There are 117 builders inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame. None are women. It's an omission highlighted by a century of contribution from women in the sport.
There are 117 builders inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame. None are women. It's an omission highlighted by a century of contribution from women in the sport.
When you look at the Hockey Hall of Fame's builders, one thing stands out - no woman, in the 79 years the Hall of Fame has been inducting members, has ever been included as a builder. It's a list of 117 men's hockey builders, exclusively ignoring the contributions of women.
While men with lesser, or at most similar, resumes line the walls of the hallowed Hall, women are excluded. Many of the Hall's early builders, men like Claude C. Robinson, John Ross Robinson, Donat Raymond, Francis Nelson, and Lloyd Turner were all worthy inductees for their contributions to the development of hockey in Canada and the United States. But to place their contributions above the organizing, building, founding, and advocating efforts of women like Bobbie Rosenfeld, Alexandrine Gibb, Myrtle Cook, Irene Wall, Mary Dunn, Cookie Cartwright, Janet Allen, Hazel Ruttier, or countless other women, is wrong.
Looking at the Hockey Hall of Fame, whether it's players or builders, there is no greater omission from the Hall than that of Fran Rider. As a founder of the Ontario Women's Hockey Association, Rider built the largest women's hockey organization in the world. She was the organization's founding executive director, and since 1982, the same year Canada first held a modern era national championship for women, Rider has served as the organization's president and CEO. When it comes to women's hockey in Canada, and globally, there would be no growth, there would be no PWHL, there would be no World Championship, and there would be no Olympic Games for women. In 1987, Rider single handedly planned an unofficial World Championship. With the IIHF refusing to sanction women's hockey, Rider organized the 1987 Women's World Hockey Tournament. The event included teams from six nations, and delegates from several other nations who arrived to observe, plan, and organize. Following that tournament, which was deemed a success on all levels, Rider was the driving force that pushed the IIHF and Hockey Canada to back the 1990 World Championships. Rider and Ontario hosted the initial tournament in Ottawa, without any funding from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (Hockey Canada).
Following that event, Rider began again, this time leading the charge for women's hockey to be included at the Olympic Games. When Angela James, who played in the 1987 tournament and 1990 Worlds became the first woman inducted to the Hall of Fame alongside Cammi Granato in 2010, she told the crowd Rider should already be in the Hall, and that she herself would not be there without her.
Rider has been recognized by other bodies, including the IIHF who inducted Rider to the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2017 she received the Order of Hockey in Canada, two years after joining the Order of Canada. Her absence from the Hall of Fame, where her contribution to the sport exceeds most builders currently inducted, is unfathomable.
Other men in the Hall of Fame arrived there due primarily to their contribution of historic trophies, like Lord Stanley and Sir Hugh Andrew Montagu Allan. The Hall however excludes women like Lady Evelyn Byng, Viscountess Byng of Vimy, who was an avid hockey supporter, and namesake for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy. The same could be said for dozens of women, like Lady Bessborough and Fran Rider, who donated trophies throughout history.
Perhaps the closest thing to a women's hockey inductee present in the Hockey Hall of Fame is Frank Patrick. Patrick helped found the Vancouver Amazons women's team, and in 1921, Patrick formed a championship played between teams from Vancouver, Seattle, and Victoria, in what would become the first cross-border, international league for women. That year however, would be Patrick's final involved in women's hockey after two of the three teams disbanded. When you read Frank Patrick's biography on the Hockey Hall of Fame website however, there is a notable omission - there is no mention of women's hockey. Walter Bush, a 2000 inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame was another advocate for women's hockey in the United States. Alongside Fran Rider, he helped move women's hockey's Olympic bid forward. Without his efforts alongside Rider, it's unlikely women's hockey would have found inclusion to the Olympic Games in the 1990s. In his Hockey Hall of Fame biography, this information is absent. Under Hall of Fame inductee Murray Costello's reign over the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, a women's council was formed, and women's leagues first received recognition in 1981. As well, it was the first time a seat on the board of directors was reserved for someone with women's hockey in mind.
It's an erasure of not only the contributions of women to grow the game of hockey, but of the contributions of men who supported women's hockey.
Conversely, many of the "builders" in the Hockey Hall of Fame, could at times be considered "demolishers" as they attacked women and women's hockey, or actively sought to diminish or exclude women.
Walter Brown, former owner of the Boston Bruins and president of the IIHF, did "not think much of girls’ hockey," wrote Myrtle Cook, long time sports write for The Montreal Star, president of the Dominion Women's Amateur Hockey Association, and Olympic gold medalist. While Brown ran the Boston Garden, a successful women's hockey tour came to the United States. When asked if Boston would host a game, Brown's reply was clear, "Women’s hockey! I should say not."
Others made changes to the women's game that changed the face of the sport for decades. It was under Gunther Sabetzki's leadership with the IIHF that bodychecking was removed from women's hockey, and paternalistic rules adopted related to equipment.
Beginning in 1982, the Hockey Hall of Fame also began awarding the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award recognizing the contributions of a sport media person to the game of ice hockey. But Ferguson was an ardent opposer of women in hockey, and sport in general. In a 1938 Maclean's magazine article said the only way women belonged in sport, if it was "a girl whose physical perfection was enhanced by a clinging one-piece bathing suit," or one with a "tightfitting bodice." What he did not want to see were women in "those violent, face-straining, face-dirtying, body-bouncing, sweaty, graceless, stumbling, struggling, wrenching, racking, jarring and floundering sports." As it specifically related to hockey, Ferguson wrote that women's hockey “reaches the lower levels of competitive athletic entertainment after you’ve watched the grace and speed and certainty and skill with which males perform.” He wrote that no man would want a woman with "that peculiarly bewildered and distressed look which girl athletes under strain always possess, that strain which so ill becomes them.” And he questioned how games like hockey, where women were “struggling weakly and gracelessly around armed with hockey sticks . . . are going to enhance any feminine charms, or those charms which I always did associate with femininity.”
There are other men in the Hockey Hall of Fame's builders category, like Lord Stanley himself, Frank Selke, and Lou Lamoriello who showed their support for women's hockey at various points in their careers.
As players, the number of women in the Hall of Fame will grow to 12 in 2024. It's a number that lags greatly behind the 28 spots that could have been filled by women in that time. 2024 also marks only the second time since women were permitted into the Hall in 2010, that both spots have been utilized for induction.
There are 16 men in the on-ice officials category, and zero women. Of the 64 recipients of the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award, only one is a woman, and none have covered women's hockey.
There are historic omissions, and active exclusion of women from Hall of Fame's of almost every sport. Perhaps there is no greater gap however, than in the absence of women, who spent their lives building leagues, teams, and guiding the growth of the sport, from the builders category in the Hockey Hall of Fame.