Sheila Forshaw stands tall on the all-time list among Canada’s female field hockey players. Some will say – with a lot of conviction and a great deal of justification – that kilo-for-kilo and centimetre-for-centimetre, she’s about the best Canada has ever produced.

     For a span of 10 years, Forshaw was a permanent fixture on the Canadian national women’s teams and it’s more than coincidental that during that 10 years, between 1978 and 1988, Canada shed its weak-sister image and became a field hockey powerhouse.

     Proof of that came in 1983 when team captain Forshaw led Canada to the silver medal in the Women’s Field Hockey World Cup, finishing with four wins and a tie against a pair of losses. Three other Mississaugans were also members of the squad: forwards Darlene Stoyka and Phyllis Ellis, and defender Karen Hewlett.

     Canada went into the competition very much as a dark horse, seeded 10^th in the field of 24 nations. Canada’s shock treatment of the ‘83 World Cup still ranks among the great surprises. “This definitely stands out as the highlight of my career,” recalled Sheila 12 years later. Another memorable moment for Sheila took place a year before. It was an indoor tournament – kind of a winter warmup for the summer session – in Germany where the Canadian squad surprised world champion West Germany, winning 6-5 in overtime in the final.

     Defenceman Sheila was the top Canuck goal-getter. Indoor field hockey was no strange experience for Sheila and teammates, Canada’s long winters and short outdoor seasons forced the team “to play a lot of indoor hockey,” she recalls.

     Forshaw is quick to brush aside her own contribution to the Canadian success story. Instead, she praises the Mississauga talent pool. “At times, we had six players from Mississauga travelling with the team,” she says. “That says a lot about the standard of high school hockey.”It was this high level of competition in Peel – particularly among the best Mississauga high school teams – that gave Forshaw her first taste of the game and prepared her for international play. She was the star of the Erindale team that battled Lorne Park for the championship time and again. She remembers it well when Erindale ended Lorne Park’s lengthy reign, finally snatching the Peel senior girls’ high school crown away. “It took us two or three years to beat them, but at the end we did it,” she says.

     From Erindale Secondary School, it was on to York University and further successes for Sheila. With York, she won three Ontario university titles between 1977 and ’81.

     Forshaw made her international debut with the Canadian team that qualified for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. They never played, Canada was among the western nations boycotting the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

     “We had to requalify four years later for the Los Angeles Games,” Sheila recalls. Not only did they requalify, but finished tied for third place, but missed out on the bronze medal, ending up fifth overall because of inferior goal differential.

     In ‘81 Sheila made her World Cup debut, finishing fifth with Team Canada. The following year proved to be a rather hectic time for the Canadian women’s field hockey team. They participated in three high-profile tournaments, finishing runners-up in the Scottish Invitational; third in the Welsh Invitational; and sixth in the out-of-season (for Canada) New Zealand Invitational. Preparing for the ’84 Los Angeles Olympics, Canada played in a four-nation tournament against Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. and won second place. Sheila called it quits after the 1988 Olympic Games in Soul, South Korea. She says a decade of representing Canada a had “some good years and some not so good.”

     Her achievements and commitment to field hockey have been recognized with a provincial Sport Excellence Award in 1983 and in her own community through her induction into the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame for 1995.