The 1991 Canada Winter Games
At the inclusion of women’s hockey in 1991, the Canada Games were not incorporated into the POE. Nonetheless, they still served as a pipeline for Canada’s best with countless future Olympians and World Champions passing through the Winter Games. According to Dr Julie Stevens, who was the assistant coach of Team Alberta in 1999 and who has written extensively on women’s hockey, “The Canada Games was basically feeders into our national women’s development team, which at the time was an under-22 team and our national senior women’s team.”11 In 2001, Hockey Canada implemented a national U-18 tournament,12 adding another step to the development of high-performance hockey in young girls. Today, the Canada Games replaces the U-18 tournament every four years.13 Truly significant about the addition of the Canada Games to the POE is that the annual U-18 tournament is played between eight provincial and regional teams, including two teams from Ontario and one team of the Atlantic provinces.14 While this promotes high-performance women’s hockey at an early age, it is also exclusive. The Canada Games, however, provides opportunities for amateur female players across the country to participate in high-performance hockey. “It was a very integrated event in terms of advancing female hockey in Canada as a whole.”15
“It’s mandatory that every province and territory participate and send teams… So right off the get go it meant that at least all the ten provinces had to run a women’s hockey program, high-performance program, of some kind so that every four years they had a team to send to the Canada Games and that commitment alone was massive to the advancement of grassroots girls hockey.”16 Women’s hockey advanced rapidly throughout the 1990s because of the growth of many new grassroot teams and the new high-performance opportunities in the sport. In March 1990, when the first WWHC was held, there were fewer than 5,000 registered female hockey players in Canada,17 while a recent survey produced by the IIHF now lists nearly 102,000.18 In 1991, Nova Scotia finished in eighth out of the ten competing provinces. A hockey program still in its youth, Team Nova Scotia played the tournament in blank white practice jerseys; but in just one Games cycle, the second smallest province by area and fourth smallest by population had team jerseys with colour coordinated equipment. This demonstrates considerable growth in both the outlook and support of women’s hockey. “Adding women’s hockey to the Canada Games program made a huge difference on the advancement of the sport in Canada from a high-performance standpoint.”19
