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The Leafs-Habs final wouldn’t begin until Tuesday in Montréal, so Georgie marked her thirty-first birthday with Oliver in the cozy, dimly lit warmth of Pasta on Duncan. Full of pizza and penne and waiting for dessert, she picked up several crayons from the pot in the middle of the table and drew a red heart with ‘I Love Ollie’ on the white paper covering the tablecloth. Sat back in their curved booth, Oliver reciprocated with his own flourish of colourful cartoon hearts.
Georgie glanced up, swooning over how hot he looked in his dark suit. “Any requests?”
“You as a little goalie!”
She smiled and began drawing a caged face mask.
“Do you miss it?” asked Oliver.
“Mmm, sometimes.”
“What was it like playing alongside boys?”
“I wouldn’t know. We weren’t allowed.” Georgie brushed breadcrumbs from the skirt of her burgundy velvet dress. “The hockey association here thought girls should be playing with dolls, not pucks. We were banned from playing on boys’ teams, and finding a girls’ league was next to impossible. Mum had to drive me two hours outside the city so I could play.”
Oliver seemed puzzled. “But this is Canada, home of hockey?”
“And archaic rules about women in sport.” She sketched the goalie’s shoulders. “Occasionally, we’d bump into boys at the rink, and man, oh man, those kids weren’t shy. They’d spit on us, whip coins at our heads, tell us we weren’t welcome. Their parents were even worse. Some would yell, swear. One dumped his coffee over my teammate.”
Oliver scoffed. “What’s fucking wrong with people?”
Drawing the goalie’s blocker, Georgie smirked. “I gotta say, it fuelled me. One Saturday after playing, I let the boys hanging around take shots on me, and I saved every single one.”
“I would’ve loved to have witnessed that!” said Oliver. “Did they see reason?”
“Nope. It wasn’t easy on Michael either. When we played at the same rink, I’d meet him at the snack bar after, and some of his teammates would tease him for being with me. They’d shout homophobic slurs at him, call me a slut, make sexual innuendos. They made it crystal clear I didn’t belong. It’s one of the reasons I stopped playing.”
“What year was this?”
“1980.” She shaded an arm of the jersey. “I was in my late teens and wasn’t having fun anymore. Dealing with misogynistic bullshit wears you down after a while.”
Oliver wrapped his arm around her. “I wish I knew you back then. I would’ve stood in your corner.”
“I know you would’ve.” She stopped drawing and frowned. “Still grates, though. When I walked away, it felt like I’d let them win.”
“Have you, though? You speak up. You hold them accountable…”
“But I wish I’d fought harder back then, been more like Justine Blainey,” said Georgie. “She was a teenager in the ’80s who wanted the same rights to play as her brother. She wrote a letter to a Toronto paper, and a lawyer—a woman—saw it and offered her services pro bono. The ban clearly violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so they launched several legal challenges through the courts, going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. They fought for years and eventually won. Justine finally took to the ice on a boys’ team and changed the hockey landscape forever.”
“That’s fantastic,” said Oliver. “What a brave young woman.”
“Yeah, she was incredible, but unfortunately the ruling didn’t put an end to all the misogynistic nonsense. It’s still a problem.” Pressing the crayon against the paper, Georgie coloured fiercely, taking her frustrations out on the drawing. “One that needs to be talked about, especially with the younger generation so they grow up thinking and behaving differently.” She let out a hard sigh.
Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Bug, I know you’re worried about everything at school, but is something else going on?”
Chest tightening, Georgie halted her frenzied scribbling. If she didn’t tell him, his father surely would. She glanced up from her sketch. “A former player/friend of Will’s told him about a job at the Hockey Hall of Fame. They’re moving into a beautiful old building at Yonge and Front and need someone to oversee their new educational program for visiting students.”
Oliver’s jaw dropped. “Georgie, this is perfect for—why are you keeping it secret?”
She discarded the crayon on the table. “I don’t want to make a big thing of it in case they don’t call.”
“You applied?”
“Yesterday. Dropped off my résumé during lunch.”
Grinning widely, Oliver laughed. “Oh, they’ll call! You’re the perfect candidate: someone with vast hockey knowledge, teaching skills, and—” His smile deflated. “Oh…shit! You’re worried they won’t hire a woman?”
