Long before PWHL expansion, the Vancouver Griffins were the city's 1st women's pro hockey team
CBC
When Diane Nelson decided to start a women's pro hockey team, her mother warned her of the risks.
"The advice she gave me was like something you would give a gambler: You've got so many quarters, once you use it up, promise me that you won't go beyond," said Nelson.
Nelson, then a West Vancouver school principal, owned the Vancouver Griffins, a short-lived women's professional hockey team that played in the National Women's Hockey League from 2000 to 2003.
More than two decades after the Griffins played their last game, Nelson says she is delighted that the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) announced that Vancouver would be home to its first expansion franchise.
Nelson's mother, now 96 years old, was also excited by the news.
"It kind of validates that it wasn't a crazy idea," Nelson told CBC News. "It is something that has tremendous possibility and I'm just glad that I'm able to share it with my mom."
Looking back, Nelson says she was "naive" about the prospect of owning a pro women's hockey franchise at the start of the 21st century.
"The doors of opportunity that were supposed to open for me didn't," she said.
Nelson is hopeful that those doors may finally have opened for professional women's hockey in the city.
The PWHL, which consists of six teams from Canada and the U.S., announced Wednesday that the new team will be known temporarily as PWHL Vancouver while it works to develop team branding, including a logo and name.
PWHL Vancouver will start playing in the 2025-26 season, which is expected to begin in November. The team will be the primary tenant at the Pacific Coliseum on the grounds of the Pacific National Exhibition in East Vancouver.
It will practice steps away at the PNE Agrodome.
Vancouver was chosen as the seventh PWHL franchise after an eight-month process that saw expansion bids from groups in more than 20 cities.
Earlier this year, Vancouver hosted a PWHL Takeover Tour game that drew more than 19,000 fans — the fourth-largest turnout in league history.
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This First Person column is written by Clare Currie, who lives in Cape Breton, N.S., and is part of a Canada Day series exploring what Canada means to people across this country. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.
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