To know her is to have felt the warmth of her embrace. And she never let anyone leave without a hug, her friends and family say.

For Mickey Walker, a woman synonymous with Canadian women’s hockey, a hug was always the start of the greatest game on earth, if not a beautiful relationship.

Her achievements are recognized with the Mickey Walker Trophy, named after her to honour the most sportsmanlike player at the women’s national hockey championship.

It was only a few years ago in her late-80s that she was the oldest hockey player registered in Ontario in the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, and arguably in North America.

When she died early last week at her home in Bala at the age of 90, it wasn’t only a loss to hockey, but to the people she touched.

This came only days before the fifth annual Mickey Walker Trophy was presented this weekend at the national championships in Charlottetown.

Friend Phyllis Adamson, who spent every day and night of the last four months with her making her meals, sharing laughs and verbal barbs, the time was a special period she will never forget.

Some people say you don’t know a person for the good and the bad until you live with them. For Adamson, she never saw anything but good in her friend.

“Nothing changed. If anything changed, I loved her more,” she said.

Adamson remembers their first meeting during a smoke break in between euchre games at the Royal Canadian Legion in Bala back in the mid-1990s.

“She was just mind-boggling to me. I remember thinking if I reach her age and sound as smart as she does, I would hope that I would impress someone,” she said. “The fact that she still played hockey . . . I can remember just looking at her, blinking my eyes thinking: I don’t believe this lady.”

Walker, a chain smoker since she was 25, quit a few years ago when she got pneumonia.

Adamson said besides hockey, Walker was an astute euchre player, loving to win.

“She played to win, but you know what? If she didn’t win it was for the fun and the people she was with that made her evening. She was a good sport about it,” she said.

Adamson recounts her friend’s outdoor activities to include badminton, golf, tennis and skiing.

“In the last four months (learning more about her) I felt like I’ve done nothing with my life compared to her,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

Just like the golden blades she skated on, her heart was a shining example of what the game is at its best. Though no one can confirm if she ever played with a straight blade hockey stick (they were too busy trying not to have the puck stolen from under them, after all), she definitely stood out among women 30, 40 and 50 years her junior.

Born in Bala and growing up on Lake Muskoka, she learned how to skate on bobskates at three years old. Both of her parents encouraged her in athletics.

She started to play hockey with a girls team in Bala at 12. By 16 she played for Bracebridge in the Women’s Hockey Canadian Championships, losing 3-1. She has since been a player and a promoter of women’s hockey, even appearing on TSN and CBS during two separate Olympics endorsing the game.

As the years went on she didn’t have the legs she used to have, but was always in the right spot and could still get off a wicked wrist shot.

Ann Knight played hockey with Walker for many years during The Ice Girls’ Monday night game at Bala arena, which Walker started 26 years ago when she returned after a 42-year absence.

Although Walker didn’t want anyone to really see her in her final days, Knight believes it was for the best.

“I think she was very proud. She wanted us all to remember her on the ice and that’s good,” she said.

The “hockey girls”, she said, made cookies and had cards signed for Walker and then dropped them off to Adamson’s husband who gave them to his wife to give to Walker.

“She liked to know that we’re thinking about her,” she said. “Phyllis said her face just beamed anytime she got something.”

The Walker, Jackson, Knight Trophy will be presented at the coming end-of-the-year hockey banquet and recognizes the most spirited player for the Ice Girls.

“I’m really glad we did that when Mickey was alive. It meant a lot to her. She knows it’ll be something that will continue on,” she said.

Another hockey buddy, Lee Harvey, a few decades her junior, learned the game like many other women during the Monday nights.

“I remember her teaching me how to do a wrist shot. I was pretty green when I started. I had been on figure skates. She taught a lot of us all the basics and everything,” she said, adding she even showed one trick involving the lifting of the opponent’s stick to steal the puck.

“She was naturally athletic,” she said. “She was definitely an inspiration. Anybody who stuck with it into the 80s, I only hoped to be half as good as she was. It was pretty neat to watch her.”

They played for more than 15 years together in Bala.

Although Walker dressed with style out in public, she was often in her sweat pants at home drinking her Tropicana orange juice with lots of pulp and eating butter tarts made by her friend, Adamson.

Whenever a hockey game was on television, she was sure to be watching. Adamson remembers a lot of loud nights when the television volume had to be cranked to the max so Walker could hear it due to her hearing loss. However within a few minutes Walker would fall asleep, giving Adamson the chance to turn down the volume. After a few minutes Walker would wake up and ask for the volume to be turned up until she fell asleep for the night. This kind of thing happened every hockey night.

True to her character, this loving woman never pulled her punches and didn’t expect anything less from her friends, Adamson said.

A couple weeks before she died Walker called out her friend, referring to her as a “brat.”

As Walker developed calluses on her feet, Adamson applied a cream to the feet to alleviate the discomfort. She asked her how she felt.

“I just feel like dancing,” Walker would answer.

With a big grin Adamson, lightly pushed her friend, and replied, “Move over honey because it’s my turn next.”

“You are such a brat,” Walker would respond, laughing.

“She couldn’t get over me. I didn’t hold back. I called a spade a spade and if I could make her laugh, I did,” she said. “She seemed to respect that way of thinking.”

She added her good friend had an insatiable sweet tooth, particularly for her butter tarts.

“I bake and this lady would just about grab the butter tarts out of my hands,” she said.

The freezer always had vanilla ice cream and of all the drinks she loved her Tropicana orange juice with lots of pulp. The fridge never had fewer than three jugs.

“There was never a time that there wasn’t a bag of chips or dip in the house. Never a time that there wasn’t that in the house,” she said. “Usually just plain chips and the French onion dip. That was her favourite.”

Not a big hockey fan, Adamson thought her friend was spinning yarns about herself, talking about books that wrote about her a few years ago.

“Finally one day I took one of those books home and read it . . . I was blown away. I couldn’t believe it. She had been truthful from the beginning,” she said.

Adamson said even up until the end, her friend achieved what she set out to do.

“She knew she was going. I kind of knew it too,” she said. “She was tickled pink to be in her own home because that was so important to her and my being there made that happen. That’s exactly what she wanted. She wanted to reach the age of 90 and she wanted to die in her own home. She managed to do both,” she said.

“She loved Bala. She loved it with all her heart,” Adamson said.

Bala residents reciprocated the care and generosity she showed them by raking her leaves or moving her furniture. In the winter though, Adamson and her husband helped with the snowplowing and anything else that needed to be done. Adamson frequently got the groceries for her. Her neighbours often asked about her despite them living in the city.

Most people know Walker for her achievements on the ice, but to her daughter Launi Bannister she will always be her mother that was picked first for the neighbourhood hockey games.

“She was a wonderful loving mother, who tried to encourage us all to be the very best that we could be,” she said.

Bannister said her mother raised them the only way she knew.

“She did it with grace and love,” she said. “It was always if you do your best that’s fine. It’s not winning, not being the best, but just trying your hardest.”

Back in the 1960s Walker’s daughter, who was a cheerleader, figure skater, ski instructor with a physical education degree, even teaching it in high school, remembers when she was a little girl in Port Credit, the backyard rinks were a battlefield for ice time between figure skating and hockey. Hockey always won and the unusual thing was that her mother was the first on the list of players to be chosen.

“Mother was always picked first,” she said. “She was an amazing stickhandler. She had a wicked slapshot. She always said her wrist shot was more powerful and it was indeed. Right up until the end of her playing she still amazed me with her dexterity. It was just unbelievable.”

Walker is also survived by her son Stephen Knipfel and grandson Joseph.

In life everything goes on and it is fitting that even in the shadow of her passing it will be the strength of her character that will be remembered.

Anyone who ever visited her home was greeted by the “I need a hug” Garfield sign on her front door. It wasn’t merely there for decoration, but a reminder to visitors.

“You couldn’t walk in or leave her place without a hug. And even up until three days before she passed away no matter what I did for her, she always gave me a hug and told me she loved me,” Adamson said. “She was good for me and I was good for her.”