My friend Mel is a master archivist and found this amazing interview with amateur female hockey players in Quebec, circa 1966 by Radio Canada: Des femmes sur la glace.

This weekend, Montreal became the top club team in North America, winning the Clarkson Cup. This report by RDS.ca highlights the game today. Women’s hockey still isn’t particularly well documented outside of international events, but both these two videos, side by side and 45 years apart, make for an interesting comparison.

Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game, by Arthur Farrell, 1899, p. 46 (Library and Archives Canada)

This is a new weekly entry dedicated to “hockey curio.”

Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game was written in 1899 by Arthur Farrell, a player and Stanley Cup champion in 1899 and 1900. It was the first hockey handbook ever written and includes all kinds of diverting factoids about the game, recounted in florid language.

This poetic excerpt on page 45 describes “the gentler sex’s” interest in the game!

(PM Harper provided a loan to help Libraries and Archives Canada preserve and digitize this book. This disintegrating copy was one of only 4 remaining of the handbook. It apparently belonged to Dr. J.M.F. Malone, a team doctor for the Trois Rivières Reds in the mid-20th century. His son entrusted the copy to infamous Montreal Gazette columnist Red Fisher, in the hopes it would reach hockey researchers. You can flip through it, either in Flash, or HTML, or download it at Backcheck – the Library and Archives Canada website dedicated to hockey.)

Know of any strangely wonderful hockey curio you want to share with Hockey Dyke? She loves hockey-related oddities, titbits, secrets and art! Email hockeydykeincanada@gmail.com