Alexandrine Gibb

Alexandrine Gibb, also known as Alex Gibb (born Toronto 1891 – 1958), was a pioneer in women’s sports during the twentieth century. Gibb advocated for women’s branches of sports across Canada and was involved in many women’s organizations. She was a sports journalist for the Toronto Daily Star, where she wrote a daily column entitled “No Man’s Land of Sport” and worked for over thirty years.

Alexandrine Gibb was born in Toronto, Ontario to Sarah and John Gibb in 1891. Her mother, Sarah Sparks, was the daughter of an early Great Lakes captains, Captain James Sparks. John Gibb, her father, owned a dairy. Both were active members in the Queen East Presbyterian Church in Toronto. They married in 1879, and had six children: Alex was the fourth.

She grew up in Toronto and attended Morse Street School. Following this, she went to Havergal College, a private girls’ school in Toronto, at the time the most athletically advanced female private school in Ontario. In 1913, she graduated from Havergal at the age of 22.

After graduation, she was a secretary for the Gibson Brothers. During World War I and the expansion of the industrial economy, she continued her career as a secretary in a Toronto mining broker’s office. She was set to marry Lieutenant Harry Dibble, a Canadian infantryman; however, he was killed during World War I.

Gibb was an active member in many Toronto sports clubs, where she played tennis, basketball, softball, and track and field. In the winter months of the 1920s, she played as left guard for a basketball team called the Toronto Ladies’ Maple Leafs. They were Eastern Canadian champions from 1922 to 1924. Gibb was an asset to the team, with whom she played until 1925. She was also a member of the Cedar Brook Golf Club, where she played tennis and was on the ladies’ executive committee.

She began to vocalize her opinion about women’s sports in the early 1920s. She lobbied to ensure women would have the same recreational opportunities and equal access to sports facilities that men already had. Other women also pioneered for women’s sports during this time but it was Gibb who “gave them ideas and inspiration and quickly became their most articulate spokesperson.”

Gibb was involved in sports administration with many different organizations. She had an important role in establishing many of these organizations, such as the Ladies’ Ontario Basketball Association (LOBA). The LOBA was established in 1919 in Toronto and Gibb was elected President in 1925. Alexandrine was also a member of the Toronto Ladies’ Athletic Club and in 1920 she was elected President. It was through this club that the phrase “girls’ sport run by girls” was coined by Gibb and put into practice. A few years later, Gibb was elected Vice President of the Canadian Amateur Basketball Association in 1922, where she was the only female on the executive council.

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