Fanny Rosenfeld

Born in Russia in 1904 (now Ukraine), Rosenfeld immigrated to Canada as a child with her family. She excelled in sports, and became known as “Canada’s best female athlete” as she played softball and sprinted everywhere. While working at a chocolate factory, she joined the company’s athletic club as well as the hockey and basketball teams of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association. Competing in the 1928 Olympics for track, she won gold as a member of the Canadian women’s relay team and silver in the 100m. Though she attended only the one Olympics, she remained committed to sports, and was back in the softball field two years later In 1932, she was voted Ontario’s most outstanding women’s hockey player. While injury kept her out of playing, she began coaching the Canadian women’s track and field team for the1934 Commonwealth Games, and later in 1936, became a sports journalist for the Globe and Mail. For 20 years, her column “Feminine Sports Reel advocated for women in sports, and worked to dispel attitudes surrounding the image of female athletes that were problematic. She was voted Canada’s female athlete of the half century by the Canadian Press in 1950, and the fact that the media even created this award speaks volumes of Rosenfeld’s accomplishments.

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