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Quickies

Did you know …

that Lord Stanley, Canada’s governor general from 1888 to 1893 and the man who donated hockey’s most prestigious championship trophy, got his entire family to play the game? His daughter, Isobel, played for a Government House hockey team that skirmished with a local female squad. It is said that even Lord Stanley’s wife took a twirl or two in a match.

When was the first Women’s World Hockey Championship held?

Informally begun in 1987 in Toronto as an invitational tournament, the Women’s World Hockey Championship has become the pre-eminent event in women’s hockey, with the exception of the Winter Olympics. Not surprisingly, Canada won that first event. At the first six championships (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000) under the auspices of the International Ice Hockey Federation the results were the same: Canada gold, the United States silver, Finland bronze. In 2001 Canada and the United States once again took gold and silver respectively, but Russia nabbed bronze. The 2003 championship was cancelled due to the outbreak of SARS, and since then both Canada and the United States have won gold twice (Canada in 2004, 2007, the United States in 2005, 2008). The Women’s World Hockey Championship isn’t held in years when there’s a Winter Olympics. Canada’s premier women’s hockey players over the past decade and a half have been national heroes such as Angela James, Danielle Goyette, Geraldine Heaney, Nancy Drolet, and the incomparable HayleysWickenheiser.