She made people believe in women's boxing. Three decades later, she's punching through glass ceilings again

The boxing memento that still has pride of place in her bedroom in Montreal is the trophy she won in her first fight when she was 25 years old.

“I always remember that because it’s where I got the dose of love for boxing that I needed to follow all the steps," Bouchard told the Star. "I grew up through the steps and it reminds me all the time — never forget where you come from.”

Bouchard essentially grew up in her uncle’s boxing gym in Jonquière, two hours north of Québec City. She watched her younger brother train and volunteered alongside her father. But when Canadian women won the right to box in 1991 and she decided to step in the ring, she was suddenly treated as an "outsider.”

“It was not easy,” she said. “They did not believe in female boxing.”

After months of hard training and her first bout against an American, which she won, attitudes started shifting. “OK, she did it, she made it. Maybe that changed their minds.”

When women’s boxing made its Olympic debut at the 2012 London Games, Bouchard was watching from the stands. Women had three weight classes — Canada’s Mary Spencer competed at 75 kilograms — to the men’s 10.

At the 2016 Rio Games, where Bouchard coached Mandy Bujold and Ariane Fortin, she recalls being the only woman to enter the ring as a boxer's primary coach. It was such an unusual sight the international boxing federation highlighted it, hoping she would be a model for others, she said.

“But since that time, I wouldn’t say that it’s changed so much,” Bouchard said, noting that, globally, there still aren’t many women coaching elite boxers.

Charlie Cavanagh, a silver medallist at the 2022 worlds, worked with Bouchard, who was part of the coaching staff at the recent 2023 Pan Am Games.

“It's extremely valuable to have a female coach on a team that has female athletes, because there's always things that men don't really know how to deal with,” the 23-year-old Cavanagh said. “And, you know, she is an excellent coach, just aside from being a woman.

"It's hard to get your voice out there as a woman (in boxing) and be taken seriously. When you're an athlete, it's difficult, but it's sort of you show up and you perform, and if you do well then you're taken seriously. As a coach, it’s a little bit harder to get your foot in the door. I think men are oftentimes chosen over women for that physical look of toughness. But I do think that it's important to have fair and equal representation in the corner, just like now we are seeing in the ring.”

At the Paris Olympics this summer, women will move up to six weight classes to the men’s seven. But even as female athletes make strides toward equality in various sports — Paris is set to be the first gender-balanced Olympics — the same can’t be said when it comes to coaching.

At the pandemic delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, 60 per cent of Canada’s Olympians and 75 per cent of its medallists were women but only 16 per cent of the 131 coaches were women. In boxing, Canada sent two male coaches for a team of five athletes: four women and one man.

Boxing Canada is among the many sport federations that have undergone a safe-sport shakeup in the last two years and the new high performance director, Kraig Devlin, says he is committed to having a female coach at nearly every major event.

Boxing Canada runs a centralized program in Montreal where most national team athletes live and train and the two full-time paid coaches are Samir El Mais and Vincent Auclair. But other coaches such as Bouchard and Jill Perry, who has coached at the Commonwealth Games, can apply to be additional coaches at training camps and major competitions.

Bouchard wants to coach a world tournament in Italy next month, which is key for many boxers looking to qualifying for Paris, and potentially even her hope of coaching at another Olympics.

Boxers Tammara Thibeault and Wyatt Sanford booked their trips to Paris with wins at the recent Pan Am Games and secured two coach accreditations for Canada, enough for the program’s full-time male coaches.

But if Canada qualifies additional boxers in Italy or a second world tournament in Bangkok in May, Bouchard thinks Canada could send a third coach.

“We cross fingers that they will be allowed to have one more coach. And if they have one more, then it will be the job of Boxing Canada to select, which I think will be a female,” she said. "When we have both, it's more complete as a team of coaches."

When Bouchard retired from competitive boxing in 2008, she didn’t expect to coach. She was — and still is — a Grade 4 teacher in Montreal. But Natalie Forget, a pro fighter she had boxed with, asked her to become her coach. A month later, a top amateur came calling. They keep coming, Bouchard said, looking for a strong coach and a better understanding of female psychology.

“Females usually are always so perfectionist and hard on themselves — even more than a coach could be on them," Bouchard said. "So if a coach is hard on you and you're always so hard on yourself, can you imagine how bad you think you are?”

Bouchard's experience has shown her there are two components to success as a female coach in boxing: "You need some people that are open-minded and see your work and say, ‘OK, she knows her thing, she knows her boxing.’ And you have to be as good as a male or, I would say, even better.”