Several hockey parents in southwestern Ontario are irate after a local arena booted their daughters out of a dedicated female-only change room and gave it to the local boys’ rep team, relegating the girls instead to a converted accessible washroom for people with disabilities.
Parents say their daughters are not being treated equally at the Ridgetown Arena in Chatham-Kent, Ont., and are urging the local hockey association to file a human rights complaint if the change room is not re-opened for their use. The South Kent Minor Hockey Association has also condemned the arrangement, calling it “extremely unequitable” and demanding that the room be made available to anyone who rents ice time.
Female players in co-ed leagues are currently allowed to change in a converted handicapped washroom located on the other side of the arena from other change rooms. The room does not have any shower facilities, and can only accommodate three to six players, depending on age. Nevertheless, the SKMHA says the change room simply doesn’t stack up.
“It is our position that the room currently used by female players is neither adequate nor appropriate,” SKMHA President Shawn Allen said in a statement to parents on Sunday.
For years, female players in co-ed leagues had been afforded a fully-equipped change room at the arena, with hooks, benches and bathroom and shower facilities. However, that arrangement changed at the beginning of the 2017-18 season, with arena management opting to turn the dressing room over to the Chatham Cyclones AAA team. The Cyclones renovated the room to suit their own needs, leaving female players with no comparable option.
“It just came down to better utilization of space,” facility supervisor Darren Goyette told CTVNews.ca on Monday. “In the past we were getting three to four girls using that change room three to four times a week. Now we’ve got a full hockey team of 18 people using it three to four times a week.”
Arena management initially created an ad hoc change room for girls that was situated off the main lobby. The space measured six by eight feet in size, did not have shower or washroom facilities and was partially visible to anyone leaving the nearby men’s washroom, Allen said.
Several complaints from parents prompted arena staff to convert the barrier-free washroom into a change room, and to strip the door off the existing women’s washroom to make it accessible.
The arena only has four change rooms available for daily use, and all four are typically occupied when games are being played. Under most circumstances, two rooms will be in use by teams on the ice, while the other two will be occupied by teams changing before or after their ice time.
The girls-only change room is only used in co-ed leagues. All-girl leagues use the regular change room.
Goyette says there are plans to renovate the small arena in 2018 to make a new change room that will accommodate up to eight girls. However, those plans need to be approved by Chatham-Kent city council before they can go forward.
He adds that girls who require a shower are permitted to use vacant change rooms when necessary.
“We don’t think that we’ve done anything against the Human Rights Code,” Goyette said. “We’re aware of that with everything that we try to do.”
Mother Jessica Knights-Hall, whose young daughter plays at the arena, says the timing of the change room shuffle is unacceptable.
“Why give the room away before an appropriate room is available (for the girls),” she told CTVNews.ca in a written message. “(Chatham-Kent) should never have approved this UNTIL there was a safe and appropriate room for girls to use.”
Goyette said the initial plan had been to have a replacement change room set up for girls in September, but construction delays ended up pushing the timeline back to at least early 2018.
The SKMHA acknowledged that arena management is often limited by the design of the facility, but the association says it doesn’t see the current situation as one of those issues.
“The issue is not with the facility, but rather the actions of the municipality,” Allen said. “By leasing the girls’ dressing room to a Chatham Cyclones AAA hockey team, the municipality has created the situation where the female players are being treated inequitably.
“Their efforts to create a substitute dressing room have exacerbated the situation by creating additional inequalities.”
