Fanny 'Bobbie' Rosenfeld and Jo-Anne Polak. Two remarkable women, both trailblazers in Canadian sport, and both grew up in Barrie.
Their accomplishments are perhaps the most notable of any sports figure to come from the shores of Kempenfelt Bay.
Rosenfeld was an Olympic gold and silver medallist and this country’s first superstar female athlete.
Polak is considered the first woman to run a men’s professional sports franchise, when she was at the helm of the Ottawa Rough Riders as co-GM for three years.
Perhaps because of the passage of time, Rosenfeld and Polak's accomplishments hide in plain sight, though the country’s female athlete of the year award is named in Rosenfeld’s honour.
Those two Barrie women were separated by almost a half-century and there is little to suggest that Rosenfeld and Polak’s collective accomplishments are linked; the Barrie connection is more an interesting coincidence.
On the business side today, Barrie women are continuing that tradition. And unlike the sepia-toned mementos left behind by Rosenfeld, their contributions are current.
“Fans see the shiny execution,” says Tiffany Gordon, who's director of partnerships for the Canadian Hockey League. “They don’t see the work (behind the scenes) that goes on to get there.”
Another Barrie native, Jillian Frechette, spent almost three years doing precisely that sort of development work that came to fruition this week: she launched the New Jersey Devils' third jersey.
Frechette is the senior vice-president of marketing for the NHL club, a role that stretches across seven other portfolios in the Devils parent company and entails everything from events at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., to music properties.
Frechette has had a 25-year run in the industry. It started as a Barrie Colts intern in the club’s first Ontario Hockey League season, included working for both major Canadian breweries, and she’s held a similar position with the NHL's Calgary Flames that she now holds now with the Devils.
She even found time to run her own yoga studio in town.
“Before I had kids, of course,” she says, half in jest, of her three-year-old son and daughter, who is nine.
Frechette’s work has gained notice on multiple levels, including recently being awarded executive of the year by Hashtag Sports, an honour stemming from her heading up a team that dramatically revamped the Devils digital presence in the hyper-competitive New York/New Jersey sports market. Frechette’s team also was honoured for its work broadcasting “fake” games in the early days of the COVID pause last year.
She engages a fan base that is both enthusiastic and demanding; if there were two Devils fans in a room, three opinions would emerge.
The Devils' third jersey got that sort of varied reaction. More importantly, it garnered attention far and wide, including prominent play in U.S. markets and in hockey-mad Canada. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman dedicated a large swath of his popular blog to the launch, with whom Frechette collaborated with Martin Brodeur, the Hall of Fame goaltender.
“(I’m) a touch starstruck,” Frechette concedes via text of the coverage, “I’m not going to lie.”
Claire Welsh had an equally chaotic week for entirely different reasons. The Barrie native is a graduate of Innisdale who worked locally at the Barrie Examiner and for the Golf Association of Ontario. She is now the head of player relations for the Open Championship/AIG Women’s Open in St. Andrews, Scotland.
This week, Welsh was in South Africa for the DP World (formerly European) Tour event, the Joburg Open. She graciously answered questions from the airport in Johannesburg and then while on the plane back to the UK overnight on Friday, ahead of restrictions imposed by the British government.
“No two days are the same,” Welsh says. “This job has taken me all over the world and there are always new people to connect with, which keeps it really interesting.”
With the world — fingers crossed — emerging from COVID, the 150th anniversary of the Open Championship is slated for St. Andrews, the home of golf, this July. It's a huge opportunity for Welsh and has the potential to be a touchstone event for other reasons, not least of which is that Tiger Woods could be able to compete by then. He’s twice won at St. Andrews.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate about Tiger’s health,” she says. “But there is no doubt he has a connection with the Old Course, having won The Open twice there. The 150th Open is going to be a massive celebration of golf.”
While Welsh and Frechette now live abroad, Gordon remains in Barrie, in part due to COVID and the work at home norms it triggered. She worked a series of jobs after graduating from the University of Guelph, and then took a client services job at Canadian Controlled Media Communications (CCMC), the CHL’s agent, in 2014. She rose through the ranks at CCMC and was brought on board by the CHL a couple of years ago.
Gordon has a critical role to play in re-engaging sponsors after the dramatic effects of the pandemic. Two Memorial Cups have been cancelled, so has an entire OHL season (Colts fans need not be reminded), along with the other two member leagues abridging their schedules last season.
The full knock-on effects have not yet completely played out, but it has pushed change into overdrive for a traditionally bums-in-seats-powered league.
"We have the (regional presence) that allows companies to (display) their greatest assets,” says Gordon, pointing out that streaming has become a much bigger part of the CHL’s strategy since the pandemic.
Though she was active in sports growing up, Gordon did not set out to work in the field. She had her eye on business and branding after getting her commerce degree. (Polak became Rough Riders GM after taking a job in the club’s business office. She originally went to Ottawa to work in politics and remains in the nation’s capital as VP of communications at Canada Post.)
Given how sports work together with business growing their brand, Gordon had an inkling that the world of fun and games was a good fit. Frechette voiced a similar refrain from her time working for both Molson and Labatt.
As it happened, when Gordon took the job at CCMC, Connor McDavid was the star attraction. Those circumstances, along with two world junior championships taking place in Toronto and Montreal, came to define the business model for junior hockey at the time, in a comparable way that Sidney Crosby’s emergence helped change that model a decade earlier.
“It was more a happy accident,” she recalls of her work in the hockey industry.
To anyone, especially young women, looking for advice, Frechette, Welsh and Gordon all had some to give.
For her part, Frechette still marvels at the change that has taken place in the industry in the last 10 years. You must adapt and be willing to accept what you learned yesterday may be the old way of doing things by tomorrow.
“You have to constantly be learning new things,” she says. “…I would have never imagined 10 years ago hiring as many graphics, motion graphics people as I have recently. … That change is unbelievable.”
Both Welsh and Gordon pointed out some of the positive change to help young women get started.
“The CHL is actually more than 50 per cent women working for it right now,” says Gordon. “…I would also say that everyone, male and female, needs to have a mentor, someone to go to and to bounce things off of. … We all need that type of help.”
Welsh adds: “There is so much opportunity for women and girls right now. The industry is really starting to wake up… (so) don’t be afraid to use your voice and bring your perspective to the table. It’s amazing how far it can get you.”
Welsh openly pines for a visit home, given the distance and how COVID has (and still) curtailed travel plans to see friends and family.
The pull of home was obvious in Frechette’s voice as well.
“The pandemic has kept me from Barrie for too long,” says Welsh, “…(and) to see a lacrosse or hockey game.”
A girl’s heart is never far from home.
