Preston Rivulettes honoured for historic hockey exploits
Norma Jacques, 97, lives in a nursing home in Kelowna, B.C.
Dementia has stolen her short-term memory.
But her long-ago puckpushing exploits with the famed Preston Rivulettes of the 1930s remain her enduring legacy, something sturdy and extraordinary to hold onto in her hockey-loving heart.
“She’s in a very calm place,” said Nancy Dasent, her daughter.
Reach back 80 years, if you can. Gaze at the new plaque honouring the Rivulettes, unveiled at the Preston Aud on Friday, and let your mind drift backward.
There Norma stands, athletic and young. She was a swimmer, a ballplayer. She was Norma Hipel, a scrappy teenage Preston defender, in those Lowther Street Arena days.
And like her Rivulettes all-women team that trampled the Canadian competition, losing only twice in 350 games and seizing six Dominion championships in the span of a decade, she was as tough as a bare-knuckled Preston clout to the jaw.
“This team of women played hard and they fought,”
said Dasent, the oldest of Norma’s seven children, as she retold her mom’s tale of a bitter 1938 game against the Rivulette’s rivals from Charlottetown.
“Mother and a member of that team got in a fist fight. At the end of the game, they were all fighting, including the goalies. The gloves were off and they were all fighting.”
They fought for wins, before disbanding for the Second World War. They scrounged for funds to pay team bills in the ominous shadow of the Great Depression. Clawing for more than local recognition of their remarkable run for decades afterward.
On Friday, some of that bigtime recognition finally arrived.
That special Government of Canada plaque, officially honouring the Rivulettes and their decade of dominance as a historic Canadian event, was placed at Preston’s main arena.
Relatives of late Rivulette greats, like Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe and Helen and Marm Schmuck, stood for their lost hockey moms and aunts and cousins.
As for living Rivulettes, Norma is believed to be the last one. Her daughter, who also lives in Kelowna to watch over her mom, will tell her about the plaque. But minutes later, the news will be forgotten. But, somewhere inside her, it will be appreciated.
“She’d be very pleased,” Dasent said of her mother’s reaction to the honour. “She’d say it’s long overdue. She would have wished other members of the team would have lived to experience this. It was a remarkable period in Canadian history. It was extraordinary what these women did.”
Hilda Ranscombe, the team captain and dazzling scorer that many pitch for Hockey Hall of Fame entry, died two decades ago.
Ruth Collins, who played as Ruth Dargel, died last year in Kitchener. She was 93.
But Norma, at 97, remains physically sound even after a physically demanding hockey career followed by more-recent legal battles surrounding her family inheritance.
Norma was just about 16 when she joined the Rivulettes in 1935 as a few players in their 20s retired. Of course, she became a Rivulette. No surprise there.
“She was fixated by this hockey team from the time they started,” Dasent said.
“She was 10 or 11 and this team was struggling to get off the ground. So mom went to her dad, ‘Can you help them?’”
Her dad was Norman Otto Hipel, an arena builder and wellknown politician who had been Preston’s mayor in the 1920s and later became Ontario’s Minister of Labour. Naturally, Hipel helped out the team that Norma eventually joined. One time, in 1939, he paid most of the bill to send the team to Prince Edward Island.
But women’s hockey was no easy gig in the 1930s.
“Certain people believed that women should not be playing hockey,” Dasent said. “If one of the members got sick, there would be an article in the paper, ‘You see, this is what happens when women try to play hockey. They’re not strong enough …’ ”
Sure, there was tremendous support for the team. But the Rivulettes faced skeptics as determined as those darned Edmonton Rustlers, the club that took two close matches from the flu-ravaged Preston visitors in 1933.
“In the early 30s before my mother joined the team, they were accused of having men on the team dressed up as women,” Dasent said. “More than one member of the team stripped down to their basic clothing to prove they were women.”
But the Rivulettes could play. No one could question that.
As for Rivulettes mementos, Norma doesn’t have any of her own. A fire 51 years ago destroyed the family home and business in Macey Bay, Ont. Anything she had was lost.
But in Preston on Friday night, the long-ago Rivulettes got recognition for their feats before their young heirs — the Cambridge Junior Women’s Rivulettes — skated against Oakville. Much has changed since the 1930s. Much remains the same. Canadians still love women’s hockey, Dasent said. But some of the struggles her mom endured continue.
“They still fight for equality. They’re still fighting for change rooms. They’re still fighting for ice time at a decent hour,” she said.
“Some things have not changed in 80 years.”