How is it that the stalwart Canadian dream of playing hockey in the league that most challenges one's skills and desires is still unattainable for girls across the country? Yes, those of us who care about girls and sport feel as if we are in a Canadian version of the Monty Python dead-parrot skit, a ridiculous circular argument between the purchaser of a dead parrot and the pet store owner who sold it to him. Such is "the people's game."

Last Friday the Manitoba Human Rights Commission ruled that the sex-segregation policy of the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association discriminated against Jesse and Amy Pasternak when they were disallowed from trying out for the boys' hockey team at their high school, West Kildonan Collegiate in 2004, while they were in Grade 10. Now, as Grade 12 students, the twins -- a goalie and defensewoman -- have the right, thanks to the decision of MHRC adjudicator Lynne Harrison, to play to the best of their abilities.

In 1976 in Ontario, Debbie Baszo challenged the Ontario Rural Softball Association and Gail Cummings the Ontario Minor Hockey Association at that province's Human Rights Commission after these star players were disallowed from playing softball and hockey on boys' teams because they were girls. They won, but later this decision was overturned by the provincial courts, not on human-rights grounds but on the legal technicalities of what is considered a public place and the definition of a "person."

But the mere thought of girls playing in the Neverland of sport -- where boys can stay boys well into adulthood -- prompted sport associations to lobby the government at the time to amend the Ontario Human Rights Code to keep females out permanently. Hard to imagine, but true.

Sports lobbied hard, saying men would quit coaching in droves "if they had to coach little girls." The sky would fall for these Chicken Littles.

And so Section 19(2) of the Ontario Human Rights Code came to be and the province became the first to legislate against the rights of girls and women in sport -- that is, until a girl named Justine Blainey in Toronto came along in 1985 and argued that she wanted to play on the same team as her brother David.

By this time, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been entrenched in the new Constitution and over the next three years, Ms. Blainey and her lawyers argued successfully that girls had to be allowed the right to play to the best of their abilities -- just as boys could. The Supreme Court of Canada found Section 19(2) was unconstitutional, as it denied equality before and under the law.

Hockey persisted, and tried to argue that Ms. Blainey did not meet the standard for playing, despite her coach's testimony saying she was one of the team's better defencepeople. That was way back in the days when she was allowed to skate. The Metro Toronto Hockey League passed a motion disallowing her even to step on the ice during a practice.

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