Marge and Helen Callaghan
Helen (Callaghan) Candaele St. Aubin, and Marge (Callaghan) Maxwell were both multi-sport, high school athletes in the 1940s in their hometown of Vancouver, BC. The girls were united in softball, and they played in multiple fundraising exhibition games to assist in the war effort. While playing with the championship-calibre Mutuals softball team, the sisters took up work with the Boeing Production Plant, assisting in the war effort as many women did, working 6 days a week for a weekly salary of $24.
Helen had enjoyed a remarkable softball career in the Vancouver area before she was scouted for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) while playing in the 1943 Detroit Female Softball World Championship. Marge, a powerful slugger on the same softball team, would join Helen just a bit later that year in the AAGPBL on the Minneapolis Millerettes. The women went on to have successful careers in the AAGPBL, with Helen playing 495 games through five seasons, and Marge playing over 700 games through eight.
Following their playing days, Marge and Helen began careers in teaching, and raised families. Helen’s youngest son, Casey Candaele, would follow in his mother’s footsteps, going on to play nine seasons of Major League Baseball, including three as a Montréal Expo. One of Helen’s other sons, Kelly Candaele pursued a career in film, co-creating a documentary based on his mother’s and aunt’s experiences in the AAGPBL, called “A League of Their Own” (released in 1987). The Hollywood film of the same name was inspired by Candaele’s documentary, and he contributed to the 1992 release starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis as well.
The 68 Canadian members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, including Marge and Helen were inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in 1998. Marge was one of fifteen former AAGPBL players in attendance for the induction (Helen had passed away six years earlier). Helen was also posthumously inducted in 2021 as an individual, owing to her successes on the field and her contribution to the documentation of the history of the AAGPBL.
