isolated; a 15 hour drive from Toronto. Resting on the shores of Lake Superior, across from a series of mesas known as Sleeping Giant, and only 50km from the Minnesota border, the city was not dubbed Thunder Bay until 1970 when two towns, Fort William and Port Arthur amalgamated.
In the 1800s, Port Arthur was a major stop on the shores of the Great Lakes and also for the Canadian Pacific Railway in expanding farther west. In men’s hockey, Port Arthur played and lost to the Ottawa Senators in 1911 for the Stanley Cup, and the Port Arthur Bearcats were four-time Allan Cup champions in 1925, 1926, 1929, and 1939. In 1936, the Bearcats represented Canada at the Olympic Games bringing home a silver medal from Germany.
Women’s hockey came and went in various parts of North America, but it remained relatively stable in Port Arthur and neighboring Fort William. The earliest mention of women’s hockey in the area came in the Fort William Journal in 1907.
By the 1920s, the two cities were host to a thriving women’s hockey community playing in the Thunder Bay Ladies Hockey League.
During the 1927-1928 season, the Port Arthur North Ends, Port Arthur South Ends and the Fort William ‘Y’ all vied for the Thunder Bay title, with the Port Arthur South Ends eventually winning the Thunder Bay Ladies’ Amateur Hockey Association title beating Fort William 1-0 and 3-0 in their total goal series. It earned them the opportunity to play for a Western Canadian title. Next up for the South Ends was a single game sudden death game against the University of Manitoba Co-eds in front of “more than 2,000 fans” as reported by the Free Press Evening Bulletin on March 22, 1928. According to the Free Press Evening Bulleting, “the Port girls were considerably faster skaters and with speedy back checking smothered most of the visitors’ attempts to reach the goal before they could get any shots away.” The Port Arthur South Ends were again victorious, this time winning 1-0 to be named the Western Canadian champions.
It set up a series against Toronto Aura Lee for an unofficial Canadian national title.
In front of more than 3,000 fans, Toronto won the first game 3-0, and dominated the second game 5-0 to take an 8-0 series title. The Toronto Star wrote that Toronto Aura Lee beat the Port Arthur South Ends for “The title of girls’ hockey champions of Canada…The two games were witnessed by large crowds, and the first all Canadian girls’ hockey championship proved quite a success financially and otherwise.”
By the 1930s, it was not only the Thunder Bay Ladies Hockey Association, but also the Lakehead Ladies League bringing more teams into the fold including the Port Arthur Roughriders, Campbell Daredevils, Pine Street Co-Eds, and Lakehead Maroons. With the Dominion Women’s Amateur Hockey Association organizing official national competition by 1933, the now diluted talent pool in the Thunder Bay region decided to develop two all-star teams to form viable contenders for an Eastern Canadian title, as Port Arthur was now considered an Ontario team, rather than part of the West, which began in Manitoba. Those teams were called the Lakehead Maroons and Twinports.
In the 1940s, local woman Hilda Donati , who had moved to the city in 1932, “contributed greatly to the development of the game of hockey.” In 1936, Donati became an executive with the Port Arthur West End Junior Hockey Organization, “a position she held for many years and one not commonly undertaken by a woman during that time.” Donati also founded “Hilda’s Pee-Wee Hockey League” the first of its kind in Thunder Bay, and some thought in Canada.
Dubbed “Mrs. Hockey” by MacLean’s Magazine in 1948, Donati’s hockey league, by that year, had grown to 20 teams and over 300 participants in three age divisions, up from only eight teams when the league was founded in 1945. Donati’s league continued into the 1950s, by which time Port Arthur was again fielding championship caliber women’s hockey teams.
In 1950, the Port Arthur Bombers challenged the Western Canadian champions, the Winnipeg All-Stars for a national title. Winnipeg went on to beat Port Arthur 7-2 and 7-3 to win the Canadian title. The following season, the Port Arthur Bearcats women’s team were ready for another challenge from the west for the Lady Bessborough Cup and the title of Canadian national champions.
This time they faced the Moose Jaw Wildcats. Moose Jaw opened the series with a dominant 4-0 win with Lois Milligan scoring a hat trick. The second and deciding game of the series was even more lopsided with the Moose Jaw Wildcats securing the Lady Bessborough Cup and a national title with an 8-1 win.
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Despite their losses, Port Arthur remained the only city outside of Western Canada at the time willing to challenge for a Dominion championship. There were other teams operating in Ontario, but Port Arthur was the only team able to challenge for national fame.
Like many Canadian cities in the coming decades, Thunder Bay would battle with the rise of ringette as a threat to ice hockey, but by the 1980s, the new Thunder Bay Women’s Hockey Association was launched, and new teams, like the Thunder Bay Queens.
When few continued to see beyond city and provincial lines, the Port Arthur South Ends and later the Port Arthur Bombers and Port Arthur Bearcats continued to push for more. Port Arthur kept Ontario’s women’s hockey scene on the map in times few were competing. The women of Port Arthur played an unsung role in the preservation of the sport in Ontario, one that shouldn’t be overlooked.
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