When Winnipeg Had Two Teams

We're all quite aware that there are, in 2021-22, nine schools with Canada West hockey teams. This isn't some new fact, but it needs to be stated because, across the four Canada West provinces, every province has at least two teams within its borders except for one. That one province is Manitoba where the University of Manitoba is the only school with Canada West hockey programs. With no provincial rivals, the Bisons have forged good rivalries with both Regina and Saskatchewan as the closest teams they play, but how great would it be if Manitoba had two teams? Or if Winnipeg had a second team like Calgary and Edmonton do?

This question stemmed from a tweet sent out by the great Nathan Sager today after the University of Manitoba put out a tweet about University of Winnipeg President James Currie and University of Manitoba President Michael Benarroch having some fun while hyping the Duckworth Challenge, a set of games between the schools' basketball, volleyball, and women's soccer teams that determines a winner between the two Winnipeg-based schools in head-to-head games between the teams listed above.

In response to the tweet, Sager wrote,

What if I told you that the University of Winnipeg did have hockey at one point for both men's and women's hockey?

Full credit for what follows goes to Will Jones, a broadcast operator and media technician at The University of Winnipeg, who went digging into Wesmen sports history to find as much as he could about Wesman hockey. What he ended up with was a comprehensive look at three decades of Wesman hockey that he put into a film titled Iced: The Lost History of Hockey at The University of Winnipeg!

Produced back in 2016 and shown on MTS TV Stories From Home, Jones spent three years digging through archives and interviewing players as he tracked down the history of Wesmen hockey that focuses on the "modern Wesmen teams of the 50s through early 80s; and the championship pedigree UWinnipeg women's club team in the early 2000s." The end result is a very good film that pulls back the curtain on a university hockey program that very few seem to remember.

Grab your history books, folks, because we're going back in time to visit this era of Wesmen hockey! Here is Iced: The Lost History of Hockey at The University of Winnipeg in its entirety as we look back on a pair of lost Canadian university hockey programs!
Honestly, Mr. Jones' efforts in producing this can't be understated as this is an exceptional look at Wesmen hockey. While I missed out on seeing the Wesmen men's team play by a good twenty years, I had no idea that there was a women's team at the institution during the early 2000s. Had I known, I probably would have gone to see a few of those games as it sounds like the women's program was quite good. Especially when you hear that they beat the Bisons year after year and could compete with teams like Alberta and Regina.

Would it be incredible to see the Wesmen return as a possible tenth Canada West team? Heck yes! I'd love to see a tenth team in Canada West and have a second Manitoba-based team for a crosstown rivalry once more. Where they would play would require some examination and we're certainly not here to try and build a program from the ground up, but it would be pretty cool to welcome the Winnipeg Wesmen back to Canada West hockey if they were thinking about adding hockey to their complement of sports teams!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!