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From grim beginnings, a Hall of Fame career
Published On Wed Nov 3 2010
On Monday, Canada's Angela James, above, and American Cammi Granato will become the first women to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
By Randy Starkman
Olympic Sports Reporter
This isn’t a fairytale Canadian hockey story of backyard rinks made by Dad.
There was no Dad.
Angela James was the youngest of her single mom Donna’s five kids, and it was a struggle just to buy milk, never mind equipment. Her power skating coach was a deaf man whose powerful strides she emulated on the local shinny rink without him knowing it.
James has a date with history on Monday, becoming along with American Cammi Granato the first women to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Often referred to as the Wayne Gretzky of women’s hockey, she will have a spot in the same shrine as The Great One.
But she took a drastically different route there.
James grew up in the crime-ridden housing project of Flemingdon Park. Asked to describe what it was like over a coffee in her old neighbourhood this week, she rhymes off a laundry list of dangers.
“Yes, there was sport, but there was a lot of drugs and alcohol ... a lot of stabbings and for sure lots of murderers, psychopaths, the Valentine killer was in my era there, there were guys killed over poker games, there was David Todd, who killed his wife and put her in a freezer,” James says.
“When you think back then, it’s pretty dramatic when you go on a class trip down to the police museum and they say, ‘Here is the freezer where the skin tissue remains of David Todd, who killed his wife.’ In the meantime, kids from that community are right there going ‘Omigod.’”
Her ability to rise above her surroundings to become the most dominant player in women’s hockey for nearly two decades starting in the late 1970s is nothing short of inspirational.
But there’s no mention of it anywhere in the arena that now bears her name. There was a ceremony in June, 2009 to change the name of Flemingdon Arena to Angela James Arena, but there’s no plaque telling visitors anything about James or even a photograph.
A group of kids wandering by the rink as James was being interviewed this week by a Hockey Night in Canada crew while standing right under the sign bearing her name had no clue who she was.
“Hey CBC!” shouted one, “Whatcha doin’ here?”
James was such a dominating force that opponents had to know where she was on the ice at all times. The Gretzky reference aside, her Hall of Fame biography notes she had a combination of Mark Messier’s aggressiveness and Mike Bossy’s sniping skill. She helped Canada to four women’s world championships, scoring 11 goals in five games at the inaugural event in Ottawa in 1990.
But getting cut from the Canadian team headed to the women’s hockey debut at the 1998 Nagano Olympics was a controversial decision that stings to this day.
“How could it not?” James says.
The women wore pink sweaters at that first world championship, but James specialized more in black and blue. She was a physical player, one of her trademarks the way she grunted on the ice.
It’s only in reminiscing that James realizes the grunting originated because of the deaf man.
“We played shinny hockey outside and there was a gentleman in his 40s, a deaf man, and he was a phenomenal skater, he could stickhandle and he could really read the game,” James says. “I can sort of picture him right now. I would kind of follow him, see what he would do and emulate him. And he used to grunt.”
James admits she was no angel growing up. She and her friends stole milk from the Dominion store and also regularly pilfered from the local Margaret’s Donuts and Coke factories. She also experimented with drugs and alcohol.
“I experienced a lot of that stuff growing up as well,” she says. “I was very fortunate that I didn’t get caught up in it. Some of our friends did.”
When the arena was re-named for her two years ago, one of the themes of her speech that day was, “Never forget where you come from, but you can always change where you’re going.”
“My roots are Flemingdon Park, but it doesn’t mean what we were exposed to is how we have to live in the future,” says James, a longtime sports co-ordinator at Seneca College. “We can always change, change our destiny, change who we are.”
Published On Wed Nov 3 2010
On Monday, Canada's Angela James, above, and American Cammi Granato will become the first women to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
By Randy Starkman
Olympic Sports Reporter
This isn’t a fairytale Canadian hockey story of backyard rinks made by Dad.
There was no Dad.
Angela James was the youngest of her single mom Donna’s five kids, and it was a struggle just to buy milk, never mind equipment. Her power skating coach was a deaf man whose powerful strides she emulated on the local shinny rink without him knowing it.
James has a date with history on Monday, becoming along with American Cammi Granato the first women to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Often referred to as the Wayne Gretzky of women’s hockey, she will have a spot in the same shrine as The Great One.
But she took a drastically different route there.
James grew up in the crime-ridden housing project of Flemingdon Park. Asked to describe what it was like over a coffee in her old neighbourhood this week, she rhymes off a laundry list of dangers.
“Yes, there was sport, but there was a lot of drugs and alcohol ... a lot of stabbings and for sure lots of murderers, psychopaths, the Valentine killer was in my era there, there were guys killed over poker games, there was David Todd, who killed his wife and put her in a freezer,” James says.
“When you think back then, it’s pretty dramatic when you go on a class trip down to the police museum and they say, ‘Here is the freezer where the skin tissue remains of David Todd, who killed his wife.’ In the meantime, kids from that community are right there going ‘Omigod.’”
Her ability to rise above her surroundings to become the most dominant player in women’s hockey for nearly two decades starting in the late 1970s is nothing short of inspirational.
But there’s no mention of it anywhere in the arena that now bears her name. There was a ceremony in June, 2009 to change the name of Flemingdon Arena to Angela James Arena, but there’s no plaque telling visitors anything about James or even a photograph.
A group of kids wandering by the rink as James was being interviewed this week by a Hockey Night in Canada crew while standing right under the sign bearing her name had no clue who she was.
“Hey CBC!” shouted one, “Whatcha doin’ here?”
James was such a dominating force that opponents had to know where she was on the ice at all times. The Gretzky reference aside, her Hall of Fame biography notes she had a combination of Mark Messier’s aggressiveness and Mike Bossy’s sniping skill. She helped Canada to four women’s world championships, scoring 11 goals in five games at the inaugural event in Ottawa in 1990.
But getting cut from the Canadian team headed to the women’s hockey debut at the 1998 Nagano Olympics was a controversial decision that stings to this day.
“How could it not?” James says.
The women wore pink sweaters at that first world championship, but James specialized more in black and blue. She was a physical player, one of her trademarks the way she grunted on the ice.
It’s only in reminiscing that James realizes the grunting originated because of the deaf man.
“We played shinny hockey outside and there was a gentleman in his 40s, a deaf man, and he was a phenomenal skater, he could stickhandle and he could really read the game,” James says. “I can sort of picture him right now. I would kind of follow him, see what he would do and emulate him. And he used to grunt.”
James admits she was no angel growing up. She and her friends stole milk from the Dominion store and also regularly pilfered from the local Margaret’s Donuts and Coke factories. She also experimented with drugs and alcohol.
“I experienced a lot of that stuff growing up as well,” she says. “I was very fortunate that I didn’t get caught up in it. Some of our friends did.”
When the arena was re-named for her two years ago, one of the themes of her speech that day was, “Never forget where you come from, but you can always change where you’re going.”
“My roots are Flemingdon Park, but it doesn’t mean what we were exposed to is how we have to live in the future,” says James, a longtime sports co-ordinator at Seneca College. “We can always change, change our destiny, change who we are.”
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