Hilda Ranscombe
The Preston Rivulettes
A ladies team unlike any other
One of the greatest sports teams in Canadian history—a team that was born and bred in Cambridge—was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame Thursday night in Toronto.
The Preston Rivulettes women’s hockey team was inducted into the Calgary-based national sports hall of fame in the Trail Blazer category.
An UNPARALLElLED team
Rivulettes awarded Canada's highest sports honour-the Order of Sport
Also inducted with the Rivulettes were the Chatham Coloured All-stars baseball team from the 1930s—a team that included Ferguson Jenkins Sr.—and a handful of notables from the world of sports, including many household names like hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser, canoe-kayaker Adam VanKoeverden, and broadcaster Brian Williams.
Rounding out the 2022 Order of Sport honours were soccer standout Dwayne De Rosario, lacrosse legend John Tavares, the inspirational para-swimmer Tim McIsaac, and in the builder category, Olympic rower Tricia Smith and Edward Lennie, founder of the Traditional Arctic Sports Games.
Accepting the honour on behalf of the Rivulettes was James Ranscombe, nephew of two of the team’s stalwart players—the late Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe. Hilda, who was regarded during the 1930s as the greatest female hockey player in the world, was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2015, along with another Prestonian, distance runner and two-time Olympian, Robert “Scotty” Rankine (Los Angeles, 1932, and Berlin, 1936).
Canada's greatest-ever team?
Were the Rivulettes Canada’s greatest team? If they aren’t universally acknowledged as such by Canadian sports fans, they are, at the very least, in the conversation. One team that is often regarded as Canada’s greatest women’s team is the Edmonton Grads, a basketball team that played from 1915 to 1940, winning 522 games and losing just 20.
And there are others, including professional hockey and baseball teams. Even the Chatham Coloured All-Star baseball team from the 1930s, which was inducted along with the Rivulettes, was almost unbeatable.
An unmatched record
As for the Rivulettes, what we know is this. They won six Dominion championships, losing another by default when they couldn’t come up with the money to contest the trophy in Edmonton one year, and losing another in two games after a late-game goal, to the same Edmonton squad, after a week-long train trip to Alberta’s capital. In an estimated 350 games during the decade of the 1930s, they lost just twice.
After the Second World War, the Rivulettes were largely forgotten, though there was a resurgence in the legend of the Rivulettes late in the twentieth century; they were inducted into the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame in its inaugural Class of 1998, both Hilda and the Rivulettes as a team, and were included in the epic CBC documentary, Hockey: A People’s History in 2006. Books and articles appeared about the team, including those by hockey writer and historian Brian McFarlane (Proud Past, Bright Future: One Hundred Years of Canadian Women’s Hockey, Stoddart, 1995), who wrote a letter of support for Hilda’s induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999, saying “there is a vast amount of evidence to back up the belief that Hilda…was the best female hockey player of her era.”
2022 Order of Sport recipients
Order of Sport Recipients
Recipients and dignitaries at the 66th annual Order of Sport Awards pose on Thursday, October 6, 2022 in Toronto. Pictured front left are: Tim McIsaac, Adam Van Koeverden, Tricia Smith, and James Ranscombe, nephew of Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe of the Rivulettes. Back left, Michael Burns, co-chair of the 66th annual Order of Sport Awards, Dwayne De Rosario, John Tavares, Hans Lennie, son of Edward Lennie, Brian Williams, Blake Harding, Cheryl Bernard (CEO of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, and Michelle Cameron-Coulter, governor.
Ranscombe was the best
“Hilda Ranscombe was simply the best female player on the ice,” noted Harold Ribson, chronicler and manager of women’s hockey teams for decades. When asked decades later who was the best player ever, he replied without any hesitation, “Hilda Ranscombe, star of those great Preston Rivulettes teams in the thirties, was the best.”
Others echoed those sentiments. “Twice we played the Preston Rivulettes, the greatest team in Canada.” wrote famed Muskoka-area and Gravenhurst hockey player Mickey Walker.
None other than Bobbie Rosenfeld nominated Ranscombe for the Norman Craig Memorial Trophy as Ontario’s top athlete; Hilda was an all-around athlete, excelling in everything she played.
Wrote her Rivulette teammate Norma Hipel (Jacques), “She could skate rings around everybody else and was as good as any man.” And though vocal as an observer after she hung up her skates, Hipel said “you couldn’t find a nicer person.”
NHLers Carl Liscombe, who grew up in Galt and remembered playing with and against Hilda and Nellie on the frozen Grand, said “Hilda was just as good as any boy, and better than most, myself included. When we picked teams, she was always the first one chosen.”
A Modest Superstar
Hilda Ranscombe
In her lifetime, Hilda would not entertain any notion that she was the team’s MVP. “The team was the MVP,” she said.
Hers was a message that resonates for all teams. That sense of team, which the Rivulettes never forgot, was no doubt the main reason for their success. But as Marie Kurt said in 1999, “Hilda would have excelled among today’s players.” Kurt played against the Rivulettes with the Kitchener Wentworth Radio team before finally joining the Rivulettes in 1935.
“She always played hard but it looked so effortless. She was a modest and humble woman, always a lady. She was the best player I ever saw, and there were a lot of good players.” Kurt played against the top teams in Canada, including the Montreal Maroons and Winnipeg Eatons.
Another player, Mary McGuire, who played with the Stratford Aces against the Rivulettes, was adamant that not only were the Rivulettes the best team in Canada but that “Hilda was, without any doubt, the best female hockey player in the world. She was just marvelous to watch. I can’t emphasize strongly enough how good she was. She was a very, very outstanding hockey player and athlete.”
A Lady
And a role model
She was every bit as much a lady, said McGuire. “She was always calm and collected. There was always a fair amount of fighting and swearing. Really and truly, I never heard her say anything out of place. Her exemplary character, as well as the incomparable way she played the game, made her a role model to countless young girls.”
One of the ways opposing teams tried to neutralize the Rivulettes was by taking out Ranscombe. Phyllis Griffiths, herself a pioneer in Canadian women’s sport, and a 1978 inductee into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, wrote in her Toronto Telegram column, “The Girl and the Game,” about an incident that took place in Preston when the visiting Port Dover team came to town.
“The despatch from rinkside, or ringside, indicates that the Port Dover girl (a Miss Smith) knocked Miss Ranscombe to the ice,” she wrote, “and then and there pummeled her until Referee Gordon Wright pulled the aggressor off by main force.”
There were no helmets in those days. It was, wrote Griffiths, one way to enliven the L.O.H.A game at Preston. The referee penalized Miss Smith for the remainder of the game, which Preston won 3-1.
The Rivulettes in Montreal, where they played the hometown team, the Maroons, at the Forum.
A pitcher, she was one of the best softball players anywhere
The most beautiful player to watch
Ranscombe would weave through the opposing team, even men’s teams, making it all look so easy, “…like Bobby Orr would later do. She was the most beautiful player, bar none, and I’ve since seen a lot of professional players.”
As if her talent, and comportment on and off the ice, weren’t enough to endear her to young girls and fans everywhere, what McGuire especially liked about Hilda was her modesty. “She was a girl who never bragged. She’d act as if she was just an ordinary person.” But her abilities were akin to those of an Olympic goddess, long before women’s hockey was admitted to the Olympics, and though there was talk leading up to the 1936 Berlin Games of trying to get women’s hockey admitted as a demonstration sport, she lived and exemplified the qualities and character of an Olympian.
“That’s why Toronto sportswriters like Bobbie Rosenfeld and Alexandrine Gibb always followed her and the Rivulettes,” said McGuire. “They’d come to Galt to watch her play and they’d write about her being the best.”
And follow her they did. Hilda and the Rivulettes played against the Montreal Maroons at the Forum, and though there were efforts afoot to have them play at Maple Leaf Gardens, the proximity of Galt Arena Gardens with its artificial ice, meant that they could host visiting teams late in the spring during playoffs at the Shade Street Arena, when the ice in their home rink in Preston, the Lowther Street Arena, was melting.
Still, the Rivulette players felt affronted when the visiting Montreal team chose to stay in a Galt hotel rather than at one of Preston’s hotels, something even the Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t do when they held their training camps at Galt Arena in 1934, 1936 and 1938; they stayed at the Preston Springs Hotel, which was torn down a couple of years ago, and they did their dryland training at Riverside Park, when they could easily have stayed at the Iroquois Hotel in Galt and walked to Soper Park for dryland training and then their on-ice workouts at the so-called “Soper Park Arena.”
Learn more about the team
The Preston Rivulettes were inducted into the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, along with Hilda Ranscombe, as an individual, as part of the inaugural class.
The 1946 Galt Junior Red wings featured Terry Sawchuk (above
She scored on Sawchuk
As far as we know, there was never any attempt to put the Rivulettes on the ice in a friendly exhibition against the Leafs during their camps in town. But years later, when the Galt Junior A Red Wings were in town, such a scenario did, in fact, take place.
“I can remember seeing Hilda, smooth as smooth, coming around her net carrying the puck, and skating through the whole team,” said McGuire. “I forget why this was set up—probably because everyone knew Hilda was the best female hockey player anywhere and they wanted to see how she would fare against a men’s team—though it wasn’t a real game…Hilda skated around them all and ended by scoring on Terry Sawchuk. I was there and I saw it. I knew many of the Galt Red Wings players. The crowd roared. They saw the greatest female hockey player score on the boy who would become the game’s greatest goaltender.”
Normie Himes, a Galt native and decade-long player with the NHL’s New York Americans, was Galt’s coach that year (1945-46) and knew Hilda. It is likely that he sanctioned the exhibition. Future NHLers Marty Pavelich and Freddie Glover were playing for Galt that year, and though it happened more than 75 years ago—as of the summer of 2022—Pavelich can still vaguely recall the incident.
Hilda recalled the exhibition at Galt Arena in 1998 as if it happened recently; she followed all the Galt junior players who went on to play professional hockey. She was a true fan of the game.
When she scored on Sawchuk, the Rivulettes had been disbanded for five years, yet none of her old skills were lacking. She was the same player who, a half-decade earlier, the Toronto Star noted “…after a brilliant lone rink-length rush…rifled a shot for the initial score,” in the Canadian title game against Winnipeg.
Hello
Brilliantly weaving and stick handling
Toronto Star sportswriter Andy Lytle, once wrote that “Hilda continued to outshine them all. She was brilliant with her weaving and stick handling, drawing the crowd to their feet time after time. She was also one of the most persistent back checkers on the ice.”
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Additional Information
Today the Hockey Hall of Fame proudly displays Hilda’s original burgundy sweater, light brown leather hockey gloves, and black hockey pants. The priceless memorabilia was thought to have been lost after the two Ranscombe sisters sold their house and moved into a nursing home in the early 1990s.
Some believe the artifacts were mistakenly left behind; others believe something more nefarious happened with collectors eager to get their hands on such rare artifacts.
Hilda lived long enough to be inducted into the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame in May 1998, dying later that year at age 84. Not long afterward, thanks to the generosity of a Cambridge eye doctor, Taras Zienchuk, the lost items were bought by the optometrist from a sports collector and donated to the hockey shrine.
“It was the right thing to do,” he said. He had once examined Hilda’s eyes, not knowing of her legend until later reading of her exploits when she was inducted into the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame. Today, thanks to the generosity of Zienchuk, Hilda’s jersey is believed to be one of the oldest women’s hockey jerseys in existence and on public display.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be in the Hall unless I bought it,” reasoned Zienchuk.
A month before Hilda’s death, her sister Nellie, star goaltender on the team, died. Around that time the Ranscombe family purchased Nellie’s jersey from the collector and promptly donated it to the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame.
A Mentor to the End
As Hilda failed, friends and those she mentored over the years rallied around her, such as Nancy Getty. “I went up to visit Hilda and say goodbye,” she wrote. This is a time for family so I will not go back to see her again.”
Told of Hilda’s failing condition, Getty was nevertheless taken aback when she saw her. “Hilda is a dear friend to me and my mentor. She gave me a new strength within myself not only on the ice but within my everyday life. She always had so much passion and attitude that…rubbed off on me. Today I held her hand and let her know that every time I skate, she will be there skating with me. She squeezed my hand and we both cried. I feel so blessed to call her Aunt Hilda, my friend.”
Hilda Ranscombe, the ultimate team player and one of the finest women to ever lace on skates, died the next day.
As the twenty-first century progressed, most of the other players passed away, including one of the youngest members of the team, Ruth (Dargel) Collins. Hilda had mentored her in the 1930s.
Hilda was a champion tennis and softball player—a pitcher, nominated as the top softball player in Ontario—and excelled in basketball, among other sports.
George Cassidy, a stick boy for the Galt Jr. A team in the 1930s, became a pretty good player himself, making it to the American League. “When you were at those Rivulette games, everybody was watching Hilda,” he said. “She was, without a doubt, the outstanding star.”
Six-time Canadian Champions
Rivulettes in Final Program at Maple Leaf Gardens
In the final program at Maple Leaf Gardens (February 13, 1999) before the Leafs played their last game at the storied arena before it closed, near an ad featuring legendary broadcaster Foster Hewitt calling a game from the gondola with the words: Last minute of play in this era,” there was another ad featuring the Rivulettes.
“The Preston Rivulettes dominated women’s hockey in the 1930s, securing a place in the Hockey Hall of Fame…and though they never played Maple Leaf Gardens, we thought we’d put them on the program tonight.”
Although coach Herb Fach and manager Marvin J. Dykeman were not officially honoured at the Order of Sport awards ceremony in Toronto in late 2022—only players are recognized for induction purposes—the two were essential to the team’s success. They knew whom they had in Hilda—the Montreal paper had written that Hilda “was the Aurel Joliat of the visitors,” as the Rivulettes beat the hometown Maroons at the Forum 4-1—but they treated her as just one of the players, and for that they were respected by all the players, especially by Hilda.
After the Rivulettes disbanded at the onset of the Second World War, and after a planned European tour had to be nixed, coach Fach stayed on as the Lowther Street Arena manager. One incident that occurred there, between Fach and a couple of rink rats, including the real-life Sam Collard, was fictionalized in David Menary’s book, The River and the Railroad. Collard’s older sister, Beatrice, was a Rivulette team chaperone at one time, and Sam recalled seeing them play.
Collard, saying he didn’t want to build Hilda up bigger than she was, said “Hilda was exceptional, the best there was. She was 80 per cent of the team. I watched them. I saw her play. Stickhandling, passing, skating, there was nothing she was weak on. She was the best, and without her they wouldn’t have won what they won.”
See the Order of Sport Awards from October 6
The Preston Rivulettes were inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in Toronto in early October.
Rivulettes recognized by Canadian Government
The Whole Team was the MVP
Hilda was always ready to correct such sentiments. “We had no famous players,” she said time and again, and so frequently that some people of later generations actually believed her. “We played together. The whole team was the leading scorer.
Fach would often recount those days with the Rivulettes, and would tell new generations of rink rats about that earlier era. Fred McCulley, who worked at the rink from 1948 to 1953, enjoyed talking about the famed team and its players. “He always told us about Hilda’s prowess and leadership abilities,” said McCulley. There were still plenty of Rivulette players frequenting the arena, and living in town, and they would confirm all the stories, as would fans.
McCulley was born in the early years of the Rivulette dynasty, but better remembers Hilda’s lifelong devotion to the game, and the way she gave support and encouragement, as well as her hockey expertise, to new generations of young girls. She followed the resurgence of women’s hockey with keen interest in the 1980s and 1990s. To her, hockey was fun; it was her passion, despite her skill in so many other sports.
Hilda sold real estate in the 1960s but later developed MS; eventually she experienced difficulty walking and even standing. Yet she continued to bowl by using her cane to steady herself.
“Her determination to live as normal a life as possible never faltered in spite of her physical limitations,” said longtime friend June McCulley.
A mentor to the end
Physical challenges late in life
Late in life her legs had to be amputated. She was brought to her induction for the Cambridge Sports Hall of Fame ceremony in a wheelchair by her niece, Betty Barnes. When Al Findlay presented her with her induction plaque, both had tears in their eyes.
“We went to P.E.I. and we won down there against the Charlottetown Islanders,” said Ranscombe at her induction. “We went to Winnipeg and beat them. The only time we lost was when we went to Edmonton.”
That loss would forever haunt the team. As coach Fach explained, the players went out each and every game with one goal in mind, to win. And though some criticized them for never letting up, Fach said it was not in their nature to ease up, to somehow keep the score down. They went all out, each and every game, no matter whom they faced.
“In Edmonton the atmosphere was so different,” said Hilda. “We went with nine players and three were sick. Myself, all I did on the ice was cough. The girls played good hockey but we only had one spare.”
Memories of Edmonton
Their only two losses
It had been a long train ride west from Galt in the dead of winter, taking a full week. That took a toll on the players. They lost the two-game series by the narrowest of margins, losing 2-1 and 1-0 while playing the second game short-handed after a player was hospitalized before the first game and another removed during the second game. Yet despite the losses, they praised their opponents.
Hilda had her chances, despite her cough. “I went right in on the goal and what did I do? Instead of drawing the goaltender, I shot. That was stupid.”
After the game, the referee came into the Rivulette dressing room and said, “Sorry girls, I couldn’t let you win.”
“One of our girls jumped on him,” said Hilda. “I guess he didn’t want us to win.”
But for those two losses, the Rivulettes might have gone undefeated, not for a season, but for a decade. They never lost again.
Their old arena in Preston had no artificial ice like the one in Galt did, but it did have a storied past, with the Rivulettes, and with such legends as Howie Morenz having played there for Stratford in the Big Six league era.
After a long trip, they were welcomed to Edmonton
Memorabilia lost in fire
In the 1970s the Ranscombes were encouraged to put some of their photos and memorabilia on display at the Preston Auditorium, which they did. When the arena burned to the ground, much of their memorabilia—pictures, trophies and pucks—was lost. No one felt the loss like the Ranscombes and their teammates.
“All our trophies went down with the arena,” Hilda lamented. Gone were artifacts that were prized by the entire town: sticks, pucks, the Lady Bessborough and Bobbie Rosenfeld Trophies.
“Oh God, it broke our heart,” recalled Collard, who managed to salvage a lump of melted silver, a remnant of the Bessborough Trophy, and return it to the Ranscombes. “Oh geez, they were mad at me. I think they might have thrown it at me.”
Collard was the one who convinced them to loan the items to the arena. “I can’t stand a Ranscombe to be mad at me.” Luckily, the Ranscombe’s never stayed mad at anybody for long, he said.
The arena was eventually rebuilt and Hilda, sometimes accompanied by Nellie, would be a frequent visitor, wearing her familiar red and white jacket presented to her by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.
She’d call up the arena manager, Doug Lloyd: “Open the back door, I’m coming over.” If they forgot, she’d bang her cane on the arena door until someone came to open it. And she’d bang on the boards with her cane to voice her concerns during games.
Lloyd recalled she was such a frequent visitor to the arena that they’d always stock her favourite chocolate bar, making sure they had an extra supply for her.
“Hockey was her game, that’s for sure,” said Lloyd. “Hockey never left her.”
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The Quintessential team
The Rivulettes were the quintessential team, THE women’s team of the 1930s. Few teams anywhere have rivalled the renown this small-town team knew. Sometimes it takes decades for legends to be born, for an appreciation to gain momentum, but for the Rivulettes, their legend was talked about, and witnessed, not only in Preston and Galt, but in countless packed arenas across the country. National newspapers followed their exploits and signalled their arrival in other cities and towns.
There was no world championship as the decade of the 1930s came to a close. War interrupted a planned European tour. The better part of six decades came and went. The Winter Olympics finally admitted women’s hockey in 1998, the last winter of Hilda’s life. She lived long enough to see her dream, and that of every member of the finest pioneering women’s hockey team, come true.
Hilda's induction to the CSHF
Although we don’t know if Hilda ever dreamed that one day women would be admitted to the Hockey Hall of Fame, it is almost a certainty that if she did, she would want others to go in, not herself. She would prefer the team to take the laurels. It would take another decade, and then some, after women’s hockey made it into the Olympic Winter Games, before the first women were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, something longtime Toronto sportswriter Milt Dunnell, had predicted as early as the 1990s.
That happened in 2010, the same year that Canada won its third consecutive Olympic gold medal, when Angela James and Cammi Granato were selected for induction.
As for the Rivulettes, their induction into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and Hilda’s earlier induction to the same Hall, will perpetuate the legend of one of Canada’s finest teams, male or female.
Many players were with the team for a decade
A legendary player, a legendary team
As of the late autumn of 2022, though nominated more than two decades earlier, Hilda Ranscombe has not been inducted into hockey’s symbolic shrine. One can almost hear Hilda’s soft voice saying that the younger players, those who came along years after the heyday of the Rivulettes, are more deserving of such accolades than she is, though there can be little doubt that she would fiercely champion the induction of her team, the Rivulettes.
For one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, it was all about the team, which makes her legend all the greater.
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