Pioneering hockey champions.
Paula E. Kirman
Edmonton is a city known for its championship-winning NHL hockey team. However, long before the Edmonton Oilers came into being and began winning regional finals and Stanley Cups, a women’s hockey team with roots in Jasper Place was making waves in the local and national hockey world.
The Jasper Place Rustlers was formed in 19291. It was coached by Corwin Ray Tufford, who moved to Edmonton from Toronto with his wife Mary. Later the family moved to a lot at 95th Avenue and 153rd Street in Jasper Place in 1914.
C. R. Tufford was elected as a councillor for the Town of Jasper Place when the town was incorporated in 1950. But he died the following year at the age of 61. “Prior to that, he was very involved with the Hamlet, then Village, of Jasper Place since moving his family there in 1914. He was the first president of the Jasper Place Tennis Club in 1922, and he played hockey on the community league’s men’s team. He was an active member of the community league until the late 1940s and was instrumental in establishing the first school in Jasper Place,” wrote Michael Brodrick, Tufford’s great-grandson, in an email to the Jasper Place Community History Project (JPCHP). Jasper Place’s first school was West Jasper Place School, built in 19352.
A page about the Tufford family is included in the Crestwood Centennial (1917-2017) commemorative book written by Mark Hopkins and Robert Morrison on behalf of the Crestwood Community League (page 73). Corwin Tufford worked in real estate, and his partnership with Eugene Bolton resulted in Tufford & Bolton becoming the exclusive agents to the area known at the time as Capital Hill (now known as East Crestwood). Mr. Tufford earned the nickname Corwin “Coordinated to Win” Tufford because of the success of the Rustlers, and was himself athletic playing for the Jasper Place Community League Hockey Team and founding the Jasper Place Tennis Club in 1922, becoming its first president.
Two Tufford daughters – Eleanore and Rosemary – played with the Rustlers3. Eleanore played defense and Rosemary played centre. Both were considered among the top women’s hockey players of the 1930s in Canada. Rosemary was part of the team’s top line, which also included wingers Hazel Case and Marian Walker.4
Other players on the team lived in Jasper Place or in the west Edmonton neighbourhoods of Crestwood and Grovenor.5 The name of the team appears to have changed to the Edmonton Rustlers at some point. Various articles referencing the same time period label the team as both the Jasper Place Rustlers and Edmonton Rustlers, sometimes simply calling them the Rustlers. Brodrick has a letterhead from 1933 that reads “Edmonton Rustlers” but also notes the same discrepancy in the team’s name depending on the source.
The year 1933 was a major one in the team’s history with championships that included:
- Canadian Ladies Hockey Champions
- Canadian Senior Ladies Hockey Champions
- Western Canadian Ladies Hockey Champions
- Alberta Provincial Ladies Hockey Champions
- Edmonton Open City Women’s Champions
- Lady Bessborough Trophy Winners6
The team retired later in the 1930s. In 1938, Eleanore Tufford began playing for the Edmonton Blizzards, and moved to Calgary in 19397. In 1939, the Edmonton Bulletin reported that “Edmonton lost much of its girl hockey excitement when Corwin Tufford and the Rustlers’ girls team retired from competition some years ago.”8
Rosemary and Eleanore were actively involved in the St. John the Evangelist church on 148th Street, as leaders of the Legion of Mary. They opened their home for meetings and had a shrine in their garden that was donated to the church after their home was sold.9
Eventually, Eleanore founded the company Homes & Gardens Real Estate Limited, running the business from her family home in Jasper Place. Eleanore died in 2010. Brodrick, Eleanore’s great-nephew, is now the owner.
In 1998, C. R. Tufford’s legacy as a town councillor and coach of the Rustlers was honoured with the naming of Tufford Way in Terwillegar Towne after him.10
References
1Ian Kennedy. ”Tufford Sisters Were Tough Competitors In The 1930s.” The Hockey News, July 10, 2024. https://thehockeynews.com/womens/other-news/tufford-sisters-were-tough-competitors-in-the-1930s
2Denise Roy, “History of the Orange Hub.”
3“Our History.” Homes & Gardens Real Estate Ltd. https://www.homesandgardensrealestate.com/company-history
4Ian Kennedy. ”Tufford Sisters Were Tough Competitors In The 1930s.” The Hockey News, July 10, 2024. https://thehockeynews.com/womens/other-news/tufford-sisters-were-tough-competitors-in-the-1930s
5Donald Luxton and Associates Inc. and The City of Edmonton, “Parks & Recreation,” in Jasper Place Historic Resources Inventory, City of Edmonton: February 2019, p. 37.
6https://hockeygods.com/images/13743-Jasper_Place_Rustlers_1st_Canadian_Ladies_Hockey_Champions_1933
7Ian Kennedy. ”Tufford Sisters Were Tough Competitors In The 1930s.” The Hockey News, July 10, 2024. https://thehockeynews.com/womens/other-news/tufford-sisters-were-tough-competitors-in-the-1930s
8”Spotlighting the Sport Girl.” Edmonton Bulletin, Wednesday, December 20, 1939, p. 13.
9Mark Hopkins and Robert Morrison. “The Tufford Family.” Crestwood Centennial (1917-2017), p. 73.
10 “Our History.” Homes & Gardens Real Estate Ltd. https://www.homesandgardensrealestate.com/company-history
Paula E. Kirman is a freelance writer who grew up, and still lives, near the Jasper Place area.
[This post is an expanded version of an article that appeared in Spring 2025’s SPANN]
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