Women's Hockey
Brief Overview of the Project
Female hockey in Canada and around the world has a long and rich history – but few people know the story!
While the early beginning of Canadian female hockey dates back to the 1880s, it has only been during the past twenty-five years that the development of women’s hockey both in North America and globally has been the subject of scholarly and popular works, and there continues to be significant interest in capturing more histories of ‘her’ game.
However, popular stories and research remain limited due to a lack of historical sources, and consequently girls’ and women’s hockey experiences remain under-studied and under-recognized. The SOHA women’s hockey collection prioritizes the voices of women and girls who have played, coached, officiated, or administered Canadian women’s hockey in order to address this gap.
Given this, the purpose of the women’s hockey collection is to mobilize women’s hockey stories and memories so they are accessible, engaging, and interactive for the public.
What is the history of this project?
This project emerged from a pressing need to capture female hockey history. Accounts of the female game are sparse and as such little is known about the game through a gendered lens. Women have contributed in many ways to the professional evolution of the game, as well as the promotion of hockey as a cultural symbol for Canadians in general. We felt this type of oral history collection would provide critical resources for further education on the subject while simultaneously recognizing women who broke barriers and established themselves as equally worthy participants in this sport.
What are the research questions guiding the collection?
Our goal is to create a collection where women’s hockey testimonials serve as a vehicle for critical discussion of greater themes that permeate our society. The testimonies help identify specific problems in female hockey history and shed new light on such broader questions.
Who do we want to hear from?
We seek input from girls and women who wish to share their perspective about how they play, coach, officiate, follow, lead, or build the female game. The SOHA women’s hockey collection includes interviews conducted by research associates in Brock University’s Sport Oral History Archive (SOHA) as well as crowdsourced through voluntary contributions.
What sorts of stories are we hoping to find?
The stories we hope to gather and compile address the experiences of girls and women as a way to capture how female hockey has changed over time.
What types of other material are we interested in?
We welcome more than your voice! Oral histories benefit from additional materials that bring the voice and personal experiences of interviewees and contributors to life. The oral histories are curated and presented alongside additional audio, visual, and textual sources to create a multi-media resource that engages the public.
We are calling the public to share memories, artifacts, photos, and any other memorabilia related to your experiences in women’s hockey that are meaningful to you, and to please tell us why they are significant. It is not necessary that you share these materials, but if you have digital records, such as a scan or photo of rule books, tournament posters, pamphlets, score cards, team rosters, ticket stubs, and annual reports then please feel free to upload your files. Of course, we also appreciate digital copies of photographs of yourself and others as these can accompany your oral history contribution to our Women’s Hockey Collection.