It was the first ever official women’s hockey tournament sanctioned by the IIHF. Its existence in the IIHF program was due to the success of the invitational tournament three years earlier which drew such rave reviews from all who witnessed or heard about the event that the IIHF realized it was time to include the women’s game under its international umbrella of events.

Fran Rider, president of the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association and founder of the unofficial 1987 event, continued to press for a true world tournament. The next stage was the 1989 European Women’s Championship in Dusseldorf and Ratingen, West Germany.

Rider attended as a guest of the hosts; a marketing agency was brought in to assess the viability of the event; and, IIHF President Dr Gunther Sabetzki was in attendance. The stands were full, and the games such a success that the IIHF decided to make that tournament a qualifier for a true Women’s World Championship to be held the following year in Ottawa.

At the IIHF’s Annual Congress in Stockholm, Sweden, 26-27 April 1989, it was agreed that the IIHF would establish an official Women’s World Championship and that Canada would be host of the first event, in 1990.

The Civic Centre was a perfect location. In Canada’s capital city, and home to the junior Ottawa 67’s, it was small enough to fill and big enough to impress. Many of the scores were not close, but the home side drew attention for wearing pink uniforms instead of the more traditional red and white. It was a marketing tool, to be sure, but it worked, and when Canada and the U.S. played in the gold-medal game, TSN had a dream final which attracted a sellout crowd of 8,784 to the arena and a TV audience of some one million people.