Why this 63-year-old hockey goalie fell in love with Canada's game

Hockey is an escape for retired nurse Wanda White from Middle Sackville, N.S.

"I tell my husband it's my drug," the 63-year-old told CBC Radio's Information Morning on Wednesday. 

"When life gets rough, as life does, and you're working and you have children, you have elderly parents … it's a camaraderie that people don't understand unless they play hockey."

White's team, the Zoomer's Boomers, is made up of players aged 60 and over from across the province, many of whom are retired nurses and teachers. 

For the first time a hockey team in that age category will compete at the Canada 55+ Games, which are happening in Kamloops, B.C., later this month.

White started playing hockey in the 1970s when she lived in Fairview, N.S.

"They wouldn't allow girls hockey in that day so a bunch of friends and myself got together," she said.

Her friend's father was the president of the local minor hockey league at the time, and told White if she could come up with 60 players, he'd make sure they had ice to play on.

It didn't take long for White and her friends to fill their roster.

"We got 60 girls signed up and … it was an all-female coaching staff, mostly mothers of players. My mother was one included," she said.

Listen to Wanda White's full interview about her long hockey career and the upcoming Canada 55+ Games: