Nora Loreto is a Canadian freelance writer and author of “From Demonized to Organized: Building the New Union Movement.”
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled his new cabinet last month, Canadians learned that he had created a curious new position: minister of middle-class prosperity. But when his pick for the position, Mona Fortier, was asked how the government would determine if someone is middle class, she couldn’t give a clear answer.
After being pressed for a definition by Laura Lynch, interim host of “The Current,” Fortier said, “Well, I define the middle class where people feel that they can afford their way of life. They have quality of life. And they can ... send their kids to play hockey or even have different activities.”
Fortier didn’t reach this example by accident. There is no greater symbol for Canada than hockey. Nostalgia and myth are deeply engrained in the Canadian consciousness, and hockey benefits from both: as a memory of those good old days playing at the local schoolyard and as a testament to the vaunted values expressed by the sport.
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This explains why the reaction to hockey commentator Don Cherry’s career-ending racist rant last month was so intense. When Cherry blamed immigrants for not wearing poppies during Remembrance Day, calling them “you people,” he may as well have been talking to immigrant parents who are less likely to enroll their kids in hockey programs.
In one survey, Sportsnet asked Canadians whether they could skate backward (a fair hockey proxy): Only 19 percent of immigrants can. Among first-generation Canadians, that rate stands at 41 percent, only slightly lower than the apparently hockey-averse millennial cohort (43 percent). Overall, about half of Canadians say they can skate backward.
And there’s the rub: For many Canadians, hockey isn’t simply a sport, but a stand-in and marker of true Canadian identity In a 2011 poll, 77 percent of Canadians said that hockey is an important national symbol. Either you play hockey or you don’t. Either you skate or you don’t. Either you’re considered Canadian or you’re, as Cherry said, “you people.” His outburst reveals an understanding of Canada that is overwhelmingly white and male — just like hockey itself. Sure, there are female and nonwhite players, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
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Hockey has seen racialized players modernize the sport, but it also has a long history of exclusion and racism. Just last month, former National Hockey League player Akim Aliu said that, when he was a minor-league hockey player, Calgary Flames coach Bill Peters called him the N-word several times in the locker room. Another player then accused Peters of punching and kicking a teammate when they were with the Carolina Hurricanes. Peters apologized to Flames General Manager Brad Treliving, but he omitted Aliu’s name and didn’t mention the word racism. Peters eventually resigned on Nov. 29.
Share this articleShareHockey isn’t just exclusionary in terms of race and gender. It’s also prohibitively expensive. Global News pegged the costs of playing in the Greater Toronto Hockey League at almost $5,500 per season (Canadian dollars, or 4,150 USD). Compare that with elite-level soccer in nearby Oakville, which costs$1,500 and drops to just over $500 for players in the house-league level at the North Toronto Soccer Club. And, unlike with sports such as football or soccer, children must start playing hockey at a very young age to have hopes of playing in the big leagues when they’re older.
In reality, far from being a sport of Canada’s middle class, hockey is much more associated with people who have disposable income. With more than one-third of Canadians living in regions where lakes don’t get cold enough to skate on in the winter, it’s even less likely that young people have the chance to learn to skate for free.
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Yet, if you find yourself questioning these myths around hockey, as I have, you realize just how intensely they are policed. Most Canadian media outlets have no space or interest in questioning our national identity, or critiquing what the assumptions we make say about us. What does it say about Canada that our other official national sport, lacrosse — which is based on a sport played by indigenous people on this land for time immemorial — is constantly overlooked for our mythical ties to hockey, a game created and played mostly by white boys and men?
As demographics shift and as more and more parents with young kids are priced out of expensive activities, our attachment to the sport could wane. Other sports or activities might take its place, but none speak to the contradictions, good and bad, of Canada and its identity in quite the same way.
Perhaps that’s why some Canadians are clinging to hockey as an identity so fiercely, harassing and harming those of us who are asking for Canada to press pause and reflect on how we’ve outsourced our nationalism to a frosty and exclusive sport.
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