Pioneer girls of the BC soccer world

This is the speech I gave at the induction ceremony for three Blue Mountain girls soccer teams into the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame: 

The Blue Mountain Royals celebrating being named Outstanding Team at the 1982 Sun Cup of Soccer Champions. This photo sits on my bookshelf in my office and it inspired me to gather my memories, make my soccer video detailing the early days of girls' soccer in BC, and nominate the three Blue Mountain teams for the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame.

Hello everyone!

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Anne Russell and I was a proud member of the Blue Mountain Royals soccer team from 1975 to 1984. I still consider myself a Royal today and enjoyed a great reunion with my fellow players, our coach Dean McInnes, and several of the team parents on Sunday.

I am also a friend and admirer of the two other Blue Mountain teams being honoured tonight. We played the Devils on an exhibition basis many times and then in league play during their final U-18 year. We looked up to the Rangers as the senior team in our club.

Forty years ago, I was, to quote Cyndi Lauper, just a girl who wanted to have fun. I loved kicking the soccer ball around in the backyard with my four brothers, and would take it out to the fields at Lord Baden Powell elementary, just behind my house, and kick it against the backstop of the ball diamond. When I got a little older, I would illegally climb the fence into the school courtyard and kick it against the wall there. You just couldn’t stop me!

I would go to my brothers’ games, and watch from the sidelines as they played, and wonder why I couldn’t play on a team too! I was told that girls didn’t play soccer, that there were no organized teams. I didn’t know then that the English Football Association had banned the growing sport of women’s soccer in the 1920s – a ban that was not lifted until the 1970s and that spilled over into Canada in the chilling effect that it had on the development of the women’s game.

Then, in 1975, I heard that my friend Kerry Rupert WAS playing on a team, and that girls soccer had started up. I eagerly informed that my parents that there WAS a team and I wanted to join it! Thus I became a Blue Mountain Royal! Thanks Kerry! 

I was overjoyed to be playing with my new friends on a real team and travelling to Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, and Burnaby to take on other teams. We’d also play against the other Coquitlam clubs: Bel Air and Cape Horn. Along with the Blue Mountain club, they were the precursors to today’s Coquitlam Metro Ford Soccer Club. In the first game I remember playing as a nine-year-old we took on the Port Moody Sparks, and were bowled over by a tiny dynamo forward named Tina Pavan, who would join our team in her teens.

For the next few years we developed our soccer skills and grew as a team. Under the guidance of coaches Dean McInnes and Peter Van Hulsen, we learned the finer points of the game and became very successful in the win-loss margin. But we also learned to play with character, to always be good sports, and to treat our opponents with respect. Jim Gray and Cam Barnetson were working similar miracles with the Devils and the Rangers.

We were also proving that girls COULD play soccer. One year, we travelled to Pitt Meadows for the Hammond Days festival to put on a demonstration of the game before there was any organized soccer in Pitt Meadows or Maple Ridge. A decade later, current national team goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc would start her youth soccer career in a Maple Ridge club. 

 In 1973, there were only three girls soccer clubs across British Columbia. By 1980, there were 317 teams. In 2002, there were more than 307,000 women and girls playing nationally.

So by the early 1980s, girls were playing the game, and playing it well. There was even a championship tournament for girls started in the late 1970s that the Devils and Rangers qualified for. 

But the pinnacle of amateur sport… the Sun Tournament of Soccer Champions …  sponsored by the Vancouver Sun newspaper, eluded us.

Soccer was B.C.’s most high-profile amateur sport from the 1950s through the 1980s and beyond.

Boys who got to play in this elite Sun Cup tournament, which pitted the two best teams in the coastal region against each other, played in Swangard Stadium — a real stadium! They were marched in by bagpipes in a parade of champions, had their games covered by real newspaper and TV reporters, and the Sun Soccer Boy and his runner up were featured in the Vancouver Sun.

But for the first few years of organized girls soccer in B.C., girls were not allowed to play in the Sun Cup.

Then, in 1981, more enlightened minds prevailed. It was the girls’ turn to play at Swangard, with a parade, bagpipes, an announcer calling out their names, an allstar team, and a Sun Soccer Girl and Runner Up being featured on the front page of the Vancouver Sun sports section.

In a happy coincidence that highlights what a hotbed of soccer Coquitlam was, three teams from the Blue Mountain Club — teams that are being honoured tonight — The Royals, The Devils, and The Rangers — qualified for the inaugural Sun Cup for Girls.

Those same three teams emerged victorious in the top three age groups at the first Sun Cup, which also served as the provincial championship at that time.

The Sun Soccer Girl was Jane Norman of the Blue Mountain Rangers. Soccer Girl Runner Up was Karen Daws of the Blue Mountain Royals.

Fully half the allstar team was from Blue Mountain. And the Rangers were named Outstanding Team of the tournament.

Girls soccer had truly arrived and Coquitlam’s Blue Mountain club was leading the way!

It was a moment of immense pride for our teams, our families, and our community.

One local sports writer, the late Norm Wright, said it was seeing our team play that convinced him that girls and soccer belonged together. In fact I think it was that speedy little forward Tina Pavan who convinced him.

My team, the Royals, returned to the Sun Cup in 1982, winning again. We went on to be Western Canadian champions and placed second in Canada. One of our members, Brenda Yamamoto, was named Sun Soccer Girl Runner Up and others were allstars.

It was a thrill, but nothing matched the thrill of that first Sun Cup when Coquitlam girls proved that we deserved the same respect on the turf as the boys did.

There were direct connections between our pioneer soccer community and the early days of the national team. Someone we played against regularly, Geri Donnelly of the Port Moody Flames, went on to join Canada’s first rag-tag version of a women’s national team in 1986. She scored Canada’s first and second goals ever. I played on a summer team with her that same year. Local Coquitlam girl Cathy Ross was also an early national team member.

Someone who played with us as a Royal in our last two years – Linda Petrasch (now Linda Milani), also played for the national team for a couple of the early years.  Both of these women were honored as national team alumni at a recent ceremony before a World Cup game.

Some key national team members reaped the benefits of a vibrant girls’ soccer scene in BC that we helped to create. 

Christine Sinclair, Canada’s current captain, wouldn’t be born until a couple of years after that first Sun Cup, but she went on to play in its successor, the Coastal Cup, in her formative years. My brother- and sister-in-law coached against her when she was a young teen and remember her as a phenomenon even then.  

Other current and former national team members, including Abbotsford’s Sophie Schmidt, got their start in the girl’s soccer system that we pioneers helped to build.

In my lifetime I have witnessed huge growth of girls soccer, the start of rep teams, elite teams, school teams, university teams, and the launch of the women’s national team.

So yes, I will be extremely proud when I join 50,000 other fans to watch Canada against Switzerland in BC Place on Sunday and when that same venue hosts the World Cup final on July 5. When I was at the U.S. game on Tuesday I thought back to those early international soccer exchanges we had with Seattle teams and reflected that I never imagined it would come to this.

But I am most proud of the equity achieved in Canadian soccer: unlike when I was a little girl watching my brothers from the sidelines: my daughters and my son have the same opportunities to play, ref, and coach with our club, the Chilliwack FC. And they take advantage of it.

And there’s another legacy: lots of women playing through their 30s, 40s, 50s or until their knees give out, whichever comes first. Yes, I’m still playing recreational soccer at age 49. I’m no superstar and probably wouldn’t even make the rep team if I was playing as a girl today, but I play in a recreational league my friends and I organized for women over 30. I scored six goals this season! We now have 12 teams and more than 160 players coming out two nights a week in Chilliwack. We are all enjoying the personal empowerment, bonding, commitment to fitness and community building that comes with that. 

I want to give a huge shout out to my coaches when I was a girl – Dean McInnes and the late Peter Van Hulsen gave us the skills to play soccer, but also emphasized sportsmanship, integrity, and camaraderie. And we girls were bonded for life as a result. I know that Jim Gray and Cam Barnetson instilled similar values with their teams.

We learned a lot from winning, but also from our occasional big losses. Ironically, we ended the youth careers of our older rivals, the Devils, in playoff action in 1983, and then were eliminated ourselves by the younger Willingdon Dirty Dozen a year later in 1984. Character-building experiences all!

I just want to take a moment to recognize that not all the legends of the Blue Mountain Club of the 1980s could join us tonight. We’ve lost some good ones along the way, including Rangers coach Cam Barnetson, Royals assistant coach Peter Van Hulsen, parents from various teams, and the first Sun Soccer Girl, the late and great Jane Norman.

I made a soccer video detailing the history of all this as an assignment for university course in digital storytelling that I took. As I approach a half century in age and watch some of my friends pass away, it hits home that nobody can tell your story as well as you can, so if you want to make sure your story is told, then make sure you tell it. The video now has more than 1,400 views on Youtube. It’s called Pioneer Girls of the BC Soccer World if you want to look it up.

I am so honoured to be here tonight being recognized with the rest of you. Forty years later, girls still just wanna have fun. And they are!

Thank you to the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame for this wonderful recognition. Thank you, Royals, Devils, and Rangers, for paving the way for the soccer girls of today. And thank you to the adults of the previous generation for having the foresight to let the little girls join their brothers on the pitch and play! 

Farewell to an old friend, the Now newspaper in Coquitlam

Final edition of The Tricities Now, formerly Coquitlam Now was published today. It rose from the ashes of The Columbian newspaper, which itself closed in 1983 after 122 years of publication.
http://issuu.com/coquitlam-now/docs/coqthu20151001

I wrote a tribute farewell letter that is published on page 10. It got edited down due to space constraints. Here's the full version, complete with references to the late great Larry Rose and Norm Wright, the Blue Mountain Royals, and young aspiring writer Annie.

Dear Editor:

The Tri-Cities Now and I go waaaay back. Back to the beginning. Back to when it was the Coquitlam Now.

When I was 17 back in 1983, I was an aspiring journalist, working on The Catalyst newspaper at Centennial Secondary and heading down to The Columbian newspaper after school to work as a file clerk.

Much to my dismay, The Columbian shut down in 1983 after 122 years. Not an auspicious start to my career!

Within the year though, I saw hope for the industry. Displaced Columbian reporters, ad sales people, and editors joined forces to start Now Newspapers in Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster, and Surrey.

Norm Wright, the former sports reporter for The Columbian, was the founding sports editor for the Now Newspapers. He had covered the emerging sport of girls’ soccer and had often written about my team, the Blue Mountain Royals, and other local powerhouses. The coverage continued in the new Now format and we graced those pages several times.

When I was in first-year university at SFU in 1984, he offered me a stringer’s job of reporting on SFU sports in On The Hill, my own column in the Burnaby Now (sometimes also picked up by Coquitlam Now). In those pre-email, pre-internet days I would go interview the SFU coaches on Monday morning, write up the results on my electric typewriter, and drive them over to Now Newspaper headquarters in New Westminster in time for the Tuesday deadline.

Sadly, Norm passed away from cancer in 1986. He was a great mentor to me. My generation of girls’ soccer pioneers all appreciated his coverage of our sport as we broke boundaries and claimed our right to be in the spotlight. I gave a special shout-out to him in June of 2015 when three Blue Mountain girls teams were inducted into the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame.

I continued to appreciate Coquitlam Now from afar when I moved to Chilliwack to begin my career in university communications in 1990. I would always make sure I read it when visiting my in-laws. Larry Rose, my father-in-law, was a big community booster in Coquitlam and local public relations consultant, so we always had lots to discuss about Coquitlam politics and events during our visits.
When Larry passed away in 1999, then-editor Pat Cooper devoted a whole page of the Coquitlam Now to a tribute to Larry. The Dogwood Pavilion was filled to overflowing at his service, and many there read and appreciated her heartfelt tribute.

With the advent of the Internet, I was able to keep up with The Now via its web version.
I’ve been gone from Coquitlam for more than 25 years now, but it will always remain a special place in my heart, my core home. I lament the loss of the many community newspapers that are closing these days, and hope that we can find a way to continue to have “papers of record” for our communities.
Sincerely,
Anne Russell

Photo of one of Norm’s stories on us:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosedaleannie/16780827711

The evolution of (the) Rosedale Annie

Rosedale Annie wine tasting in the Okanagan with her hair twin.

Back in 2007, when I was an early adopter of Twitter, then a fairly new social media site, I had to choose a username for myself. Most combinations of my first and last names were already taken, so I settled on Rosedale Annie. (If we were being truly literal I would be East Chilliwack Annie, since we live a kilometre or two from the vague neighbourhood boundary of the unofficial neighbourhood of Rosedale on the outskirts of Chilliwack.) 

Since then the persona of Rosedale Annie has kind of taken on a life of her own, helped in no small way by my adventures, well documented on Facebook. She’s a fun-loving gal with friends in many circles, always ready to share a post-soccer beer and wings, or go on a new adventure, which may include cycling the Kettle Valley railway, touring wineries in the Okanagan, heading into Vancouver for a show, or attending, in costume,  a friend’s  Archie-themed birthday party. 

Hijinks often ensue when she’s around, and when it’s time to relax she welcomes friends and family from near and far to sit back on her deck overlooking her garden and backyard and the Hope Slough. If you’re lucky you may see river otters, great blue herons, and bald eagles, and her husband Daryl may have mixed up a batch of the Rosedale Annie, her signature cocktail. 

• 2 oz of Absolut fruit-infused vodka (mango is best; peach will do) ... (always a double!)
• 1 oz sparkling water
• 4 oz Western Family unsweetened grapefruit juice
• 1 oz Sunrype wild raspberry juice.
• (Measurements are rough estimates; feel free to experiment!)
• Shake the first three ingredients in a martini shaker with ice.
• Pour into tumbler-style glass.
• Pour raspberry juice over top for a layered look!

 Enjoy.

 

Eulogy for an old, old friend -- my tribute to Jean Scott

I lost my oldest friend a few weeks ago. Not oldest in terms of duration of the friendship, although we were going on 14 years. No, my friend Jean was simply the oldest person I had ever known, two months short of her 103rd birthday.

Jean had been a social activist longer than most people have been alive. She devoted her life to causes that promote social justice, women’s equality, and the rights of the common person.

Many know the public Jean, but I was lucky enough to get to know the private Jean, as we forged a strong friendship borne of mutual admiration. I love to hear stories, and she loved to tell them, so for a decade and a half I heard many chapters from the story of Jean.

Back in 2001 I was a busy mum, juggling kids, marriage, and a full-time job, when I met Jean.
She called me up at work, having somehow got my number, and demanded to know: “What is the university planning to do to commemorate Person’s Day this year?”

My boss, who knew her, told me to do anything Jean wanted.

First Jean had to educate me about the Person’s Case of 1929 and why there even is a Person’s Day, commemorating when the Privy Council recognized women as persons under the law. Then I helped her find speakers, order refreshments, and promote the event, which went quite successfully.

Fascinated by the impact this octogenarian had had locally, provincially, and nationally, I decided to nominate her for an honorary doctorate at the local university. That continued our formal relationship a while longer, and I was delighted, as was she, when the nomination was successful.

That could have been it for Jean and I, but I was intrigued by this feisty senior who seemed to have personal experiences relating to every major event of the 20^th century. The Titanic? It sank in the weeks before she was born. World War I? She could remember her uncle going to fight in it. The Spanish Flu? It nearly killed her father. The Depression? She scraped through it doing menial labour. World War II? She had a dalliance with a German POW. The 60s? She helped arrange health care for the hippies on Vancouver’s Fourth Avenue. The 70s? She was a driving force nationally in feminist issues.

I didn’t have time for a new “old” friend, but I was won over by her energy, her relentless positivity, and her verve, and we quickly became close. How could I resist? Besides, I figured, she was almost 90. How long would this friendship go on for anyway?

Although I escorted her to many public events and she loved them all, the best parts of our friendship were the private moments.

She became a treasured elder in our family, and loved nothing more than being invited to share dinner around our table after a country drive out to our house. (She loved food in all forms, had a robust appetite, cooked for herself into her 100th year, and the last word I heard her speak was “delicious” as the nurse fed her some pudding.)

I wasn’t her only friend, of course. She was so effusive that many were drawn to her positivity.
Jean had a healthy ego and an extremely strong need for her voice to be heard. I think she lasted so long partly because she couldn’t stand to think of a world without her.

Her drive to share the narrative of 20th century women’s experience through the lens of her own life led to her writing and self-publishing Brown Sugar and a Bone in the Throat, her memoir of growing up in poverty, overcoming abusive relationships, and emerging into a political consciousness that inspired her to speak up for others. One of my proudest achievements was helping to stage a public reading of the book, with my daughters reading the part of young Jean and women friends of every age reading the other stages.

I also enjoyed taking her to visit my son’s Grade 3 class as a living example of a 100-year-old, who proved to them that centenarians CAN dance (AND play the ukulele).

Jean was a living link to many stages of Canadian history and an inveterate name dropper who had known Pierre Berton, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, and every left-leaning politician, it seemed.
She demonstrated how to grow very old gracefully while remaining extremely engaged with loved ones and community, all the while retaining a sense of humour, vivaciousness and a lust for life. (Did I mention she was also a notorious flirt?)

When she began suffering with heart trouble late last year, she told me:

“All this time I never knew I HAD a heart, it just kept ticking away and giving me no trouble. Now the bottom half works but the top isn’t doing so well, and apparently you need your WHOLE heart to work.”

I replied: “Oh, believe me, your whole heart has been working hard for a long time! Just look at how you’ve shared it with so many people.”

Having lost Jean, but not begrudging her passing (she was 102 after all) I reflected on her attitude towards life, which is part of what kept me so eager to continue to be her friend.

I recently read that only 10% of those born in 1917 made it to age 85. Jean, born five years before that, made it to almost 103. So she outlived her peer group by a longshot, but stayed connected to the world by continually making new friends from all generations.

So in the hopes that we should all have the good fortune to live life to the fullest for as long as we get to be here, I offer you some life lessons from our friend Jean:

1) Embrace life with passion

From an early age (I know, because I listened to her stories and read her book), Jean met the world with excitement and unbridled enthusiasm. From the brown sugar she recalls sneaking from the barrels in her father’s grocery store, to the beauty of the blossoming fruit trees on Spadina Avenue, to the many types of music that she played and enjoyed listening to, to men she flirted with and the women and children she engaged with and encouraged, Jean brought a certain gusto and appreciation to everything she encountered.

2) BE engaged, with your causes, your passions, your community

I often thought that what was keeping Jean alive was one more project, one more cause. She moved to Chilliwack in her late 60s, ostensibly to retire, but took on project after project, all of them for the betterment of the community. I know she did this in her six previous decades as well. The Chilliwack Museum, housed in our heritage city hall thanks in part to Jean, the transition house movement, the Academy of Music, the local NDP chapter, the Heritage Singers, the Carman United Church, and others all benefited from her devotion to causes that Jean cared about and that helped others.

3) Inspire others to care about the things that matter to you

Jean didn’t have Facebook or Twitter to spread the word about her projects and causes (although someone – not me – did create a Facebook profile for her that you can check out if you want). No, she spread the word about her causes the old-fashioned ways: letters to the editor, photocopied flyers (she would say mimeographed), telephone chains, and fiery speeches. A few years before I formally met her, I encountered her at the campaign offices for the Alliance for a Better Chilliwack, where she was improvising lyrics to a campaign song for the municipal election coalition. Whatever approach she used, she was always inspirational, infecting others with her enthusiasm.

4) Value education

It brings joy to my heart to know that something I instigated brought joy to Jean’s heart. Receiving an honorary doctorate from UFV was one of her peak life experiences, because she had always regretted not getting a university education. But Jean was a lifelong learner. One of her prized possessions was a plaque with a quote from Michelangelo that said: “I am still learning.” Among her favourite sources of knowledge and culture were CBC Radio, library books, concerts and theatre outings, and courses taken through UFV partner ElderCollege.

5) Appreciate friendship and family

Anyone who was friends with Jean became friends with her entire circle by proxy. For years I heard stories about Spencer and Sonia and their kids and grandkids, her sisters and nieces and nephews, long-lost relatives who came back into her life, and friends Sharon and Phil Blaker, Pat Carfra, Jean and Jim Servizi, Doug Wickers, Bobbi Jacobs, Brenda Janzen, and others. She thanked me every time we saw each other for being a good friend to her, and always insisted on hugs and kisses. She was appreciative of every outing, especially one Christmas Eve when she was snowed in – unable to get to Langley, and we brought her out through the storm for prime rib at our house and an impromptu trip to the Rosedale United Church’s candlelight ceremony. And she remembered incredible details about me and my family –- not always accurately -– but very vividly. For years she mistakenly thought my daughter Molly wanted to be an architect and would tell her about famous female architects. When two of her sisters died in their 90s a week apart in 2008, she felt so adrift that she sought formal grief counselling. On her last good day, she asked me to bring my kids to see her, so the next day I did, on what turned out to be her last -– not so good -– day. But she still beckoned my girls to her bedside and grasped their hands for a final loving connection with her radiant being.

6) Be grounded

Jean loved social life and the adrenalin buzz that came along with it but she also appreciated the basic good things in life, such as home-made food. Up to the age of 100, the woman could take a butcher’s bone and an onion and come up with a tasty soup. She didn’t understand why you’d buy muffins from a store when you could make your own. Until she left her own home with a yard she grew a bounteous garden. Simply listening to music, singing, playing the piano, or meditating on a poem or a prayer also grounded her. And of course there was the soothing company of her cat Nicky -– unfriendly to so many but so devoted to her.

7) Spread love and joy as part of your daily life

You couldn’t be friends with Jean without hugs and kisses -– on the lips! But I also saw her share love wherever she went. She would have kind words for the waitress, ask after the taxi driver’s family, encourage the many UFV students she met at events, throw cheerful words out as she pushed her walker down the hall at the Lynnwood, and profusely thank the nurses as they tended to her in her hospital bed. A fine example to follow!

8) Share what you know

When I was interviewing Gwen Point, the new Chancellor at our University, she told me that her grandmother told her this: “What you know has no value. It’s like sand falling through your hand unless you pass it on to others.” Jean understood this, and was forever teaching others, about the importance of women’s rights, major achievements in the labour movement, local history from both Chilliwack and her prairie homes of Rocanville and McAuley, and lessons learned from years in the trenches fighting for the common good.

9) Make sure your voice is heard and your story is told

Not all of us have the gift of rhetoric and a whole autobiography itching to be written, but we all have a story. Jean’s keen desire to tell hers so that it would not be forgotten led to her writing her memoir. That should inspire us all. You may not write 20 chapters, but your story shouldn’t die with you. All of our stories are important. History is the collection of individual narratives. Start telling yours to your family and friends so that your stories and the experiences and wisdom that shaped you lives on in their hearts.

And speaking of hearts, here’s the final life lesson we can learn from Jean:

10) Keep hope in your heart

Jean was an eternal optimist, despite a life filled with struggle. She NEVER gave up. As she languished at home with the heart trouble that eventually led to her demise, she told me she had to get better so she could host one more birthday party in April. So as we celebrate the equinox today, one month from what would have been Jean’s 103^rd birthday, let’s all take a little hope in our hearts home with us.

Thank you.