Brampton Thunder goalie Liz Knox surrenders a goal to Montreal Stars' forward Caroline Ouellette during the Clarkson Cup final on March 25, 2012 at the Gale Centre in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
photo: Rick Denham/Hockey Hall of Fame
There are two reasons why this year’s Women’s Worlds are being held in Brampton. The first is business. Hockey Canada fielded proposals from various venues, and the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association (OWHA) was one bidder. And behind that bid was the organization’s long-time co-founder and leader, Fran Rider, a member of the IIHF’s Hall of Fame and, since 2015, a Member of the Order of Canada. Brampton gets it. No brainer.
The other reason? Brampton has perhaps a richer history of women’s hockey than any other city in the world. No exaggeration.
It all began in 1963. That’s when the Brampton Canadettes Girls’ Hockey Association was founded, the first association in the world dedicated specifically and only to the development, support, and growth of hockey for girls and women. Four years later, the team established the Brampton Canadettes Annual Easter Tournament (originally called the Dominion Ladies’ Hockey Tournament), and it quickly grew and grew and became the world’s largest tournament for female hockey. Today teams from all over the world compete, playing more than 600 games during the Eater weekend.
And this year, with the World Women’s a focal point in Brampton, the tournament goes on. Now in its 54th year, the tourney started on Thursday and wraps up on Easter Sunday. It is now so big that eleven arenas in the area are needed to accommodate the massive game schedule for some 31 levels of play. And one of those arenas is the Cassie Campbell Arena, eponymously named after the city’s greatest native daughter.
But back to the start. 1967. Guess who was a player in the first tournament? Fran Rider. “I grew up in Etobicoke (western Toronto), but I didn’t care where I went—I just wanted to play hockey,” she reminisced. “I always wanted to play hockey, but I basically played in a backyard rink because there was no team. And then in the Toronto Star Jim Pennington wrote a story about the Brampton tournament, and I ended up on a team that was C level. We didn’t have a practise. We stepped on the ice and played our first game, full body contact. We had a nine-year-old on the team and a 44-year-old on the team, and I was 16, but everybody was happy. When I played, our team got the ice at 7am. It was bitter, bitter cold, but there wasn’t a lot of ice available for girls’ hockey.”
The success of the Brampton tournament helped spread by word of mouth female hockey. Three other cities in southern Ontario quickly established their own events, creating a mini-tour for girls to play. “That tournament brought a lot of teams together,” Rider continued. “There were four major tournaments—Brampton, Wallaceburg (which called their event the Lipstick Tournament), Preston (home of Hilda Ranscombe and the Rivulettes of the 1930s), and Picton. A lot of the teams didn’t have leagues to play in, so they would meet at these tournaments. Then some U.S. teams, mostly Massachusetts and Michigan, would send teams to the tournament, as well as Prince Edward Island. That’s how we started to interact and learn more and more about girls’ hockey in other places in relative obscurity.”
Fran being Fran, she also got involved recruiting and organizing to the point that by 1980 she had become tournament director, a position she held for a decade. It was the most important decade in the history of women’s hockey. “Soon after I became director,” she continued, “we developed a connection with West Germany. And then somehow Holland found out about us and we invited them and we created an international division of the Brampton tournament in 1985. And after that event we had meetings with teams in Australia and England and other places that were weaker, so we decided there would be no intentional bodychecking, which was the biggest issue in the women’s game.”
If any of this sounds like an easy puzzle to connect the dots, you are right. Rider created an international division in this Brampton Canadettes tournament, and two years later she organized the first, unofficial World Women’s Championship in Toronto. And out of that success came the IIHF’s participation in 1990. The rest is, truly, history.
“Even in the late 1970s, I learned about players in other countries in Europe, and even then I thought we need to get a world championship going. And we have to get in the Olympics,” Rider continued with her trademark ability to convey the near-impossible with words that make it sound easy. “But Brampton was key. Out of that tournament most female players have played in it at some point.”
In the 1960s, the tournament was still pretty small, but once it expanded, it went on the move for a while. “For a while, the tournament was held in Mississauga at Doublerinks because the arena had two pads,” Rider explained, “and then the Meadowvale complex was built in Mississauga and it had four pads, which was the first four-pad arena anywhere, so everything could take place under one roof. It was important to interact and grow the game. And then in 1990 it moved back to Brampton.”
And once the IIHF came on board in 1990, the game exploded across Canada, the U.S., and Europe. But Brampton continued to play a pivotal role, icing a team for many years in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. And that’s where Cassie Campbell comes in again. After the success of the Nagano Olympics (despite losing to the U.S.) she came home to Brampton and talked to mayor Susan Fennell about the lack of opportunities for girls in the area (ambitions had increased exponentially since the ‘60s!). Fennell not only bought a franchise, and called it the Brampton Thunder, she was instrumental in growing the Central Ontario Women’s Hockey League into the National Women’s Hockey League—and becoming its new president. More growth, more development, more visibility.
The Thunder won the championship in its first season, and a look at players in the CWHL that year is to see a who’s who of Canadian greats from that era—Caroline Ouellette, Angela James, Jayna Hefford, Vicky Sunohara, Lori Dupuis, Geraldine Heaney. The team later became the Brampton Canadettes-Thunder and were part of the league for two decades before relocating to nearby Markham, Ontario. Their best season was 2011-12 when they advanced to the Clarkson Cup finals, only to lose to Ouellette and the Montreal Stars.
Of course, things haven’t been the same since the demise of the CWHL, but the Brampton Easter Tournament remains the central date on any female player’s calendar. On Sunday, champions will be crowned at those aforementioned eleven rinks and 31 levels, and in a week IIHF President Luc Tardif will put gold medals around the necks of the winners of the World Women’s Championship at CAA Centre. The connection is pivotal in the history of women’s hockey.
The other reason? Brampton has perhaps a richer history of women’s hockey than any other city in the world. No exaggeration.
It all began in 1963. That’s when the Brampton Canadettes Girls’ Hockey Association was founded, the first association in the world dedicated specifically and only to the development, support, and growth of hockey for girls and women. Four years later, the team established the Brampton Canadettes Annual Easter Tournament (originally called the Dominion Ladies’ Hockey Tournament), and it quickly grew and grew and became the world’s largest tournament for female hockey. Today teams from all over the world compete, playing more than 600 games during the Eater weekend.
And this year, with the World Women’s a focal point in Brampton, the tournament goes on. Now in its 54th year, the tourney started on Thursday and wraps up on Easter Sunday. It is now so big that eleven arenas in the area are needed to accommodate the massive game schedule for some 31 levels of play. And one of those arenas is the Cassie Campbell Arena, eponymously named after the city’s greatest native daughter.
But back to the start. 1967. Guess who was a player in the first tournament? Fran Rider. “I grew up in Etobicoke (western Toronto), but I didn’t care where I went—I just wanted to play hockey,” she reminisced. “I always wanted to play hockey, but I basically played in a backyard rink because there was no team. And then in the Toronto Star Jim Pennington wrote a story about the Brampton tournament, and I ended up on a team that was C level. We didn’t have a practise. We stepped on the ice and played our first game, full body contact. We had a nine-year-old on the team and a 44-year-old on the team, and I was 16, but everybody was happy. When I played, our team got the ice at 7am. It was bitter, bitter cold, but there wasn’t a lot of ice available for girls’ hockey.”
The success of the Brampton tournament helped spread by word of mouth female hockey. Three other cities in southern Ontario quickly established their own events, creating a mini-tour for girls to play. “That tournament brought a lot of teams together,” Rider continued. “There were four major tournaments—Brampton, Wallaceburg (which called their event the Lipstick Tournament), Preston (home of Hilda Ranscombe and the Rivulettes of the 1930s), and Picton. A lot of the teams didn’t have leagues to play in, so they would meet at these tournaments. Then some U.S. teams, mostly Massachusetts and Michigan, would send teams to the tournament, as well as Prince Edward Island. That’s how we started to interact and learn more and more about girls’ hockey in other places in relative obscurity.”
Fran being Fran, she also got involved recruiting and organizing to the point that by 1980 she had become tournament director, a position she held for a decade. It was the most important decade in the history of women’s hockey. “Soon after I became director,” she continued, “we developed a connection with West Germany. And then somehow Holland found out about us and we invited them and we created an international division of the Brampton tournament in 1985. And after that event we had meetings with teams in Australia and England and other places that were weaker, so we decided there would be no intentional bodychecking, which was the biggest issue in the women’s game.”
If any of this sounds like an easy puzzle to connect the dots, you are right. Rider created an international division in this Brampton Canadettes tournament, and two years later she organized the first, unofficial World Women’s Championship in Toronto. And out of that success came the IIHF’s participation in 1990. The rest is, truly, history.
“Even in the late 1970s, I learned about players in other countries in Europe, and even then I thought we need to get a world championship going. And we have to get in the Olympics,” Rider continued with her trademark ability to convey the near-impossible with words that make it sound easy. “But Brampton was key. Out of that tournament most female players have played in it at some point.”
In the 1960s, the tournament was still pretty small, but once it expanded, it went on the move for a while. “For a while, the tournament was held in Mississauga at Doublerinks because the arena had two pads,” Rider explained, “and then the Meadowvale complex was built in Mississauga and it had four pads, which was the first four-pad arena anywhere, so everything could take place under one roof. It was important to interact and grow the game. And then in 1990 it moved back to Brampton.”
And once the IIHF came on board in 1990, the game exploded across Canada, the U.S., and Europe. But Brampton continued to play a pivotal role, icing a team for many years in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. And that’s where Cassie Campbell comes in again. After the success of the Nagano Olympics (despite losing to the U.S.) she came home to Brampton and talked to mayor Susan Fennell about the lack of opportunities for girls in the area (ambitions had increased exponentially since the ‘60s!). Fennell not only bought a franchise, and called it the Brampton Thunder, she was instrumental in growing the Central Ontario Women’s Hockey League into the National Women’s Hockey League—and becoming its new president. More growth, more development, more visibility.
The Thunder won the championship in its first season, and a look at players in the CWHL that year is to see a who’s who of Canadian greats from that era—Caroline Ouellette, Angela James, Jayna Hefford, Vicky Sunohara, Lori Dupuis, Geraldine Heaney. The team later became the Brampton Canadettes-Thunder and were part of the league for two decades before relocating to nearby Markham, Ontario. Their best season was 2011-12 when they advanced to the Clarkson Cup finals, only to lose to Ouellette and the Montreal Stars.
Of course, things haven’t been the same since the demise of the CWHL, but the Brampton Easter Tournament remains the central date on any female player’s calendar. On Sunday, champions will be crowned at those aforementioned eleven rinks and 31 levels, and in a week IIHF President Luc Tardif will put gold medals around the necks of the winners of the World Women’s Championship at CAA Centre. The connection is pivotal in the history of women’s hockey.