On March 31, 2019 the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) announced it would officially cease operations on May 1, 2019. Here’s what you need to know.

The CWHL began in 2007 and, up until 2015, was the only professional women’s hockey league for players who wanted to compete in North America. In 2015, the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) began operating as a rival league in the United States (more on that later). The CWHL did not pay its players because it was not financially able to do so; therefore, the vast majority of its players played for the love of the game. Most CWHL players worked full-time jobs or were graduate students (or both) and gave up their weeknights to practice and their weekends for games and travel. The 2017-18 season saw the CWHL expand to China with the addition of two teams, the Kunlun Red Star and the Vanke Rays. Chinese investment enabled the league to pay players modest stipends for the first time ranging between $2,000-$10,000 CAD. When the league announced its closure it was a six-team league with clubs in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Markham (Ontario), Boston, and Shenzhen (China – the Vanke Rays and Kunlun Red Stars merged to form the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays after the 2017-18 season).

The CWHL announced its closure via a press release stating, “The Board of Directors of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) has made the decision to discontinue operations effective May 1, 2019. Unfortunately, while the on-ice hockey is exceptional, the business model has proven to be economically unsustainable.” The Board has been extremely quiet beyond this original statement, drawing criticism from fans and players alike about the lack of transparency. Players were informed on Fri., March 29 that a conference call would take place on Sun., March 31, with no idea what the conference was about. The general managers and player representatives joined the conference call an hour before all the players were to call in. It was at this time they were informed that the league would cease operations. The announcement also came right before the start of the IIHF Women’s World Championships taking place in Espoo, Finland. No one appeared to have any idea that ceasing operations was even a remote possibility for the league. Regarding the league’s claim that it was operating under an unsustainable business model, The Victory Press, explained that the CWHL was created with registered Canadian amateur athletic association (RCAAA) status, meaning it was a non-profit designed to promote amateur athletics in Canada “nation-wide as [their] exclusive purpose and exclusive function.” This RCAAA status limited the ability of the league to pay its players beyond anything considered a stipend. The business model, however, does not explain why the decision to cease operations was made without consulting team general managers or players.

On April 2, 2019, the NWHL announced that it had board approval to invest in the creation of teams in Toronto and Montreal. This announcement came as a shock to the CWHL, which was not consulted in the decision. The option of playing in the NWHL for Canadian players is also a contentious issue for both political and logistical reasons. Many of the top American national team players, such as Hilary Knight, Brianna Decker, and Kacey Bellamy, had jumped ship from the NWHL to the CWHL because of the way the NWHL had treated them. Most notably, the NWHL burst onto the scene announcing that it would pay players between $10,000-$20,000. Yet, less than 18 months after its opening day, the league announced that it would have to slash player salaries in order to continue operations. Logistically, it is difficult for Canadian players to play in the United States because of visa issues. Neither the P1A Athlete visa and/or the O1A Extraordinary Ability visa allow players to work an additional job, and if a spouse/partner were to join them they would also be barred from working on those specific visas. Thus, any Canadians looking to play in the United States would have to be able to financially sustain themselves on their NWHL pay and sponsorships alone. Furthermore, Hockey Canada was recently exposed for strong-arming the national team players into staying with the CWHL. Evidently, they were told if they played for the NWHL their spot on the national team could not be guaranteed. Below is a video of Hilary Knight talking about why she “crossed enemy lines” to play in the CHWL and some of the difficulties she encountered in the NWHL.

The National Hockey League (NHL), had been contributing $50,000 each year to each of the two women’s professional leagues. Once the CWHL announced its closure, the NHL allocated all of those funds to the NWHL. The NHL has been reticent to create a women’s league (similar to the NBA-WNBA model) while there were two competing leagues. However, even though the NWHL is the only women’s league standing, the NHL remains reluctant to get involved in women’s professional hockey.

Teams began liquidating their jerseys and other merchandise as part of the league’s legal obligations and as a way to help finance outstanding debts. On April 27, the CWHL added its nine league trophies to the auction block, which raised concerns about public memory and how the league’s achievements could be archived appropriately if they were sold to the highest bidder. In an act of solidarity, fans put together a GoFundMe campaign and coordinated with other buyers to ensure that as many trophies as possible would be donated to a public archive or kept for the sake of future professional women’s hockey in Canada. Unfortunately, a last minute bidding war took place for a significant number of items and the GoFundMe was unable to secure the MVP trophy as planned. We will have to wait and see where those trophies end up.

Despite the NWHL’s opportunistic announcement to create teams in Toronto and Montreal, players are not confident that there will be professional women’s hockey in Canada in the fall. In fact, there are rumours of a potential boycott of women’s hockey across the board in order to secure a unified future. The players are taking a measured approach to ensure that whatever comes next is better than what they just lost. They appear to have learned a valuable lesson about taking nothing for granted and the limits of being grateful for the crumbs they have historically been given, but their next move will be telling. The closure of the CWHL is a setback for women’s sports, but it also provides us with a teaching moment. Equality is not guaranteed. Progress is not linear. And, individual empowerment won’t solve this collective problem.

To learn more about the closure of the CWHL, check out the following links:

• The Last Stretch Podcast – learn how the players reacted to the news.
• CBC’s The Current – Panel discussion with Liz Knox (CWHLPA representative), Courtney Szto, and Kirsten Whalen (Victory Press).
• The Ice Garden – learn what the Hockey Hall of Fame has to say about the CWHL trophies.
• Yahoo Sports – former player, Ailish Forfar, of the Markham Thunder penned a piece from her own perspective on the last day of the CWHL’s existence.

Courtney Szto is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Her doctoral research explored the intersections of race, hockey, and citizenship in Canada.  She is the Assistant Editor of Hockey in Society and writes for her own blog The Rabbit Hole. Learn more about Courtney here and follow her on Twitter @courtneyszto.

Tampon Applicator. She Got Drilled. Pussy Whipped. Slippery When Wet. Quick and Slick. The Reacharound.

Any guesses as to what I’m talking about?

Believe it or not, these are the names of rock climbing routes on public land in Canada.

In outdoor rock climbing, it is customary for the first person who successfully “sends” a route (the first ascensionist) to choose a name for it. A culture of adolescent sexual humour permeates climbing and some first ascensionists name cliffs and routes with sexist puns—this can take the form of sexual innuendo, gender stereotyping, male sexual gratification and overt gender violence. It is because of the strong tradition of first ascent naming rights in the climbing community that these route names persist with little to no confrontation.

The aforementioned route names are located in one climbing area in Ontario, Canada. However, from informal conversations at the 8th International Outdoor Education Research Conference (IOERC8) and a scan of online climbing guides, these naming practices appear to extend across the globe. It is also an issue with a long history, as TA Loeffler wrote about sexist and racist naming practices in climbing guides across the United States more than 20 years ago.

In this article, I offer a snippet of my larger doctoral research project that explores women’s experiences in rock climbing. At the time I proposed my dissertation, route names were not on my radar. However, questions about route names started to percolate in my mind after a climbing trip to Red Rocks, Nevada in February 2017. I travelled and climbed with the local university club, and after leading and top-roping a cliff called the “Panty Wall,” which was comprised of numerous routes named after women’s undergarments, I began to wonder if similar naming practices were used elsewhere.

I wanted to know how women negotiated these route names, so I specifically asked about this in my research interviews. In particular, I conducted 17 individual, semi-structured interviews and four focus group interviews, speaking with 34 women aged 19 to 31. The majority identified as white. Most of the women had completed undergraduate degrees and several were completing graduate degrees. The women reflected a wide range of climbing experiences and abilities. I use pseudonyms when citing their comments below.

Women’s Reactions to Sexualized Route Names

Six themes emerged from my research interviews with respect to how women in rock climbing negotiate sexist route names.

1. Frustration: Most of the women were frustrated by the overt objectification and sexualization of female bodies. Several mentioned that they would be embarrassed to share the names of the routes that they climbed: “I would feel weird being like, ‘wow, I climbed this great route. Have you climbed Tampon Applicator?’”
2. Helplessness: Many of the women expressed disappointment with the sexist route names yet felt that nothing could be done to change them. They explained that there is no outdoor rock climbing governing body with oversight of route names and that a strong tradition of first ascensionist naming rights exists in the climbing community: “Sadly, you name it that, it gets in a guide book, and it ends up there. It’s an unwritten rule.” Several informants agreed that if women were to speak up against these route naming practices, their climbing merit and reputation would be criticized, and they didn’t want to receive that unwanted attention.
3. Exclusion: A few informants described the sexist route names as a way of systemically excluding women. They advocated renaming sexist routes and rewriting online climbing guides as a way of creating a more considerate culture in climbing. For these women, their climbing or abstention from climbing was a political act, and they would not climb these routes until they were renamed.
4. Internalized Sexism: On the other end of the spectrum, some informants found the route names humorous. Layla rationalized that the sexist naming practices were “jokesters just trying to be funny.” Mikayla laughed and declared the route names did not offend her. For Mikayla, the route names were a non-issue and did not represent a more systemic existence of sexism in climbing. When Deana, another woman in the same focus group, challenged this notion of the route names being only an individual problem, Mikayla emphasized the tradition and sanctity of first ascents and naming privileges. Mikayla explained that climbing culture equates the first ascensionist with being god-like, so you don’t touch what a god has created.
5. Pushback: Upon hearing that a few women felt the listed route names should remain unchanged, several informants pushed back against this acceptance. These informants maintained that the defense of first ascent naming rights was nonsense. Felicia articulated that laughing off these sexist route names had been the norm for a long time, but that women deserve not to be minimalized or made to feel uncomfortable in a space that they have every right to be in. Lilith said that she would never feel entitled to name let alone sexualize a cliff, and she suspected that this conquering of a mountain equated to the conquering of a woman. Her question still rings in my head: “Whose consent do you have to name this in this way and does conquering require consent?”
6. Intersections: A couple of the women connected the misogyny of these naming practices with settler-colonial relations in Canada. Faidra acknowledged that any kind of exploration is rooted in colonial dominance and imperialism, and Lilith struggled to imagine a way to not reproduce settler colonialism by renaming the routes.

The research participants’ responses have left me pondering a number of questions. How do we grapple with this narrative as outdoor practitioners, teachers and researchers? Do these route names create an intimidating leisure environment? In what ways might gender oppression exist as an ever-present tool of state violence? How do we untangle the relationship between gendered oppression and colonization in an attempt to decolonize our land-based education?

Such questions have relevance beyond rock climbing. For example, these route names reminded me of the hashtag “#ThisIsNotConsent” that was created to highlight victim blaming during an Irish rape trial in November 2018. In the trial, the perpetrator’s defense lawyer held up the victim’s underwear in court and declared: “Look at the way she was dressed.” This social media campaign occurred while I was presenting my research at the IOERC8 conference, and I couldn’t help but think of the Panty Wall and Lilith’s question about whose consent we need to “conquer” and, in turn, name a route. Simply put, the acceptance and cultural reproduction of sexist route names are symptomatic of how we approach consent and handle women’s claims of sexual assault and harassment more broadly. If we hope to address the ways in which sexism and misogyny often permeate our culture, we should think critically about how everyday practices, such as sexist names in rock climbing, may reinforce the marginalization of women.

Jennifer Wigglesworth (@Jenn_Wiggles) is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Her dissertation project explores women’s rock climbing using feminist perspectives on the body, and she has written a chapter in the Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Outdoor Learning.

On April 6, 2018, the Humboldt Broncos of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL) were travelling to a playoff game against the Nipawin Hawks on a rural highway when their bus collided with a semi-trailer truck. Sixteen people on board were killed and 13 were injured in the crash. Ten of the fatalities were Humboldt Broncos players.

What first drew me to this story was the overwhelming wave of emotion that it captured across Canada. The crash led to a nationwide outpouring of grief and mourning for the victims and their families. This included a social media campaign with the hashtag #putyoursticksout, where thousands of Canadians placed sticks outside the front doors of their homes and businesses to pay tribute to the memory of the fallen hockey players. What followed was an official “Jersey Day”, where Canadians donned a hockey jersey to show their support with the hashtag #jerseysforhumboldt. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an official statement on the tragedy, saying:

Our national hockey family is a close one, with roots in almost every town — small and big — across Canada. Humboldt is no exception, and today the country and the entire hockey community stands with you…. We are here for you. As neighbours, as friends, and as Canadians, we grieve alongside you.

In addition to symbolic support and solidarity shown throughout the country, the crash sparked an enormous GoFund Me campaign that became the most successful of its kind in Canada and second-largest ever, illustrating the global reach of the tragedy. The campaign raised over $15 million in 12 days before it was completed. By recent comparison, the Las Vegas Victims Fund, created in response to the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas where 59 people were killed, and which was first overall until Humboldt, raised $11.8 million in 12 months. The wave of grief, mourning, and the mobilization of support across the nation, was profound.

But as the country grieved, I was triggered with thoughts of the mosque attack that occurred in Quebec in January 2017 which left six Muslim men dead and 19 more injured; and of Colten Boushie, a resident of the Cree Red Pheasant First Nation who was shot to death in August 2016 in the town of Biggar, Saskatchewan, which is 200 km away from Humboldt and whose shooter was acquitted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury just under two months before the Humboldt crash; and, of the ongoing search for missing and murdered Indigenous women that increasingly exchanges progress for rhetoric. As a mixed-race Canadian with Pakistani and European backgrounds, I was saddened by the tragedy and of the lasting effects it will have on the victims’ families, friends, and community, but also wanted to understand why such overwhelming forms of mourning are not extended in other circumstances. Specifically, I wondered if my own ambivalent feelings about our collective response to Humboldt could teach us about the state of Canadian racialized subjects in moments of national tragedy.

To better understand the answers to these questions, I draw from Dia Da Costa’s work on emotions and belonging in her article Cruel Pessimism and Waiting for Belonging: Towards a Global Understanding of Affect. Cruel pessimism asks, after so many broken promises, how long will it take for those not included within the imagined Canadian community to become so disillusioned, or battered, that they look for justice elsewhere? For the Canadian racialized subject, how long will we continue to have faith in the promise of a multi-cultural, benevolent Canada, despite continued evidence to the contrary? For Indigenous Peoples – how long will they be asked to persevere towards acts of reconciliation? Acts that remain unreciprocated by the state.

Contextualizing the overwhelming wave of mourning toward Humboldt within Canada’s colonial legacy reveals the ways in which such benevolence and love is, in reality, disproportionate – finite for some, infinite for others. If we consider responses to Humboldt as racially coded, then we must also understand this tragedy as one that provokes a collective national mourning, which ensures the continued ascendancy of the white national subject within the Canadian imagination. The overwhelming deployment of affect unleashed in Humboldt tells us which lives are coded as grievable, as worthy of mourning, and cemented in national memory. This collective mourning also, however, betrays the optimistic discourses of multiculturalism and acceptance on which the construction of a benevolent, friendly Canada exists.

On April 8, in response to the rapid influx of donations to the Broncos GoFund Me Account, freelance journalist Nora Loreto tweeted: “I’m trying to not get cynical about what is a totally devastating tragedy but the maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role.” Within days, the tweet’s “impression” reached 27 million people. Loreto received hundreds of death threats, was doxed, and lost job contracts as a result of her tweet. Many responses were heavily misogynistic and violent towards Loreto, while others accused her of racism and sexism.

The example above is described by Sara Ahmed as an outcome of the formation of racial kindred. The powerful aligning of race, history and family transforms whiteness into a familial, national tie. Reaction to Loreto show how hate is exercised through practices of love. It is love for a nation that produces hate against those who threaten beloved feelings of national pride and grief for those privileged subjects that embody that nation. When national mourning is interrupted, individuals bind together in tearing down those who question this differential allocation of love to privileged national subjects. In this hate, love for, and investment in, Canada as a peaceful, benevolent nation is secured (along with the love for particular national subjects that embody that nation).

These investments in national mourning and love have significant implications for racialized Canadians, who already take on the burden of concealing feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and stress in their daily lives. In the case of Humboldt, these subjects must also navigate expectations that they participate in a national grieving process that reaffirms their outsider-ness. This love that is called upon to be shown for the nation, according to Ahmed, is a form of waiting for the racial subject–waiting for inclusion into the Canadian imagined community. A waiting that continuously produces feelings of inferiority that reveals the underlayers of the multicultural projects that at once demand love from the racial “other” while continuously producing differences to exclude them.

National tragedies like Humboldt remind us of what is considered most tragic in the Canadian imaginary, despite what our optimistic national discourses tell us. Humboldt also marks yet another impasse, injecting a wave of ambivalent affects within Canadian racialized subjects that can be described as a compulsive longing for alternative forms of belonging and justice that lie outside the current Canadian national imaginary, and at the same time a continued endurance for acceptance within it.

Adam Ali is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He is a member of the King Research Group: Bodies & Contexts. His dissertation project examines the ostensible rise of “radicalization” in Muslim diasporic communities in Canada through post-colonial theories of Orientalism and affect. He has also written about environmental issues in sport, including a co-authored paper with Dr. Jay Johnson on the 2014 NHL Sustainability Report. 

On April 6, 2018, a bus associated with the Humboldt Broncos Junior Hockey Team crashed in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, killing 16 people. The national and international response was astounding, including a $15 million GoFundMe campaign (the largest ever in Canada) along with another $1.5 million donated directly to the team over just 12 days. Between consistent features in sport media outlets, shout outs from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, a Tim Horton’s donut controversy, and a large participatory movement of “putting your sticks out for the boys,” the tragedy was seemingly omnipresent.

Among the social media buzz, Québec-based writer and activist Nora Loreto commented in a twitter thread that the “maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role” in this uptake. Public response to her comments was swift and included over 5000 replies to her tweet, death threats, an attempted boycott, and multiple editorials. While not all of the reactions were negative, the public response to Loreto’s critique – which was almost as prompt and passionate as the philanthropy toward the players and families – offers us the opportunity to think through the ways in which power and politics play out in the Twittersphere and digital spaces more broadly. The attack on Loreto provided interesting points through which we can critically unpack ideas of nationalism, rurality, and the hockey community in the context of Canadian sport.

Loreto is no stranger to ruffling feathers and providing alternative perspectives in the media. From issues such as the politics of student associations in Canadian Higher Education to the weaponization of free speech in activist organizations, Loreto’s writing is provocative and political. Twitter, on the other hand, is a space where brevity is necessary and the trolling or heckling of journalists is commonplace. So we might have expected a passionate response to Loreto’s tweets. However, the level of sophistication of the response to Loreto – including death threats and an attempted boycott of her work – indicates that this backlash was far more systematic than simple trolling or click-baiting. Therefore, these ideas of sporting nationalism, rural idylls, and identity politics have implications beyond the collective imagination, as they effectively policed public reaction and punished Loreto’s critical reading of the public response to the tragedy in tangible ways.

Furthermore, there were a few conundrums evident in these online discussions—the first of which was related to the notion of time. Many people indicated that immediately following a tragedy, critical readings are inappropriate. This is ironic, given that social media platforms enable the rapid sharing of information about the event in the first place. Frankly, without social media there is no way that news of the crash would have spread so prolifically from rural Saskatchewan around the world. Many people seem to want to consume news of tragedy immediately, but more critical analysis needs to wait.

Secondly, many Internet users seem to have a distorted idea of where Canadians live. Many responses drew on the idea that we (Canadians) “have all been on that bus.” For a country with more than 80% of the population living in urban centres (with roughly 30% of all Canadians living in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver) – it seems inaccurate to claim that we have all spent hours on a school bus on a long prairie highway.

Finally, the response to Loreto’s comments invoked some emotional narratives about a communal identity associated with Canadian hockey. One of the dialogues noted that “the hockey community is like a family regardless of race or religion. We grieve for our family.” While Loreto’s critique was explicitly about those who were not implicated in such a community, readers actively defended the integrity of this imagined hockey community and provided compelling individual stories to demonstrate the inclusiveness of hockey culture. These individual examples, however, miss the point. Loreto’s comments were about the way in which the public responded to the tragedy, not a critique of hockey or hockey culture. Twitter users were defensive of this hockey community and how it brings Canadians together – suspiciously defensive. Such defensiveness maybe reflect an awareness that Canadian demographics are changing and resulting in different patterns of sport participation, particularly in rural areas where low populations are often transient due to volatile resource-based economies. While it is beyond the scope of this conversation to make any clear conclusions, it appears that the role of hockey in Canada is coming into question. The attack on Loreto may be emblematic of much larger social issues related to hockey and Canadian society.

In summary, a reading of the way coverage of the Humboldt tragedy was policed provided several points of reflections for Canadians. This conversation provided a point of entry to think about contemporary sporting nationalisms, imagined rural identities, and the construction of sporting communities. Perhaps these ideas are changing in Canada and these expressions are how Canadians are working through some growing pains. What is more certain from this reading is that these ideas have substantial implications when they are invoked in digital spaces and lead to tangible, real world, sometimes horrific outcomes (e.g., death threats both on and offline). As media coverage continues, Canadians are now waiting to hear how the $15 million will be used – as it turns out, many were eager to throw money at a cause without any specific plans or clear indication for how it would be used.

Kyle Rich (@KRich052) is an Assistant Professor at Brock University in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. His research focuses on the intersection of sport, recreation, and rurality in Canada.

Ann Pegoraro (@SportMgmtProf) is a Full Professor in the School of Human Kinetics at Laurentian University. Her research focuses on the intersection of the digital world and sport.

“I feel good that I am playing part in changing our culture and showing girls anyone can cycle. I don’t care what people say. I am the one benefitting from this bicycle. The most important thing that anyone can do is stand up for him or herself.” – Ayan from World Bicycle Relief (Eldoret, Kenya, Dec. 2017)

“You cannot lie when you’re on your bicycle, it will always tell you the truth” – Fagodien Campher, BEC Owner – Bicycle Empowerment Network (Lavender Hill, South Africa, date unknown)

“We believe in the bicycle as a means of increasing access to vital health services, economic opportunity, educational empowerment and independence.”  – Bikes Without Borders (Toronto, ON)

“It is not a hyperbole to say that bicycles can change the world.” — Mike Brcic, Board Chair of BWB

The narratives above provide a small glimpse into the values and experiences people place onto bicycles across the globe. These narratives encapsulate the bicycle as a tool for development that has the ability to address a range of social issues, including poverty, lack of transportation, gender inequality, health and education. In addition, various social actors – such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and corporations – praise the bicycle as a tool for reducing poverty, and supporting youth development and education within marginalized communities around the globe. As a Master’s student and a member of Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst’s research team at York University in Toronto, Canada, these kinds of narratives enable research teams like ours to highlight and identify what is called the Bicycle for Development (BFD) movement.

The BFD Movement

The BFD movement has continually grown but has received limited attention. BFD is premised on the bicycle’s ability to catalyze social change, but it has yet to be determined if the BFD movement and the object at its centre – the bicycle – could be a way forward for the growing field of Sport for Development (SFD). Could the bicycle be a practical development and social tool for marginalized communities around the world?

There have been many instances where the bicycle has been an agent of activism. For instance, the bicycle was a tool of empowerment for Western women during the 19th century. The bicycle facilitated women’s mobility, independence, and an entry point for women’s public personas. In more current forms of activism, The Biking Public Project advocates for policy changes to New York City’s e-bike bans as a way to counter prejudiced attitudes towards  immigrant delivery cyclists in NYC. Additionally, Ciclovía is an organization that uses the bicycle as way to re-claim urban public spaces in Colombia. Through these examples, the bicycle becomes more than a mode of transportation – it becomes a text marked with multiple meanings. Similarly, with BFD organizations, the bicycle’s purpose and meaning all vary, but they inherently agree that the bicycle holds the possibility for change.

Taking a Closer Look at BFD Initiatives

Let’s take a moment highlight a few BFD narratives that showcase the significance of this movement. Bikes Without Borders (BWB), a Toronto-based non-governmental organization, uses the bicycle in multiple ways to effect social change in communities both locally and internationally. In partnership with CultureLink, BWB provides refurbished and donated bicycles to participants who complete the Bike Host program. Bike Host is a free mentorship program that connects Convention refugees and Permanent Residents with cyclists in Toronto, who then lead group bike rides in and around the city.

As a few Bike Host participants highlight:

“you might just think, how can a bike change everything? Actually, it changed a lot.” 

And,“you’re not only a part of the city, you’re a part a cycling group; you feel accepted”.

The meaning and value that is placed onto the bike (1) provided participants with positive attitudes, (2) provided the potential for individuals to feel a sense of belonging, and (3) encouraged individuals to explore their city (Bike Host Report 2016). These are a few of the ways the bicycle has the potential capacity to enhance social inclusion.

Internationally, used bicycle donations are often shipped via containers to various parts of the world. In the Zomba District of Malawi, the bike is used to mobilize community health workers – enabling them to increase their health outreach capacities through the use of bicycle ambulatory services. In Sierra Leone, donated bicycles from BWB provide children with easier access to education because schools in these regions are located far away from many communities. Through this one BFD organization, the bicycle showcases its capacity to provide access and developmental change in parts of the world.

BFD Research

As scholars, it is important for us to reflect and engage in critical reflections, analysis, and action, rather than passively accepting BFD solely on its good merit. Many SFD scholars call upon the need to use various perspectives and theories to explore and make explicit the power relations in SFD (for example, see Levermore 2011; Hayhurst, 2014; and van Igen 2016). With this in mind, our current Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada funded study, Cycling Against Poverty? Researching a Sport for Development Movement and an ‘Object’ in/for Development, explores and open discussions about how, in some contexts, inequalities of gender, class, race and other social relations (e.g., sexuality) are embedded in the daily works of BFD.

As the bicycle’s multiplicity of meanings become more diverse and complex, our BFD research team hopes to explore and understand these intersections through the narratives of BFD participants and organizations. Our aim is to display their stories and lived experiences of the bicycle, while utilizing photography, digital platforms, multi-sited ethnography, community-based approaches and digital participatory action research.

Moving forward, our team at York University is negotiating and building trust with BFD organizations and their communities. We are seeking to engage in capacity building with (allowing participants to take part as active research participants) and for the participants (informing organizations about the needs and wants of the community). The BFD community research will be conducted in Uganda, Canada, and Nicaragua. As the team gears up for the second phase of the BFD research, the perspectives and knowledge of the participants and organizations will start to paint the canvas of what the BFD movement means to them. In turn, their perspectives will soon inform the organizations we work with, national sport policies, BFD NGOs, varying academic fields, and public knowledge.

Emerald Bandoles is a MA candidate in Kinesiology and Health Studies at York University. Her research interests include the intersections of sport for development, community health, postcolonial feminism, discourse analysis and Asian studies.

To learn more about the Bicycle for Development research and updates, follow the links below:

Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst: http://www.lyndsayhayhurst.com/bicycles-for-development

Dr. Brian Wilson: http://css.ubc.ca/projects/bicycles-for-development/

Twitter: @Bicycles4Dev

On October 5, The New York Riveters of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) and the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League (NHL) announced a partnership. While the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) has made several of these cross-league partnerships with the NHL in the last few years (Montreal Canadiennes – Montreal Canadians, Toronto Furies – Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Inferno –  Calgary Flames), this is the first such partnership for a team in the NWHL. In recent years, there have been suggestions that the two women’s leagues need to build partnerships with the NHL and its affiliated teams in order to gain legitimacy and maintain a stable league. From that perspective, this partnership is a step in the right direction and, at face value, is a huge asset to the Riveters, because it provides them with increased marketing and promotional resources and reach, a state of the art facility, and support for local grassroots programming for girls and women’s hockey. Despite these benefits, there are also reasons to be concerned about the NHL being associated with and having a say in the development of professional women’s hockey.

At quick glance, this deal is great for the NWHL and the newly rebranded Metropolitan Riveters. It adds staff, resources, and skill and knowledge bases that the team otherwise could not afford. A major aspect of the partnership “includes marketing & cross promotion on digital and social media channels and on game broadcasts”. This will dramatically increase the visibility of the franchise and league. The Devils Twitter account has 605,000 followers compared to the 12,700 of the Riveters (as of October 10, 2017). Combined with in-game promotions, this immediately opens the Riveters up to increased exposure to those in the hockey community. This increased visibility could help bring in new fans and sponsors.

The partnership also gives the Riveters access to a state of the art facility, rent free. The Riveters home ice will be the Barnabas Health Hockey House, the Devils practice rink. This means they are guaranteed good quality ice, in an arena that likely has lighting and camera positions already in place to facilitate the broadcasting of their games. The Riveters will also play at least one double header with the Devils at the Prudential Center, the Devils home game facility. Season ticket holders of both teams will have access to both games. A final beneficial aspect to this partnership is an agreement to collaborate on efforts to continue the development of girls’ hockey in the surrounding area. Growing the game has always been an aspect of the NWHL’s mission. This partnership also appears to have a plethora of assets aimed at leveraging the Riveters brand to benefit the Devils’ market.

Despite these advantages, there are reasons for concern. One notable concern is that the NHL tends to cater to cisgender, heterosexual, white men, while the NWHL is focused on women and understands that some of their players and fans are part of the LGBTQ community. Despite the NHL’s recent efforts at catering to diversity through their You Can Play Project and Declaration of Principles initiatives, their actions tend to disenfranchise fans outside of this demographic. With the continued use of Patrick Kane as a poster boy despite multiple rape allegations, along with weak punishments and non-apologies for other athletes who are accused of sexual assault, or caught on national TV using sexist, racist, and homophobic slurs, many women and members of the LGBTQ community feel like the NHL does not care about them as much as they purport to.  We need to question if money provided by a league that has not historically privileged inclusion will be “clean” or if it comes from clubs that have protected (and may continue to protect) those who have assaulted women or used misogynistic or homophobic language. Considering the players, and a not-insignificant portion of the fan base of the NWHL, are not only women but also identify within the LGBTQ community, NHL acceptance of these behaviors stands in stark contrast with supporting the NWHL.

While it is great that marketing and promotion resources are being given to the Riveters, there are reasons to think critically about marketing initiatives provided by a men’s team for a women’s sport. Women’s sports require different marketing strategies, due to different target markets than the traditional straight, white, male demographics of men’s hockey. Women’s sports draw different fan bases, and including, but not limited to, the “family/young female player” demographic. Often women’s sports are only marketed to girls and the parents that would bring them. While getting young girls excited about a sport is great, they are generally not the ones buying season tickets, and only focusing on this demographic leaves out adult women (and men) that could be a more consistent fan base if they are marketed to. If traditional NHL marketing techniques and demographics or the “family” demographic for women’s sports are the only tactics used, many potential fans could be left out. Hopefully the Devils will listen to the marketing ideas and target markets that the Riveters have built over the last two years and not take over with their perceptions of how women’s sport should be marketed. For instance, the Queer community is a big demographic for women’s sports, which the WNBA has recently embraced, and which the NWHL has been reaching out too. The Riveters have Harrison Browne, who came out as a transgender man while playing for the Buffalo Beauts last season. The league has worked with and promoted him since his coming out. This season, Browne announced his plan to work with local LGBT youth groups. The NWHL has player and fan demographics that deserve more than the lip-service that is often given by the NHL diversity initiatives.

Beyond this, there is reason for skepticism about the amount of marketing and publicity on their social media channels and on game broadcasts that will occur. When the partnership was announced, there was only one tweet on the Devils account announcing it. This tweet linked the press release, which was the only post on their main website regarding the deal. The only mention of the girls’ hockey event on the Devils main account occurred the following day, and it was a retweet from the president of the Devils Alumni Association. If a focal point of this deal is cross-promotion, the Devils need to step up their game if it is actually going to have the impact one would expect from the press release.

A final consideration is related to brand equity. The last two seasons, the Riveters have sported a very patriotic Red, White, and Blue color scheme to match their Rosie the Riveter logo. With this partnership, however, they announced a change in colors to the Devils Red and Black along with the name change from New York to Metropolitan. This is not the first time a women’s team has altered their brand when they partnered with an NHL Team. The CWHL team in Montreal changed their name from the Stars to the Canadiennes to align with the Montreal Canadiens brand. The Toronto Furies changed their logo to appear more like that of the Maple Leafs. While these alterations help the women’s teams visually associate with the local NHL teams and make the alignment between the two teams more evident, they may lose some of the brand equity and brand identity that they have spent several years building for themselves. It also runs the potential risk of brand conflation if the NHL team does something that is not acceptable to the women’s hockey community. This relates back to the first point of concern around the NHL and its teams not having the best track record in terms of diversity and inclusion. It begs the question of if the Devils were to make a problematic ethical decision, would fans who subsequently have problems supporting the Devils also struggle to support the Riveters.

From my perspective, until the NHL and their affiliate teams become better at truly supporting women and members of the LGBTQ community with their actions, not just their words, a partnership between an NWHL team and an NHL team will be problematic. As someone who wants to see the NWHL succeed and become a stable, paying league for female athletes with a strong fanbase, the concept of an NHL team partnership is theoretically great. NHL teams have the money, staff, and visibility that the NWHL needs. It inserts resources, lends cultural legitimacy, and increases visibility that the league otherwise does not have easy access to. However, the history of the NHL’s treatment of women and members of the LGBTQ community raises concerns about whether this partnership will be beneficial for women’s hockey in the long term rather than just a quick injection of resources that could hurt the brand in the long run. Only time will tell how a deal with the Devil(s) will turn out.

Erin Morris (@Morrsport) is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at SUNY Cortland. Her research focuses on girls and women’s participation in non-traditional sports and women’s sport development. Her recent work has focused on women’s hockey.

There is a paradox to the idea of sport in prisons—namely, that institutions whose primary purpose is the restriction of human movement are home to vibrant physical cultures and diverse forms of physical activity. Despite the numerous sociological questions that arise from this peculiar phenomenon, to say nothing of widely-circulated pop culture tropes of tattooed and muscular (and usually male) convicts, there is relatively little research on the topic within the sociology of sport. Here, I reflect on a project I conducted on prison sport and physical culture in Canadian federal prisons, and discuss the significance of prison sport to the broader sociological study of sport.

Putting Canadian Prison Sport in Context

Over 10 million people are incarcerated around the globe, approximately one quarter of whom are in North America. The United States is, overwhelmingly, the world’s largest jailer, with over 2.2 million Americans living behind bars; Canada features much lower rates of incarceration, yet has recently moved toward harsher prison sentences that may swell the number of prisoners. In both countries, the criminal justice system is not neutral, and disproportionately incarcerates men (although the number of female inmates is rising) from economically disadvantaged and racialized backgrounds. In the US, this is reflected in the overwhelmingly high numbers of African American men in prisons, while in Canada, Indigenous Peoples make up between 20-25% of prisoners despite representing just 4% of the country’s total population.

I embarked on my project in the midst of a significant shift in Canadian corrections spearheaded by the Conservative Party, which held power from 2006-2015. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Canadian government made a “tough-on-crime” agenda a central pillar of its domestic policies. This agenda included a shift in policy toward longer prison sentences, less opportunity to serve sentences in the community, harsher conditions of confinement, and reduced budgets for the operation of prisons. These policy changes were accompanied by shifts in public language that changed the focus of prisons from rehabilitation to punishment and framed non-essential prison programming—including sport and physical activity—as luxuries (despite the fact that the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners specifically identifies exercise and recreation as a right of prisoners).

These policy and language shifts had the effect of restricting the opportunities for some prisoners to engage in pleasurable physical recreation, and limiting discussions about the merits of prison sport to concerns about its contribution to individual self-transformation, without regard for structural causes of crime and incarceration. However, they were merely the latest manifestation of a trend of declining sport offerings and participation in Canadian prisons since the 1970s, due to a combination of factors, including:

• declining inmate interest in sport as a recreational activity
• budget and manpower cuts to recreation programs
• lower levels of inmate solidarity in organizing activities
• regular conservative critiques of prison sport and recreation “coddling” offenders.

Prior to this decline, beginning in the post-WW2 era, Canadian federal prisons featured a wide variety of recreational sport offerings; organized intermural softball leagues; representative inmate teams that competed in local baseball leagues and played outside teams within the prison walls; occasional sport festivals put on by inmates and attended by members of the community; and professional physical educators on staff at institutions. While the availability and organization of particular activities varied by prisons’ security levels and geographic location, there was nonetheless consistent engagement in sport and physical activity at institutions across the country. Today, many of these features of prison life have substantially declined or disappeared.

Researching Prison Sport: Social Control, Agency, and Resistance

Although I attempted to gain access to research sport and physical culture inside two Canadian prisons, my request was denied by the federal department for corrections. As such, I adapted my project to utilize a wide range of tactics for gathering information on this subject, including: interviews with former prisoners and individuals involved in delivering prison programming; examination of government policy documents; and analysis of newsletters and memoirs written by prisoners.

In my research, I discovered that sport and physical culture play contradictory roles in Canadian prisons: on the one hand, they are mandated by policymakers and deployed by prison administrators in order to achieve particular outcomes in the inmate population, such as reduced aggression or vague rehabilitative goals; on the other, they provide sites at which prisoners can exercise a limited degree of agency over their day-to-day lives, often in ways that conflict with, or even resist, the reasons for their provision. In other words, there is a tension between sport as a means of social control over prisoners and as a vehicle for prisoners to express agency and resist some of the impositions placed upon them in confinement.

To analyze my findings, I used the work of sociologist Erving Goffman, particularly his concept of the “total institution.” A total institution is an organization that is characterized by social and physical isolation from society, allowing the development of its own unique social world and subcultural roles and values. Using this framework, I examined how inmates used sport to contribute to a prison’s “underlife”—that is, a series of subcultural social practices through which inmates, according to Goffman, “decline in some way to accept the official view of what they should be putting into and getting out of the organization.” Through my research, I uncovered a variety of ways in which sport contributed to the underlife in Canadian prisons, including: repurposing exercise equipment to suit alternative needs, whether recreational or violent; using sport spaces, especially the “yard,” for illicit activities; using sport matches to engage in levels of violence that would otherwise not be tolerated by staff; and making creative use of spaces and furniture in cells to engage in yoga or fitness training when, as can occur frequently in many prisons, inmates are placed on lockdown and unable to leave their cells.

Many of these social practices are not desirable, at least from the perspective of prison staff or policymakers, and do little to contribute to prisoners’ likelihood of engaging in rehabilitation. Yet they arise from the interplay of institutional and structural restrictions, the “inmate code” that dominates the subculture of Canadian prisons, and the limited opportunities available in a total institution to engage in identity construction or collective social engagement. As such, the characteristics of Canadian prison physical culture are neither inevitable nor unchangeable, and examples exist in other prison systems of physical cultures that are more humane, less violent, and more empowering to prisoners. In other words, the structure and subculture into which prisoners are placed will largely dictate the form that sport and physical culture take in this environment.

Future Research

Prisons are major social institutions, and their physical cultures should be of great interest to researchers. Given the limited scholarship in this area, I conclude by suggesting a number of ways to deepen and broaden our knowledge of prison sport.

• Comparative research on sport in prisons and in other total institutions will add nuance to our understanding of sport in these extreme social environments. Such sites could include refugee camps and juvenile detention centres, or even private boarding schools and high performance sport academies.
• Understanding the significance of sport as a cultural practice that can temporarily permeate such total institutions, which by nature are closed off from the outside world. For example, I interviewed a number of individuals who deliver yoga programs in Canadian prisons, which facilitated contact between inmates and outsiders in an emotionally supportive environment. Similarly, a number of former prisoners spoke fondly of sport matches against community teams that would visit prisons and compete against inmate teams.
• A deeper analysis of changes and continuities to prisoners’ involvement in sport when they are released. Former prisoners face a great deal of stigma and numerous other challenges when they are released, and these social barriers may disrupt their ability to continue their participation in meaningful physical activity.
• Finally, I would argue that prisons should be of interest to scholars of Sport for Development and Peace, particularly given the tensions surrounding the social control of participants and the focus on sport’s potential social impact in marginalized or disadvantaged populations.

Mark Norman, PhD., is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, Canada. His doctoral research examined historical and contemporary meanings and experiences of Canadian prison physical culture. His postdoctoral project is focused on alternative forms of rehabilitation, most notably yoga and animal-assisted therapy. Email: normam2@mcmaster.ca

For many women, bodybuilding (i.e., sculpting one’s body through rigorous diet and training to develop muscle size) is an empowering activity. Heavy weightlifting increases muscular strength and size, and enhances one’s physical capacity. For women, bodybuilding can be empowering because a muscular female body defies our traditional understanding of a feminine body as a one that is small, weak, fragile, and limited. A female bodybuilder – someone who has, through years of strength training, gained a considerable amount of visible muscularity – challenges these stereotypes of femininity, forcing us to critically examine and reconsider our taken-for-granted knowledge of the female physique and its capabilities. Bodybuilding allows women to push against and break free from these societal boundaries, providing a space for empowerment.

Muscularity is typically viewed as a masculine trait. Our culture often discourages women from developing “too much” muscle and becoming “too” strong. Fitness magazines are filled with pictures of female athletes and fitness models who display “just the right amount” of muscularity, to remind us that muscle on women can be an enhancement to some extent, as long as it doesn’t become too visible or defiant (of gender norms). The photos of fitness models or bodybuilders in these magazines are often Photoshopped to conceal the amount or visibility of their muscles. Fitness magazines tell us, implicitly or explicitly, that visible muscularity diminishes a woman’s (hetero)sexual appeal, and that the ultimate goal of bodybuilding for women is to achieve heterosexual desirability (femininity and heterosexuality are perceived as inextricable, and our social constructions of the two often go hand-in-hand). Such magazine images produce the message that it is unbecoming of women to engage in the type of heavy weightlifting that diminishes their femininity and heterosexual desirability, both of which are contradicted by “excessive” muscularity. In collective, these messages reinforce the idea that strength and power, and ultimately ability, are a male domain in which a woman has little to no business or place.

Fitness magazines are just one example of an outlet through which messages and norms around femininity and muscularity are produced and naturalized. There are many other ways in which we socially learn that muscularity and femininity are contradictory and that visible muscularity is culturally frowned upon for women. Forms of femininity that fall outside of what is conventionally considered “normal” produce a sort of social unease and anxiety which manifest themselves in negative reactions. Female muscularity is an example of “abnormal” femininity, and the negative social reactions to it include hostility, ridicule, disgust, and confusion. These reactions can be thought of as forms of punishment for those who stray away from the norm, a way in which gender expression is policed and controlled in society, and the gender order maintained.

So while the empowering aspect of bodybuilding may be attractive to some women, the cultural repulsion of visible muscle on the female body might be an inhibiting factor for many women, discouraging them from getting involved in strength training and bodybuilding. Many of us know or have female friends who refuse to lift heavy weights in the fear of becoming “too muscular”. On the other hand, there are still women who love bodybuilding, seek muscle, and set out to acquire the type of visible muscularity that is traditionally shunned by society. I studied this group of women in my master’s degree research, and I noticed that the most common form of gender expression among female bodybuilders is filled with paradoxes. The most glaring paradox is the bodybuilders’ efforts to be simultaneously (super) muscular and (super) feminine. In fact, to display hyper-femininity is a requirement at women’s bodybuilding competitions. Competitors are required to look/be feminine in order to be viewed favorably by judges. This means having a feminine posing style on stage and visually creating a look that is judged as feminine (this includes the hair, makeup, nails, jewellery, competition suit and shoes).

In my master’s research, I analyzed the social forces that cause this paradox in female bodybuilding, specifically in fitness competitions, by interviewing several female fitness competitors and attending fitness competitions and events. Visible muscularity is a form of gender expression that defies sexist stereotypes of womanhood as being physically weak, incapable, fragile and dependant. Yet, presenting oneself in a hyper-feminine form seems to contradict this and counteract the empowerment derived from bodybuilding. But perhaps this is exactly the point: deviating from the norm, as I argued earlier, creates a type of social anxiety for both the constructor of deviance and the observer, and after deliberately constructing a body that is not mainstream, some female bodybuilders attempt to reconcile their “unconventional” bodies with the standard ideals by (over)conforming to conventional femininity.

It is also important to remember that female bodybuilders, just like all of us, live in a cultural environment that constantly bombards us with messages about what is feminine and what is attractive. While the bodybuilding subculture might perceive muscularity as an enhancement to femininity (i.e., an alternative ideal of femininity), the broader culture considers a different set of characteristics to be feminine. Female bodybuilders are exposed to both of these sets of values and are therefore constantly negotiating the contradictions and tensions between these two cultures. The desire to gain strength and muscle, and yet to follow what society tells you constitutes femininity, may lead to paradoxical behaviors and to an image of a female bodybuilder that, from a conventional lens, is overridden with contradictions.

So…is bodybuilding an act of accepting or resisting dominant ideals of femininity? I think it is both, particularly within bodybuilding competitions where the norms are policed and regulated by the federation. But it must be emphasized that building “deviant” bodies is inherently an act of resistance to the norm, regardless of the efforts to police, tame or revert the body. Bodybuilding for women, as an intentional effort to construct a body that challenges sexist stereotypes of femininity, is an act of empowerment, and a muscled female body is an empowered body, even if it is at just the symbolic level.

Bahar Tajrobehkar is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. She can be reached email (b.tajrobehkar@mail.utoronto.ca).

PyeongChang is a small county in the northeastern province of Gangwon in South Korea (hereafter, ‘Korea’), with an aging population of approximately 43,000 (in which 1 in 4 people are 65 years or older). This mountainous region, known for its quaint charm and small-scale agriculture-based economy, will host the 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and as a result, joins a long list of host cities that have witnessed turmoil due to sport mega-events. An issue surrounding the PyeongChang Games that has gained some attention – but certainly not enough – is the destruction of Mount Gariwang, a former Class 1 Protected Area for Forest Genetic Resource Conservation, now transformed into the official alpine skiing venue. Because this area had long been protected from any kind of development, public or private, a ‘Special Act’ that “may revoke the designation of all, or a part of a conservation zone” was legislated to pave way for the development.

As part of my dissertation work, I went to South Korea for three months (March-May 2017) to interview activists, journalists and residents near Mount Gariwang to understand their respective experiences with, and how they make sense of, this controversy. These conversations reveal that the controversy surpasses concerns around the environment, and can shed light on issues with broader social and political dimensions.  Note that the focus here is not centered on Korea, but rather, the various social, cultural, and political implications sport mega-events may bring or reveal in any setting (local context withstanding, of course).

Journalistic practice

Many conservative news media outlets reported that over 94% of the local residents of Jeongseon (where Mount Gariwang is located) were in favour of building the alpine skiing venue. This aligns with celebratory portrayals by the same major media outlets of the bid won after two failed attempts. However, conversations with residents living in varying proximities of the mountain (from the base of the mountain to a town 20km away) revealed that such survey results require a double-take. Those who used to live at the base of the mountain in Sukam – and only those with land registered in their own names – were compensated to relocate to a new community built atop an adjacent hill.

I spoke to those who had relocated with compensation to the newly built community, all of whom conveyed discontent with the development and the negative consequences it has had on their lives. While these residents did receive (some) mainstream media attention, what was often overlooked was the hardship that ensued, such as: having to live in makeshift shelters until their new homes were ready; the compensation not being sufficient to build their new homes with (in fact, this Korean news article reveals that what many who relocated have in common is debt); and suffering from construction-related challenges like  non-potable tap water and walls cracking from frequent rock blasts. In fact, some of the people I spoke with mistook me for a journalist and/or asked that I bring this matter to the press in order to garner attention.

At the same time, when I asked the journalists about whether and how they were able to engage with the residents who were displaced/relocated, they explained barriers in place that prevented them from diving deep into the issue, such as: lack of resources and time to actually visit the site and talk to people; difficulty in reporting stories that were critical of the Olympics or Olympic-related development due to advertising and funding relationships (this was the case mostly for  local media outlets whose biggest funding source was often the province of Gangwon itself, which was pursuing this development); and persistent pressure to write articles centred around ‘facts,’ rather than opinion, as well as to seek out ‘new’ information, rather than write about enduring socio-political issues that are not often ‘renewed’ with ‘exciting’ new material. (These barriers are reminiscent of the ‘Hierarchy of Influences’ model – a device developed by scholars Stephen Reese and Pamela Shoemaker that may be useful for understanding how journalists arrive at the decisions they make in featuring selected aspects of events.)

Making sense of local responses

To better understand the locals’ support or (quiet) disapproval, it is necessary to consider their lived experiences. For example, to delve into why many local residents saw the mountain as a means for economic gain without painting them as selfish or naïve, the historical trajectory of how South Korea developed must be considered. South Korea underwent rapid industrialization between 1960 and1980, but the development was largely centred on Seoul and other urban centres. Gangwon Province, the most mountainous region of South Korea, was left behind largely due to its mountainous terrain that rendered it difficult to build around. Hence, many pro-development locals expressed that getting such infrastructure development (“thanks to the Olympics”) was long overdue.

On the other hand, the local residents who opposed the development were not as vocal about their disapproval. What was most striking in interviews with the local residents was that those most negatively impacted felt disempowered to speak up about it. The lack of empowerment was something they acknowledged, but not something they complained about; rather, they seemed to consider it ‘natural.’ For example, when I asked whether they resisted or voiced their dissent and discontent, the reply was often ‘no, because to resist was “to break a rock with an egg”’ – ergo, that speaking up hurts oneself more when faced with an already impossible task. These residents – often with lower levels of income and education – said that they felt they “didn’t have the right to resist initiatives of the nation,” a sentiment common among this older generation who lived through two decades of authoritarian rule during the 1960s-1980s.

Post-politics: Paying lip service to ‘consultation’

Activists, most of whom were younger and geographically based in Seoul, criticized the closed attitude of decision-makers in power and the resulting lack of a public sphere wherein different ideas can be contested. They accused those in power of treating them as ‘invisible beings’ when activists requested open discussions. Many expressed that they felt as if they were fighting a losing battle when considering the broader political and institutional climate. In particular, they pointed to corruption over private financial interests and lack of transparency throughout decision-making processes as most distressing. Some lamented holes in regulations and special laws – such as the lifting of the Protected Area status – that paved the way for the development and filled the pockets of construction company owners.

These are but a few examples demonstrating that the controversy surrounding Mount Gariwang is not just an environmental issue. Rather, it serves as a lens through which to  trace the power struggles underpinning communication and politics surrounding sport mega-events, as well as reveal the sites of struggle in which unequal power relations and social inequalities may be exacerbated or transcended. Such struggles are neither new nor unique to South Korea. Environmental, social and political issues trailing sport mega-events are all too abundant. However, at the same time, such crises may reveal junctures and possibilities for preferred alternative futures and discussions for how they can be achieved.

Liv Yoon is a PhD candidate in the School of Kinesiology and a Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests include critical ecology, environmental sociology, politics, communication, and socio-political dimensions of sport mega-events. You can reach her at liv.yoon@ubc.ca. A short documentary based on Liv’s dissertation will be available online in December 2018 at css.ubc.ca (UBC Centre for Sport and Sustainability).

*Cross posted on The Rabbit Hole*

It was recently (quietly) reported that the United Nations Office on Sport and Development and Peace (UNOSDP) closed on April 30, 2017 as a cost-saving measure, a fact that is interestingly not noted on the actual UNOSDP website. The UNOSDP was created to capitalize on all the ways that sport can be used as a vehicle to achieve development goals. Wilfred Lemke was appointed as the Special Adviser to the UN on Sport for Development and Peace in 2008 succeeding Adolf Ogi.  The job of the Special Adviser is three fold:

• lead and coordinate sport projects that contribute to poverty reduction, HIV/AIDS prevention, universal education, sustainable development, and inclusion of persons living with disabilities etc.
• encourage dialogue, collaboration, and partnerships between the UNOSDP and member states
• represent the Secretary General and the UN at global sporting events/meetings such as the Olympics, Paralympics, and World Cup.

The closing of the UNOSDP means that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) now has a direct line to the Secretary General.  Given that the IOC is not a nation state, one wonders why the IOC is so invested in having the ear of the Secretary General. I asked my friend and colleague Dr. Nicolien van Luijk (@nicolien_vl) to offer her thoughts on the matter.

Dr. van Luijk completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia in early 2016. Her research focused on how and why the IOC is able to hold Permanent Observer status at the UN General Assembly when this position is only meant for non-member nation states and the intergovernmental organizations. Throughout her dissertation she looked at the historical interactions between the IOC and the UN, and also critically examined the ways in which the IOC has been growing its authority beyond what is traditionally expected of an NGO – to the point where its power has become so normalized that we fail to question its role at the UN.  She is currently working as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne looking at the impacts that the IOC has had at the UN since obtaining Permanent Observer status in 2009.

*bolded portions are my added emphasis*

What was the purpose of the United Nations Office of Sport for Development? How many people worked in the office?
The UNOSDP was opened in 2001 and this office supported the role of the UN sport for Development and Peace Special Advisor, Mr. Wilfred Lemke who had been in this role since 2008 until December 2016. The website states that the purpose of the office was to “raise awareness about the use of physical activity, sport and play as powerful development tools in the advancement of development and peace objectives, including the Sustainable Development Goals.” The office did this through creating conferences, reports, providing policy support, engaging in media outreach and also working with Member States to promote the use of sport in international development.

I am not sure how many people worked there before it was closed, however, back in 2013 when I was an intern, there were approximately 8 employees and 4 interns, plus the Special Advisor. The main office was based in Geneva and there was also a small office in New York. I think that the goals of the office were really shaped and influenced by the Special Advisor. When I worked there, and also up until its closing, the office was focused on promoting the use of sport as a tool in international development. Many people working in the area of sport for development (SfD) and also academics (like myself) had hoped that this office could provide more than simply the uncritical promotion of all sport. However, there seemed to be little willingness to engage with critiques of sport and the negative impacts that sport may have on UN goals.

In the last Annual Report published on the UNOSDP website for 2014 it states that the office and the Special Advisor fully rely on voluntary contributions for fulfilling their mandate. The office received contributions from a few members states (including the Government of Germany who helped fund the German Special Advisor, Wilfred Lemke) and also private organizations such as the IOC and Korean Air.

How was it funded? Do you believe this closure to be a “cost-saving measure”?
I know that the UNOSDP was consistently searching for more funding and were not very successful in obtaining consistent funds from member states. Knowing this, the Secretary General’s (SG) statement that the decision to close the office was a “cost-saving measure” doesn’t make a lot of sense because the UN didn’t provide funding for the office. However, it could have been that no Member States were willing to provide sufficient funding anymore, or, that the SG simply didn’t see the need for this office at the UN.

What should we know about the IOC’s relationship with the UN?
In the 1980s the then IOC President, Juan Antonio Samanranch made it his goal to align Olympic values with UN values. Ever since, we have seen subsequent IOC Presidents further develop the partnership and promote the Olympic Games and the IOC at the level of the UN. Over the last 30 years the IOC has partnered with many different UN organizations such as the UN Environmental Programme, the World Health Organization, UN Women, UNICEF, and UNESCO etc.

I personally believe that the most significant development occurred in 2009 when the IOC was awarded Permanent Observer status at the UN General Assembly. This is something people should be looking at in more detail. This is highly unusual that only a few other select non-governmental organizations (NGO) hold (the IOC is one of five). The General Assembly is the main policy making organ of the UN. This status enables the IOC to sit a representative at the meetings, and to participate in policy making. This position is very useful for the IOC enabling them to influence policies and also importantly provides them with behind the scenes access to representatives of Member States from all over the world.

I believe that the important take away from the IOC’s relationship with the UN is that the IOC has gone from being viewed as a potential partner with different UN organizations on different projects to now being a political insider at the UN. We have to question what this means for SfD, physical education and the promotion of other types of physical activity at the level of the UN.

What do you think the closing of this office means/signifies?
If the office closed without the SG’s announcement that the IOC would partner even more with the UN then I would struggle to answer this question on its own. But because of this announcement, I believe this means even less diversity of voices and even more of a focus on Olympic style of sport for development, which often lies in opposition with alternative SfD objectives. The decision to close the office also signifies that the IOC is not satisfied with funding other organizations to promote SfD and that they desire control over the process themselves. The reason I say this, is because the IOC was one of the funders of the UNOSDP. If they are truly concerned with sport representation at the UN why did they not commit to continue with this funding and help in promoting this office?

The fact that the SG himself announced the decision to not only close the office but instead create an even closer partnership with the IOC demonstrates that there is very little critical thinking at even the top level of the UN as to the role the IOC plays in development. Issues surrounding corruption in elite sporting organizations, questionable human rights violations at sport mega events, and lack of democratic governance or accountability in global sports organizations are very widely known.  Neither member state representatives nor the SG can pretend that they are not aware of this. This is a concern because it signifies that the UN is willing to develop its relationship with a private organization despite the fact that the organization often operates in conflict with UN values.

Is there a need for a UN office dedicated to sport?
I do think there is a need for more critical examination of sport and sport organizations at the UN. This is especially important because international sport organizations operate with very little regulation. The UN, as the international “government” so to speak could provide much needed regulation and suggestions for reforms. I also believe that with the explosion of the number of SfD organizations over the past 30 years, the UN could provide much needed guidance in this area. I think this should have been the intention of the UNOSDP, rather than simply be a “promoter” for sport. The UNOSDP had the opportunity to provide policy guidelines, research expertise and connections with other development organizations to new and sometimes ill-equipped SfD NGS.  I am less sure about whether the UN needs an entire office dedicated to sport, especially since other UN organizations have already been working in this area for many years, such as UNESCO and UNICEF (and other organizations have useful areas of expertise such as the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization) but more resources would definitely be needed in this area.

What can the IOC provide the UN?

I don’t see what the IOC can provide the UN, other than continuing to promote sport. And at the risk of sounding too cynical (although perhaps this should have been my opening line) I think we have all been made well aware of sport and its supposed benefits. What we don’t actually know is if the benefits that the IOC and SfDs promote are real, we don’t currently have much research that shows this. Furthermore, we continue to struggle with the negative aspects of sport such as racism, sexism, spectator violence, doping, match fixing, corruption, unsustainable mega-events, worker rights violations, human rights violations and the list goes on. While the IOC is a very successful organization, and they do have some intelligent and dedicated employees, the IOC is not in the business of critically analyzing these issues; it is in the business of promoting the Olympic Games.

Even if you are a staunch supporter of the IOC and everything it represents, and even if the IOC is entering into this with the best of intentions, the IOC’s representation at the UN should still be viewed as inappropriate, or at the very least be questioned.  The IOC is not an institution focused on equitable development or human rights. It is not a democratically elected organization, nor is it publicly accountable.  The IOC is a private elite sporting organization that is accountable to its corporate sponsors and broadcasters, and is responsible for organizing a successful Olympic Games. The IOC represents the interest of the Olympic Movement, not of SfD.

What should citizens be aware of when their city is bidding for an Olympic Games? How might this connection with the UN affect cities and governments?
I think citizens are becoming more aware that sports mega events, specifically the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and the FIFA Men’s World Cup can have significant negative impacts on the host community and that more often than not the promises made in bidding for the event do not come to fruition. We are seeing more and more democratic cities and countries pulling out of bidding for these events because communities do not want them.  Without significant changes to the ways in which the IOC and FIFA are governed or the ways in which the events are organized the over blown promises just can’t be met – regardless of the great intentions of the organizing committees.

It is difficult for me to say how the IOC’s connection at the UN might affect cities and governments, but if I were to speculate I might say that the UN or Member States could be less willing to be critical of the Olympic Games because of their close ties to the IOC. The IOC has been working to promote the autonomy of sports organizations at the UN, which suggests that the IOC is creating an environment where governments and/or UN organizations are being discouraged to speak out against issues to do with sporting events.

Learn more about the history of the IOC’s relationship with the UN from Dr. van Luikj’s work here.

Courtney Szto is a PhD Candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.  Her doctoral research explores the intersections of race, hockey, and citizenship in Canada.  She is the Assistant Editor of Hockey in Society and writes for her own blog The Rabbit Hole. Learn more about Courtney here and follow her on Twitter @courtneyszto.