Canadian Hockey Loses a Pioneer: Moira Colbourne, Hall of Famer, Gone at 90
Field Hockey Canada has announced the death of Moira Colbourne, a 2020 Hall of Fame inductee, at the age of 90.
Colbourne’s fingerprints are all over the women’s game on Canada’s west coast. In 1968 she launched Burnaby’s first organised field hockey programme, and she went on to coach at Simon Fraser University for 30 years. She was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame back in 1985, long before the national Hall of Fame came calling in 2020.
A celebration of life will be held on 15 January 2027 in Burnaby.
The timing lands with a certain poignancy. Field Hockey Canada opened nominations for its Hall of Fame earlier this month, with the induction ceremony set for 7 November in Waterloo. Colbourne’s is exactly the kind of career those ceremonies exist to remember: decades of unglamorous, foundational work that made the organised game possible for everyone who followed.
Our take
Ninety years, thirty of them coaching, and a programme built from nothing in 1968 that outlived her. That’s a life in hockey most of us can only admire from a distance. Rest in peace.
More on Canada: the FHC Hall of Fame nominations, the Pakistan women 36 probables, and Latest News.
