The Players Behind the Uniform: Artifacts From the Heritage Collection

Ethel Anderson in 1915 [1980-16-87]

This middy-style blouse was worn by Ethel Anderson when she was a player on the Edmonton Commercials high school basketball team. This team transformed into the Edmonton Commercial Graduates, which Ethel played centre on from 1915–17. Ethel is known as one of the six “original Grads,” but she is not part of the “official” 38 Grads, who are recognized as the members of the team from the 1922 Dominion Championship team to the 1940 team disbanding.

Ethel was also a vice-president and president of the Northern Alberta Pioneer and Old Timer’s Association (present Northern Alberta Pioneer and Descendants Association), whose collection became one of the foundations of the City of Edmonton Heritage Collection.

These are the kind of socks that the Grads wore in the 1920s. Dorothy “Dot” Johnson, who played from 1921–1927, is wearing a pair in the player card.

Dot was a committed player, as was seen in a 1926 game against the Chicago Tri-Chis, when she fell and her knee came out of joint. Don Maxwell of the Chicago Tribune reported the event: “The crowd waited for the stretcher bearers. She lay on the floor and waited to have the leg jerked back in place. And jerked it was. Sister players held her shoulders and the good leg flat on the floor while another sister pulled and pushed at the leg that was awry. A husky football player might have called for an anesthetic. Dorothy called for time out. The leg finally cracked into joint and Dorothy hobbled back into play.“ (April 5, 1926). The Grads also won the game. 

Sophie Brown wore this uniform during the Edmonton Grads 1936 European tour. It was on this tour that the Grads were allowed to wear the official Team Canada Olympic jacket and given team privileges, even though they were playing exhibition games and not officially part of the Olympic Games. The Grads would sometimes wear their red/white touring uniforms at home games when their regular yellow and black uniforms were too similar to the visiting team.

Sophie played from 1935–1940, first as a guard and then later as a forward. Along with fellow teammates Etta Dann and Helen Northrup, she was also a softball player with the Muttart Lumber Pats, also a championship-winning team.

It’s thanks to the efforts of Betty Bawden that the The City of Edmonton Heritage Collection has so many artifacts from the Edmonton Grads.

After Daisy Johnson died in 1979, Betty took over as the team’s unofficial historian. She helped organize Grads reunion events and represented the Grads at public events.

Betty was the final player to become a member of the team and only played with the Grads in their last season, 1939–1940. This earned her the nickname, the “baby Grad.” In the last game they played, she was able to achieve her personal goal of scoring 2 points in the game.