Women On Ice by Wayne Norton

Women on Ice: The Early Years of Women's Hockey in Western Canada is the first book to focus on the early history of women’s hockey in western Canada.

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This beautiful book more accurately follows the history of the Vancouver Amazons, Vancouver's second notable women's hockey team. They were perhaps the most famous western Canadian women's team in the 1920s, although not necessarily the most successful. They had unique connections with men's major professional hockey, specifically Frank and Lester Patrick, who let them practice at their arena complete with artificial ice.

The author does a good job covering the story of the Amazons, likely because their history was a little easier to trace given Vancouver's newspaper archives. So many of the other women's teams in western Canada at the time came from smaller centers, and their histories have only been sporadically recorded.

Mr. Norton touches on western Canadian women's history by tracing the history of the Banff Winter Carnival's women's hockey tournament. The Vancouver ladies were very popular in the Canadian Rockies. The tournament itself is quite interesting, and the author does an interesting job tying together the fate of BC women's hockey and this particular tournament.

The book features over three dozen photographs, some of which were never before published. The photos and stories of the women's teams preferences for swastikas as logos and nicknames are both startling and fascinating.

The book is published by Ronsdale Press.