Courtesy of Tidewater Press
With the PWHL set to open its second season in November, author Ian Kennedy recently published a book uncovering women’s hockey history.
His second book, Ice in Their Veins: Women’s Relentless Pursuit of the Puck, documents hockey’s history of gender inequity, as well as the stories of those who helped develop the game to where it is today.
The book also features a foreword from Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Geraldine Heaney and an afterword from Olympic gold medalist Sami Jo Small. Several organizations have promoted the book, including the San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks, Grindstone Award Foundation and Canadian Tire Jumpstart.
The Hockey News’ Janson Duench spoke with Kennedy, who manages The Hockey News’ women’s hockey site and is also a digital correspondent, to discuss the process of writing his book and the impact he hopes it will have on women’s hockey. Here is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Janson Duench: How did the pieces come together for this book?
Ian Kennedy: Obviously, there’s a massive underrepresentation of women in hockey history. If you look at most hockey history books, there are very minuscule mentions of women in hockey history. But that’s obviously not the truth. Women have been playing for 130 years.
When I had written my previous book, I was researching and came to find a woman named Marian Coveny, who was the initial captain of Team Canada in 1987 at an unofficial world tournament because the IIHF wouldn’t sanction women’s hockey at the time. And it turned out that she was from Wallaceburg, Ont., which is the same town that I grew up in. And I had never heard her name before. And I thought that was really unacceptable for someone that knew hockey history as well as I thought I did.
It definitely sparked an interest in me because I thought if I don’t know about this person that’s from my own tiny town, there’s got to be an immense number of women involved in hockey that I know nothing about as well.
And so eventually, I’ve got all of these oral histories of the challenges that women face, the triumphs that they had. And to see it through a different perspective of people that really struggled to find ice time, to find equipment that fit their bodies, to not be banned from leagues or face fans screaming awful things at them every single game just because they were women.
J.D.: How did you go about uncovering more than 100 years of women’s hockey history?
I.K.: Digging into library archives, any kind of digital newspapers that were there, visiting museums and opening up the old dusty binders of print newspapers. The Hockey Hall of Fame helped.
But the most important part is the fact that for everything that we could do, it was the personal experiences and the history told through the eyes of the women who actually lived it, which is why I really wanted people like Geraldine Heaney and Sami Jo Small to be involved so that the voice of women was really present in the book.
Women's hockey history deserves recognition. Women's contributions to hockey history deserves celebration. On shelves today in Canada! pic.twitter.com/y6THOMyNKH
— Ian Kennedy (@IanKennedyCK) October 30, 2024
J.D.: As a man writing this book, what position does that put you in to be writing about the history of women’s hockey?
I.K.: The biggest thing is that I approached this as someone that was preserving stories, not as someone that was telling stories. So I really let the people involved speak for themselves and just wanted to amplify that. Throughout the whole process, everybody was so excited to have their stories told and recorded and to be part of a project like this that is hopefully going to elevate the unknown names of the game that we should all know.
Also, a lesson I learned from my first book was to place myself in the story where I belonged. And sometimes, that was as a person that was part of the problem, whether it was learning those misogynist or sexist stereotypes growing up in AAA or junior hockey and not really knowing or thinking that women had the spot in the game. It wasn’t necessarily what I would believe, because as soon as I learned better, it’s important to do better.
J.D.: In terms of the audience for this book, are you hoping that men who read this book are also placing themselves in that history, whether they’ve been the problem or are still part of the problem?
I.K.: I think there’s an opportunity for men in hockey to take something from this and reflect on their own involvement in the game. Because I know that I’ve not always been on the right side of these debates and of advocacy, and I’m still learning. It would be pretty ridiculous for me to say that there’s not a lot more learning for me to do in the women’s hockey world. We all are involved if we love hockey and if we follow the game. And whether or not we want to focus on those things is our personal choice, but I definitely think there’s something for men in the game to learn from this book.
J.D.: With the big victories we’ve had in the past year with the PWHL, it seems like we’re entering a new chapter of women’s hockey. Do you see yourself writing another book down the line about the successes of this new age?
I.K.: Well, the funny part was I had almost finished the book in April or May (2023), right before the PWHL was announced. So when the announcement came, we went back and made quite a few changes. It’s exciting because I think of that as the last chapter of this book but also the first chapter of so much more that’s going to be happening in the next decade or over the next 50 years.
We’ve seen records breaking left and right in the first season of the PWHL, whether it’s attendance, viewership or just the caliber of play that’s on the ice right now. As more and more people get to see the level of play, we’re going to have young girls inspired to really strive for that.
I hope someday down the line, I get to tell a different side of all this, and maybe some of the players from these first couple of seasons take part and tell their story, too. At this point, I’m just as much a fan as I am anything where I’m enjoying sitting back and seeing all of these incredible things that are happening each day.
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News Summary:
- Q&A: Ian Kennedy's Book Shares The Buried Histories Of Women's Hockey
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