Wallaceburg's historic connections to Canadian women's hockey highlighted in new book
Marian 'Mern' Coveny was Canada's 1st captain of a women's international team
It was 1987 when Canada sent its first team to a women's world hockey tournament.
The event was held in Toronto. Although it wasn't an official championship sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation, it showcased elite women's hockey — opening doors for future international competitions.
Canada's team captain was Marian "Mern" Coveny who hailed from Wallaceburg, Ont., — a southwestern Ontario town about a twenty-minute drive north of Chatham.
Coveny's journey is one of several local connections to the community highlighted in Ian Kennedy's new book: Ice In Their Veins: Women's Relentless Pursuit of the Puck.
Her story, according to Kennedy, is what got him interested in writing the book, and sent him down a rabbit hole of many other women's names deserving of similar recognition.
WATCH | In 1987, women hockey players held their first international tournament:
"I was researching, actually for my last book, and came across her name in an article and found out that she was also from Wallaceburg, which is my hometown where I was born and raised," he told CBC Radio Windsor Morning host Amy Dodge.
"I was shocked because here I am a writer for the Hockey News, someone that's studied this game for as long as I could read, and I had never heard her name before."
Kennedy says he believes if Coveny was a man she'd already be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame, had a local arena would be named after her — or there would be municipal signs entering Wallaceburg with her name on them.
"She was just this individual that loved the game and kept playing for decades and drove it forward and starred in the game. That is an individual that we had never really heard about. Such a paramount figure in terms of getting women to the international stage."
Coveny passed away from cancer in 2022.
Another connection for Coveny's hometown to Canada's women's hockey legacy is the Wallaceburg Lipstick Tournament, founded in 1968, which always ran around Valentine's Day.
Kennedy describes it as one of the province's first and most prominent female tournaments.
"It was a point where women came together and started organizing and planning. And the competition really formed at those types of events that helped bring together leagues and organizations and and got people … who played in that tournament to start thinking bigger and looking toward a world championship and the Olympic Games."
According to Kennedy, women have been playing hockey for as along as men have — for roughly 130 years — and oftentimes involved hiding their gender, wearing their brothers' clothes or falsifying their identities.
"Their history is rich. It's just unknown."
"Many people have been thankful to finally have this aspect of history told and the stories preserved about these incredible women who fought court battles and tried to sneak through the system by dressing up and changing their names and developing equipment that finally fit their bodies."
To have some of these stories preserved, says Kennedy, allows future generations to know not only the struggles they went through, but also the triumphs.
"I think that there's … people out there that have never seen themselves represented. And we're not just talking about young girls seeing the game today. We're talking about 70 or 80-year-old women that have probably always loved sports but were denied access."
