Doris Parkes Was The Fastest Woman On Skates

Whether it was in water, snow, or ice, whatever Doris Parkes did, she did it fast. A provincial championship swimmer, cross country skier, and speed skater, Doris Parkes was one of Canada's top athletes in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

While few could catch her, Parkes also sped ahead in aiding the development of women's hockey in British Columbia. A hockey player herself with the Vancouver Amazons, Parkes' role in growing the sport in British Columbia was paramount to the region's development in women's hockey .

"British Columbia was coming along due to the efforts of hardworking Doris Parkes, who was a longtime member of the Vancouver Amazons and a regular competitor in Banff for nearly a decade," wrote M. Ann Hall in "The Girl and the Game: A History of Women's Sport in Canada."

As a player, Parkes was skating with the Vancouver Amazons in the mid 1920s as a defender. Following a hiatus by the team, Parkes was responsible for re-launching a new iteration of the Amazons in 1931. The Amazons had been Alpine Cup champions at the Banff Winter Carnival in 1922, and placed alongside the Seattle Vamps and Victoria Kewpies in the women's side of the Pacific Coast Hockey League, where the Amazons went undefeated.

Parkes and the Amazons played regionally in a revamped local league where as The Vancouver Sun said, Parkes "was seen to do some nice backchecking" in a game against the Seattle Royalets in 1931, where Seattle took the Northwest Girls Hockey Championship .

That year, Parkes served in a leadership role as an assistant to the secretary-treasure in the inaugural Vancouver Women's Hockey Association. Her fame in athletics, particularly speed skating were already well known, specifically from many titles at the Banff Winter Carnival.

At the time, the Carnival featured traditional speed skating races, but also included at "Girls' ice hockey team relay," which Parkes helped the Amazons win in 1931, the same year she "easily retained her B.C. championships in the 220 and 440-yard events," as The Province wrote on December 5, 1931. According to the paper, "the speed races at the annual Rotary Ice Carnival have proved in the nature of a personal triumph for Doris Parkes, speed skating star." She also won longer events, including the half mile, one-mile and 3.5 mile races as B.C. champion, holding such honors through the late 1920s, and well into the 1930s, being listed as the champion again in 1936.

Named the Queen of the 1931 Banff Winter Carnival. As the Calgary Herald proclaimed of her selected, "Queen Doris is a typical winter sports sovereign."

As The Calgary Albertan wrote in 1931, "One of the outstanding players on the Vancouver Amazons team will be Doris Winnifrew Parkes, this year's Carnival Queen, whose sporting reputation is far reaching." The paper referred to Parkes as "a wizard on skates."

The Amazons ousted the home Banff team in the opening game of the 1931 Banff Winter Carnival hockey tournament while vying for the Alpine Cup, winning their opening game 5-0, before the Edmonton Monarchs defeated Vancouver 3-0 in the final.

The following year in 1932, Parkes' took her role in growing British Columbia and Vancouver's women's hockey community further, as she was named president of the Vancouver Women's Hockey Association.

Parkes was listed as scoring both goals for the Amazons in front of 2,500 fans at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver against the Vancouver Beavers in a 2-0 win in January of 1932.

At the Banff Winter Carnival, Parkes played for the Amazons in 1926, and again in the final in 1927, falling to the Edmonton Monarchs 3-1, but it was her performance in speed skating that earned her fame at the annual event.

Not only did Parkes compete in swimming, cross country skiing, speed skating, and hockey, but she was also in diving, canoeing, lacrosse, and ski jumping, an event she competed in during the 1920s, which women were not permitted to compete in at the Olympic Games until 2014. She was also a champion in ski-joring, an event where an individual is pulled on skis by a horse or dogs.

An early force in moving not only women's sports, but women's hockey forward, Doris Parkes was a builder of the game.

Parkes passed away in 1992 at the age of 86.

View the original article to see embedded media.