15 years after retiring from the CFL, Maven Maurer finally got the opportunity to be her true self on a football field.
The longtime Canadian fullback was one of several players in attendance when the B.C. Lions inducted their 2000 Grey Cup championship team into the Wall of Fame earlier this year but the moment carried even more personal significance. She stood near midfield at halftime with long hair flowing over the top of her team jacket, wearing a plunging halter top and flared pants. As her chosen name was announced over the loudspeaker for the first time, Maurer stepped forward and with fresh orange nail polish, raised a hand to salute the crowd of 20,000 fans as a transgender woman.
“I really feel like that has been almost the final piece, so to speak. Words don’t even do it justice,” Maurer revealed in an exclusive interview with 3DownNation. “Just being able to be there, I feel like it almost reconciles the past with the present. I wasn’t able to fully enjoy and fully savour those moments that are truly special in the football world and I was able to appreciate this. I was able to really soak it in. It was so healing.”
At the time, nobody in attendance at BC Place seemed to recognize the historic moment. To date, just 17 former professional football players have been acknowledged as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, with former Montreal Alouettes’ defensive lineman Michael Sam standing alone as the only openly gay CFL alumnus. No former player in either the NFL or CFL had ever publicly come out as transgender — a person whose assigned sex at birth does not align with their gender identity — until Maurer did so with no media fanfare.
It was a moment that almost never happened. Despite formally committing to attend the September 13 game in Vancouver weeks prior, Maurer didn’t purchase her plane ticket until the day before the event. Her decision on whether to go changed day-to-day as she fought back fear over what her reception would be and grappled with uncertainty over whether the Lions would actually follow through with honouring her chosen name. Most importantly, she was worried about how her old teammates, many of whom were unaware of her transition, would react to her.
“I think the biggest thing was, what are my teammates going to say? Am I going to be accepted? The whole reason why I kept on playing football was having that family, having those brothers,” Maurer said, fighting back tears.
“Those two worlds, it’s almost like we were going to be in the same place at the same time. It was very uncomfortable leading up to it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but then I ultimately decided that I’m not going to let fear own me.”
What she found was near-complete acceptance from the men she once shared a locker room with — a life-changing moment nearly 50 years in the making.
“I want to let those guys know that it really means everything,” Maurer said. “There’s no way another person can understand.”
Known as ‘Mike’ for the duration of a distinguished professional career that lasted 13 CFL seasons, Maurer played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, B.C. Lions, Ottawa Renegades, and Edmonton Elks. Over the course of 152 games, the six-foot, 230-pound bruiser racked up a whopping 168 career special teams tackles — good enough for ninth all-time in CFL history. She added 758 all-purpose yards and four total touchdowns while suiting up for two Grey Cup-winning teams, earning the Most Valuable Canadian award in the 2005 championship game.
Despite those accomplishments, the native of Saskatoon, Sask. struggled to find satisfaction in life. Personal accolades, team success, or improved contract status never seemed to fill a void that left the fullback constantly scrambling to find the next challenge or distraction. Retirement didn’t make that easier and she admits that mental health has long been a battle. Thoughts of suicide had even crossed her mind, staved off mainly by a desire to see her daughters reach adulthood.
“Without getting too dark or depressing, I was always going to take my first exit opportunity. I had fantasized about sacrificing myself to save someone else, all those kinds of things,” Maurer said.
“I really kind of thought that once my kids were grown and adults, I was gonna go off into the woods and not come back. I was just gonna walk away and see how long I could survive. That’s just where I was — I didn’t know what else to do.”
That changed shortly after the COVID pandemic when a near-death experience left Maurer struggling for survival for several hours. In those uncertain moments, she found herself begging and pleading with God to live, promising to make changes if given another opportunity to break out of a cycle of personal turmoil. In exchange for life, she believes she had to learn a lesson of self-acceptance.
And so, at the age of 45, Maurer pared down her intense physical training regimen and cut out frequent distractions like video games. In their place, she began to engage in practices she had previously avoided, like meditation, journalling, and therapy. It was during one particularly powerful guided meditation session that she says her egg finally cracked — the metaphor many trans people use for discovering their identity.
“I never wanted to look within and part of me didn’t know if I could handle it. There was a lot of shame, a lot of guilt,” Maurer said.
“Everyone has that room in their house that you just throw stuff in that you’re going to deal with later or you don’t know what to do with it. It might be just a closet or whatever, but that room is in your mind as well. Once I opened up that door, a bunch of past experiences and a bunch of memories that were suppressed all came flooding back.”
It took Maurer almost two years to figure out how to handle that newfound information, employing a combination of therapy and personal experimentation. For the first time since childhood, she began to dress in women’s clothing, initially in the safety of home and eventually during brief trips to the board game store. During her playing career, her family often had to beg teammates to get her to leave the house and do social activities, but she now found herself eagerly anticipating these excursions using her newfound identity.
It soon became clear that a formal transition was the path to the happiness that long-eluded Maurer, but that was not without challenges. The first person she told was her wife, in what was a difficult and tear-ridden conversation. After 20 years of marriage, their relationship would be forever altered. Their daughters were also forced to adjust but have been fully accepting of the transition. Nevertheless, Maurer was careful not to make her identity public until her youngest had graduated high school, making an effort to shield them from any potential ridicule from their peers.
Maurer first publicly addressed her gender identity on social media in June 2023, a moment that received no media attention due to her relatively small Instagram following. However, there was much still to be determined at that stage, including her name. In the early days of the transition, ‘Talyn’ was used as a placeholder moniker as she explored her identity and juggled mixed responses from family members in choosing a new name. It was only after three years that she finally landed on Maven, allowing her to keep her first initial intact.
“Maven means ‘one who understands.’ It resonates because I want to help people, I maybe want to get into psychology or counselling,” she explained. “It can mean knowledgeable or even expert, so it can come off as conceited, but then it also can mean intoxicating, which I love. And then there’s Queen Maeve, which the root is based off of, and she was a famous warrior queen. I thought it was perfect.”
Finding a name that finally fit was powerful for Maurer, who spent much of her life clinging to alter egos as a form of protection. As a CFL player and later MMA fighter, she earned the nickname ‘The Wolverine’ for her tenacious and fearless style. Before her athletic career, she spent time in the Canadian Armed Forces and was nicknamed ‘G.I. Joe’ in boot camp because of her desire to fit the image of a perfect soldier.
‘Mike’ was an alter-ego as well. As a young child, Maurer went by her given name of Michael at school until male classmates began to torment her for hanging out with and behaving like the girls. They called her ‘Michelle’ as a cruel joke, which led to the official shortening of her name to try and avoid the insult.
“I went home that day and I told my Mom, ‘I don’t want to be called Michael anymore, I want to be called Mike.’ That was the first suit of armour that I put on,” Maurer recalled.
“There’s a really good Buddhist story and the gist of it is if you put on armour and you wear it every day, over time you start to think that you’re that armour and you forget what you are on the inside. That’s kind of what happened.”
With every insult, Maurer leaned further into her masculine persona for protection. She would fight bullies six or seven at a time, hoping to earn a reputation as someone too crazy to mess with. After moving to Regina, football became the perfect proving ground for this, allowing her to build respect from the boys and receive at least tacit acceptance from social groups she constantly felt on the outside of.
“I would get attention when I would hit somebody really hard or get hit really hard — I just played recklessly,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t really care what happened to my body and I noticed that was kind of special. I almost turned off feelings in a way.”
That persisted through her time with the CJFL’s Regina Rams and later into the CFL, where Maurer made a mark in one of the sport’s most physically demanding and unheralded roles. She gained notoriety and respect from fans and peers alike under a name and identity she was never fully comfortable with, something that she has now had to come to grips with.
For many trans people, the process of embracing their true identity can mean severing ties with their past selves, sometimes killing them off in a violent, albeit metaphorical, sense. Maurer knew that was never really an option for her, nor did she want to fully erase an identity that resulted in a wonderful family and deep friendships. Instead, with the help of her therapist, she has found a far more productive way to frame her transition.
“We’re driving a vehicle and now Mike is going to take the back seat. Maven is going to take control of the steering wheel, so to speak, and let Mike go with thanks for getting us up to here,” she explained. “Thanks for protecting me. Mike, The Wolverine, all the alter egos — it was all just devices to protect Maven.”
While she has made her peace with her old identity being a part of her legacy, Maurer would like to see her transition reflected in an official capacity by the Canadian Football League. While the Lions announced her as Maven on the field and the Edmonton Elks later named her to their 2000s all-decade team by her chosen name, ‘Mike’ was still being used in the CFL record book last season in reference to her statistical accomplishments and awards.
“It’s just a matter of who do I talk to?” she said. “Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic record books have updated her name everywhere, so I would definitely like the same thing done because that’s really who I’ve always been.”
In the meantime, Maurer is continuing to live life in a way that once seemed impossible: happily. She describes the change since her transition as “night and day,” with previously mundane tasks and activities suddenly becoming enjoyable. Working as a freight train conductor for Canadian National Railway, she savours the unpredictable schedule and scenic beauty of the Rocky Mountains while embarking on this latest chapter of her story.
“I’ve never used the word content before. I’ve never felt that, but I’m definitely the closest I’ve ever been,” Maurer smiled.
“It’s been remarkable the difference it’s made in my day-to-day and with my mental health. I used to be so angry and I would run on that, and now that I’m running on love, I feel like I’m amplified 100 times. I’m seeing that acceptance not only from my teammates but from my co-workers at CN, seeing it from my friends, seeing it in the community.
“Getting gendered correctly, it’s hard to express how gratifying that is and how uplifting that is for a person’s mental health who’s struggling with their identity. When I get ma’amed at the grocery store or a gentleman opens the door for me, those little gender-affirming things can mean the difference in my day.”
She hopes to continue to reconnect with the CFL community going forward, emboldened by the positive experience she had in B.C. While not everyone has been accepting of her identity, she estimates that the responses have been 98 percent positive from those she once suited up alongside — and not just with the Lions.
In the weeks after her acknowledgement at BC Place, Maurer travelled to Edmonton for a reunion celebrating her fellow all-decade team honourees. There, she again found complete acceptance from a pair of Canadian Football Hall of Famers, Wille Pless and Derrell ‘Mookie’ Mitchell.
“These were incredible football players, incredible athletes, and just good humans. They accepted me with open arms,” she recalled. “They’re smiling and laughing, and we’re talking about the old days and telling old stories. To be able to celebrate that again and to be recognized for your efforts too, that was really, truly special for me.”
Not all in society are quite as open-minded as those bonded through the blood and sweat of gridiron glory. Maurer feels privileged that her large stature and still muscular build offer her protection that others in her community aren’t afforded but is all too aware that 59 percent of trans people in Canada have been victims of violence, according to census data. In recent years, her community has also been turned into a political football in jurisdictions across North America, a strategy that she describes as a distraction from the real issues people face.
By speaking publicly about her identity now, Maurer hopes she can dispel unfounded fears about people like her and put a recognizable human face to a topic that feels foreign to many. She also wants to be a resource for any CFL players, past or present, who may be grappling with their own identity.
“I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I want to try to reach more people. I want to be more visible. I want to use any voice that I have to raise awareness,” Maurer said. “One of the things I talked about with my therapist is when you shine your light and other people see it, it secretly gives them permission to shine theirs. Sometimes you don’t know that things are a possibility until you see someone else doing it.”
Maurer’s only regret is that she was never able to fully enjoy her CFL career while it was happening due to her internal discontentment. She urges others who might be struggling to stop fixating on the worst-case scenario when it comes to embracing their true selves, as she did for so long, and instead consider the best-case scenario.
Maven stands as living proof that that outcome is possible.
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