Angela James (born December 22, 1964) is a Canadian former ice hockey player who played at the highest levels of senior hockey between 1980 and 2000. She was a member of numerous teams in the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League (COWHL) from its founding in 1980 until 1998 and finished her career in the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL). She was named her league's most valuable player six times. James is also a certified referee in Canada, and a coach. She lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Internationally, James played in the first women's world championship, a 1987 tournament that was unsanctioned. She played with Team Canada in the first IIHF World Women's Championship in 1990, setting a scoring record of 11 goals and leading Canada to the gold medal. She played in three additional world championships, winning gold medals in 1992, 1994 and 1997. Controversially, she was left off the team for the first women's Olympic hockey tournament in 1998. She played in her final international tournament in 1999.
Considered the first superstar of modern women's ice hockey, James has been honoured by numerous halls of fame. She was one of the first three women inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008 and one of the first two inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010. She was the first openly gay player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and the second Black player. She was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. James was named to the Order of Hockey in Canada in 2021.
James served as co-owner of and general manager for the Toronto Six of the now-defunct Premier Hockey Federation, and as of 2022 is the Senior Sports Coordinator at Seneca College in Toronto.
James was born on December 22, 1964, in Toronto, Ontario. She is the daughter of Donna Barrato, a white Canadian from Toronto, and Leo James, a Black American from Mississippi who came to Canada to escape racial segregation. She has two half-brothers and two half-sisters on her mother's side. Her father, who was involved with a Toronto nightclub, estimates she has at least nine half-siblings by him, though Angela believes the number is closer to 15. Among them is National Hockey League (NHL) player Theo Peckham.
A single mother, Donna raised Angela and her two half-sisters with the help of government assistance. They lived in a subsidized townhouse in the Flemingdon Park neighbourhood of Toronto. Donna worked as a bookkeeper and at the concession stand of the local arena. She battled depression and mental illness and her eldest daughter, Cindy, worked two part-time jobs at the age of 16 to help the family meet financial obligations. Angela was closest to her sister Kym, though the two often fought as children. Her father never had a consistent place in her life growing up and did not provide financial support to the family, but was available if she needed him. As one of few Black children in Flemingdon Park, Angela often faced insults, particularly over the fact that she was a mixed-race child with a white mother and sisters. She often got into fights over the slurs, forming a combative attitude she carried into the game of hockey. Her maternal grandparents never accepted Angela as a child, though they treated her sisters well.
James quickly developed an interest in sports. Her godfather gave her a baseball bat and glove to celebrate her first holy communion. She excelled at hockey, baseball, and synchronized swimming as a young child. Her mother wanted her to focus on swimming due to the lack of opportunities for girls in hockey in the 1970s. Her passion was for hockey, however, and she was constantly playing ball hockey with the neighbourhood boys from the time she was in kindergarten. James first played organized hockey in a Flemingdon Park boys house league at the age of eight, and then only after her mother threatened legal action as officials opposed her inclusion.
James dominated the Flemingdon Park league. She started in the novice (7–8 year old) age group, but her skill level was so much higher than her peers that she was moved up to atom and then peewee (11 and 12-year-olds).
James's participation in the Flemingdon Park league ended partway through her second year due to jealousy from the parents of the boys in the league. The president's son was on James's team, and was particularly offended that his boy was being overshadowed by a girl. He ordered a change in the league's policy to forbid girls from playing.
The only feasible option James had for a girls league was at Annunciation, a Catholic organization in the Don Mills district. Lacking a vehicle to drive to the games, her mother would take her to and from games at various rinks via the bus. The girls' hockey program was small, requiring that teams be made up of players from all age groups in order to field complete rosters. Skipping the bantam age group entirely, James first played senior hockey with the Newtonbrook Saints. She was 13 at the time, playing against women 16 and older. The Saints were a Senior C team, the fourth-highest level of women's hockey in the Toronto area at the time.
Focused on hockey, exposed to drugs and alcohol, and frequently getting into fights, James paid little attention to her education and nearly dropped out of school. A vice-principal at Valley Park Middle School, Ross Dixon, encouraged her to pay greater attention to her studies, allowing her to graduate from Overlea High School, now named Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute, and move on to Seneca College in Toronto. James struggled academically in her first year at Seneca, partially because she had rarely been held accountable for failing in her studies in the past, and partly because she was playing two sports at both the college and community level while working part-time jobs to help pay the family's bills. Seneca's hockey coach Lee Trempe had several arguments with James before she began to take her studies seriously.
James was a two-sport star for the Seneca Scouts. She joined the softball team in 1983, playing the outfield and batting cleanup. She was an Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) All-Star and led her school to the inaugural OCAA women's softball championship. She was named an OCAA All-Star again in 1984 and 1985, leading Seneca to another provincial championship and a silver medal finish.
Though James always played forward in her community hockey leagues, Trempe converted her to defence so that she could set up the plays and incorporate her teammates into the offensive systems the team used. Despite the change in position, James still led the league in scoring in 1982–83, recording 15 goals and 10 assists in an 8-game season. She was named the OCAA's most valuable player, but Seneca settled for the silver medal after losing the OCAA finals. Leading the OCAA with 30 points in 10 games in 1983–84, James carried Seneca College to its first championship. She was named an All-Star on defence, and again voted the most valuable player. James won both awards again the following season. Seneca repeated as champions in 1984–85 while James dominated the OCAA. She again led the league in scoring, setting school and association records with 50 goals and 73 points in just 14 games. Her scoring exploits led a Toronto reporter to call James "the Wayne Gretzky of women's hockey".
The OCAA named James its athlete of the year in both 1984 and 1985 for her exploits in hockey and softball. She set OCAA career hockey records of 80 goals and 128 points, which stood through to 1989 when the OCAA disbanded its women's hockey program due to a lack of competing teams. Seneca College retired her jersey number 8 in 2001, she was inducted into the Seneca Varsity Hall of Fame in 1985 and in 2004, received the Seneca College Distinguished Alumni Award.
After one year of Senior C hockey, James moved up to the Toronto Islanders in 1980, a Senior AA team in the newly founded Central Ontario Women's Hockey League (COWHL). The league was at the highest level of women's hockey in southern Ontario at the time, and James established herself as one of the league's stars within a year. She played in the first women's national championship in 1982, scoring the tying goal in the third period en route to a 3–2 overtime victory over Team Alberta to win the McTeer Cup.