Episode 3

Empires on Ice

Biographies

Lester B. Pearson

Long before he became Canada's 14th prime minister and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lester B. Pearson was a passionate hockey fan and accomplished player. A standout in both hockey and rugby as a young man, Pearson received a scholarship to England's prestigious Oxford University, where he played lacrosse and helped the school's famous hockey team trounce opponents across Europe in the early 1920s.

After graduating from Oxford, Pearson returned to Canada to teach history and coach the men's hockey team at the University of Toronto. In 1972, four years after Pearson completed his term as Prime Minister of Canada, the NHL Players Association immortalized his contributions to hockey by introducing the Lester B. Pearson Award, given annually to the league's most valuable player as selected by his peers.

Lester B. Pearson, Library and Archives Canada

Eva Ault

One of the game's first female stars, Eva Ault helped put women's hockey on the map in the early 1900s as women began to form their own leagues and championships. Ault became a fan favourite playing for the Ottawa Alerts, earning the nickname "Queen of the Ice." Thanks in part to Ault's brilliance, women's hockey soared in popularity around the time of the First World War, with promoters staging a series of exhibition games between Canadian and American teams. Despite its success, though, women's hockey still had its opponents, including a Montreal newspaper that determined the exhibition series in which Ault starred to be degrading to the fairer sex.

Eva Ault, Library and Archives Canada