In 1932, Edmonton had the best women’s basketball team in the world: the Edmonton Commercial Graduates. The Grads had been national champs since 1922, North American champs since 1923, and World champs since 1924. Teams wishing to challenge for the North American title had to travel to Edmonton for a two-game, total-points series.
The Chicago Red Devils decided to give it a shot, and booked their trip for May 1932. The timing was important. The Grads didn’t have access to the Edmonton Arena until after hockey season and the spring horse show. Six thousand fans might buy tickets to cheer their team on at each game. This time around, a charitable group in Calgary wanted to cash in on the Grads’ popularity too. The Shriners invited the Grads and Red Devils to play an exhibition game in Calgary the night after the series wrapped up, a fundraiser for the Shriners’ children’s hospital.
The teams were up for it, but there was one big problem: work. Not for the Red Devils – they were on holiday and could take the morning train after Monday’s late game. The Grads, on the other hand, were headed to Los Angeles for the Olympics in a couple of months, so the players needed to save their vacation days. With a train ride of six to seven hours between the capital and Calgary, it seemed like there was no way the Grads could work and still make the charity game.
A Working Team
The Grads were working women. In fact, the team had formed because of teenaged girls’ desire to break into the working world as something other than domestic labourers.
Commercial high schools gave teens the chance to learn skills for the business world: rapid calculation; bookkeeping; stenography, or the taking of shorthand; the operation of a typewriter. Edmonton’s first commercial high school had opened in 1914. In addition to their business classes, students took physical education. J. Percy Page had decided to teach the girls in his class the still new sport of basketball, despite the fact that the only hoops they had were on an outdoor court. His students had taken to basketball, so they’d entered a team in the new high school league. They’d won the city championship. They’d beaten college teams and taken the provincial title.
Although commercial high school was a two-year program, the skills the girls were developing off the court had been in high demand. Some of the students had accepted jobs after just a year of training. Even those who’d stayed only had another year to play basketball. Work and earning a wage were satisfying, but the girls had missed the physical challenge, the camaraderie of the team, the thrill of victory. They’d formed their own team, the Edmonton Commercial Graduates, and persuaded Mr. Page to keep coaching. Although personnel had changed over the years, almost all of the players were graduates of Edmonton’s Commercial High School.
Basketball game between the Edmonton Grads and the Queen Anne Candies, 1940. This was the final game played by the Edmonton Grads. Provincial Archives of Alberta, PR1970.0027/24.
A Novel Solution and a Grand Adventure
Businesses were proud to hire Grads, supporting the team that introduced the young city of Edmonton to the world, but Coach Page knew the players couldn’t ask for an extra day off. Instead he turned to local businessmen for a solution. As a civic booster, Page was a favourite amongst business owners. They’d gifted him a brand new automobile after the first international title win. Soon they had a solution lined up. The Grads would fly to Calgary in two Canadian Airways Fokker aircraft with six seats bolted into the back of each just for the journey, the first team in Canadian basketball history to travel by air to attend a game.[1]
Going into the series in Edmonton, the Grads had won 103 of their previous 104 games, but during game one there were moments when it seemed the Grads might lose. They trailed, extremely unusual for them. They pulled off a victory, spent the next day entertaining their guests at a picnic, then returned to work Monday. Monday night they were back on the court. The close call had drawn more fans to the Arena. The first half was even, but the second half was all Grads, aggregate score 93-59.[2]
Tuesday was another work day for the Grads. Most were stenographers: captain Elsie Benny at City Hall’s Treasury Department; free-throw-world-record-holder Margaret MacBurney, forward Babe Belanger, and guard Doris Neale at the Edmonton Journal; and substitutes Edith and Helen Stone at Alberta Dairy Supplies and the Edmonton Bulletin respectively. Forward Millie McCormack was a bookkeeper at the United Typewriter Company. Centre Gladys Fry was a lab technician at the University of Alberta[3]. Supporters of the team collected the women from their workplaces late Tuesday afternoon and delivered them to Blatchford Airfield.
Flying was going to be a grand adventure. Leaving terra firma was going to be terrifying. There was no time to commiserate, because as soon as the players stepped out of the cars, the crowd cheered; cameras clicked. Mr. and Mrs. Page and the basketball officials climbed into the back of the tiny Fokkers with the Grads. Time for take-off. The pilots navigated visually, following the highway south from an altitude of 800 feet.[4] Two hours later, they were back on land. Supper was not an appealing prospect.
Calgary and Back Again
Margaret stepped tentatively onto the court in Calgary, testing the ankle she’d twisted in the previous night’s game. Doris and Babe fought the lingering queasiness from their flight. The Red Devils, too, were tired – three games in four nights. By half, only 16 points had been tallied. The Grads trailed. On-going ill health had forced Millie to announce her retirement two weeks earlier; Coach Page had taken her along for one last adventure as a Grad. She gamely entered the fray, but returned to the bench minutes later, having netted one last basket. Though George Mackintosh of the Calgary Daily Herald remarked that Calgarians “didn’t see the champions at anything resembling their best”, Harry Scott of The Albertan contended that“it was real championship basketball that Grads dished up in the closing minutes of play.”[5] Final score: Grads 27, Red Devils 18.
Almost immediately the Grads left for the train station, climbing aboard the train at midnight, and settling in, grumbling at those whose adrenaline kept them chatting. Back in Edmonton they freshened up in the train station washrooms and headed to their offices for another day of work – the not-so-glamorous life of a working athlete.
Winnie Martin was a member of the original high school team at Commercial and went on to captain the Grads to their first dominion title, first North American title, and first Olympics. She attributed much of the team’s success to “the willingness of the girls to practise, which has meant a lot of self-sacrifice on their part. They are working and our only chance to practise is at night. Edmonton is scattered ‘all over the map’ and many of the players have to come from long distances and often when the thermometer is registering twenty-five degrees below zero… the only day we are ever away from our work is sometimes on the day the visiting team is to play, when our employers allow us a few hours off for the purpose of entertaining.”[6] The Commercial girls’ desire to work gifted them with a team, and that team gifted Edmonton a legacy.
[1] George Mackintosh, “Sporting Periscope” May 18, 1932 (Page 6 of 20). Edmonton Journal (1911-), May 18, 1932.
[2] “Grads Win Two Straight to Retain International Title” Edmonton Journal. May 17, 1932 (Page 6 of 16).
[3] Ann M. Hall, The Grads Are Playing Tonight: The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club. (Edmonton, The University of Alberta Press, 2011), 140, 147, 150, 159, 161, 163, 199.
[4] Marty Knack, “Flying Road Trips Truly an Adventure” June 8, 1991 (page 54 of 80). 1991. Edmonton Journal (1911-), Jun 08, 1991.
[5] Mackintosh, “Sporting Periscope.”
[6] Dorothy G. Bell, “Edmonton Commercial Grads. Have No Equal Amongst Girls’ Basket Ball Teams,” in Macleans’ Magazine 36 (23) 69-70.
Works Cited
Bell, Dorothy G . 1923. “Edmonton Commercial Grads. Have No Equal Amongst Girls’ Basket Ball Teams.” Maclean’s Magazine 36 (23): 68–70. https://research-ebsco-com.edpl.idm.oclc.org/linkprocessor/plink?id=e05ffe1e-6c3c-3aab-8c26-d79ab3da294b.\
Hall, M. Ann. 2011. The Grads Are Playing Tonight: The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club. Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 2011.
Knack, Marty. “Flying Road Trips Truly an Adventure” June 8, 1991 (page 54 of 80). 1991. Edmonton Journal (1911-), Jun 08, 1991. https://login.edpl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/june-8-1991-page-54-80/docview/2401804802/se-2 (accessed November 10, 2024).
Mackintosh, George. “Sporting Periscope.” May 18, 1932 (Page 6 of 20). Edmonton Journal (1911-), May 18, 1932. https://login.edpl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/may-18-1932-page-6-20/docview/2396196344/se-2.
“May 16, 1932 (Page 14 of 18).” Edmonton Journal (1911-), May 16, 1932. https://login.edpl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/may-16-1932-page-14-18/docview/2396238448/se-2. May 17, 1932 (page 6 of 16). (1932, May 17). Edmonton Journal (1911-) Retrieved from https://login.edpl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/may-17-1932-page-6-16/docview/2396279298/se-2
