Albertine Lapensée

Albertine Lapensée (August 10, 1898 – January 7, 1963) was a Canadian ice hockey player, often thought to be Canada's first women's hockey "superstar". She played for the Cornwall Victorias, Cornwall Nationals, Cornwall All-Stars, and Hull Vestas in 1916 and Cornwall Ladies Hockey Club in 1917, when women's hockey enjoyed some prominence, as most of the healthy men were taking part in the First World War.

Lapensée was reputed to have scored over 150 goals and led her teams to be unbeaten throughout 1916 and 1917, when records indicate that they won 45 of their 46 games. (In his book "The Miracle Maid" the author records the historic goal count as 123 in only 28 games in which her teams recorded a 27–0–1 record) Research showed that Albertine received and did demand a share of the profits from the games. Lapensée disappeared from the sport in 1917, still a teenager. There were a number of rumours: that she had died in the 1918 flu pandemic, that she had travelled to New York to undergo a sex-change, or that she had always been a draft dodging man, though none provided any credible evidence. A 1940 profile of her father refuted all those claims, detailing her as living as a woman in New York.

Early life and hockey career

Albertine Lapensée was born on August 10, 1898, in Cornwall, Ontario, the youngest of eleven children born to Phillippe and Matilde. She grew up playing ice hockey outdoors on frozen ponds and rivers alongside her brothers and other boys. With the outbreak of the First World War, the exodus of men to the fighting resulted in the decline of amateur hockey leagues. This meant that hockey arenas were losing revenue, and to counter this, the owners of the Jubilee Arena in Montreal organised a four-team women's hockey league in 1915, the Eastern Ladies' Hockey League. Lapensée joined the Cornwall Victorias for their second game after joining the ELHL in 1916. A week later she scored six as her team won 8–0. In another game, she scored 15 (16) goals, to help Cornwall to a 21–0 victory. These first surfaced immediately after her first match, when the members of the opposition Ottawa side accused her of being a man. Her father made a public statement that the claims were false, and in February 1916, the Montreal Star investigated the claims. The reporter spoke to "dozens and dozens of people from Cornwall who had known her since she was little", Lapensée realised how much money the league was making for the arenas, and how significant her role was in her team's success, and she demanded a share of the profits. These claims, leaked to the press, led the Montreal Star to dub her a prima donna. The team owners refused, and Lapensée retired from the league in 1918. Further investigations have shown that Albertine was in fact a person with physical characteristics of both sexes and that she had chosen to immigrate to the United States and lived as Albert after the appearance of dominant male physical traits began to show after the puberty.