Canada

An ice hockey coach, dressed in black, leans over on the ice, holding her stick across her legs, talking to a young participant with a long pony tail and wearing a white jersey, with other participants standing in the background.
The Indigenous Girls Hockey Program and Indigenous Girls Hockey Jamboree serve as powerful examples of “doing hockey different.” In this photo, an ice hockey coach, dressed in black, leans over on the ice, holding her stick across her legs, talking to a young participant with a long ponytail and wearing a white jersey, with other participants standing in the background (photo courtesy of Ryan Francis).

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“…you begin to see how it’s all connected and the importance that we give these opportunities for Indigenous youth and Indigenous girls to be our future” ~Ryan Francis

On lands claimed by Canada, the ongoing project of settler colonialism targets Indigenous lives, languages, ways of knowing, connections to territory, and more. Settler colonialism is the claiming of lands already occupied by Indigenous peoples for the purposes of building wealth. It involves destroying Indigenous institutions and ways of knowing, while building what Daniel Heath Justice calls a “new social order” that is geared toward eliminating Indigenous peoples as Indigenous peoples. The violences of settler colonialism in the Canadian context include, for example, the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and how anti-Indigenous racism is embedded in institutions such as child welfare, the justice system, and higher education. As Tuck and Yang highlight, the violence of settler colonial invasion “is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation.

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People wearing warm winter jackets sit in the foreground watching the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Olympics in McMahon Stadium. On the white field of the stadium are people in red jackets standing in a large square formation.
The Olympic torch is carried into McMahon Stadium during the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada (photo by Brian Woychuk licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ignorance is an activity, it isn’t simply not knowing but a form of knowing supported by the socio-political system. –Lisa Slater

It is well documented that youth sport teaches young people life lessons – about themselves, the importance of teamwork, etc. In this short reflexive essay (drawn from a larger book project), I consider another kind of education at work in youths’ encounters with sport in settler states – countries founded upon the theft of land from Indigenous peoples: it teaches young settlers, in particular, about their place in the world, their “right” to live on stolen lands.

Here, I take up selected fragments of my childhood and youth, interrogating how my encounters with sport (as both a participant and a consumer) shaped my understandings of myself and my belonging on lands claimed by Canada. I consider, in the words of social scientist Lisa Slater, some of the “dimly lit memories” that provide clues to my developing sense of self.

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Hockey player Nazem Kadri, wearing his Colorado Avelanche jersey, lifts the Stanley Cup above his head in celebration.
Nazem Kadri celebrates after his team, the Colorado Avalanche, defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning to win the 2021-22 NHL Stanley Cup. Earlier in the playoffs, Kadri, who is Muslim and of Lebanese descent, received a series of online racist attacks following a controversial on-ice play. Image courtesy of The Sporting News.

It can be argued that no sport is more identified with Canada than hockey, which makes it an interesting mirror through which to examine how race is defined and constructed. And yet, for a nation that prides itself as a “cultural mosaic,” there is little to suggest that hockey players reflect that self-image. Look no further than the overwhelmingly white National Hockey League. With the excitement of the Stanley Cup playoffs still fresh on our minds, it is worth reflecting on the question, “why are there so few racialized players in the NHL?”

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A person wearing blue jeans hits a hockey puck with a hockey stick while skating on a backyard ice rink.
Backyard ice rinks have been celebrated as a “Canadian way” to enjoy winter while many community rinks were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic (photo by Pete Thompson licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

“What do you do in the middle of a pandemic, when winter weather has arrived and almost every form of recreation is banned? Build an outdoor ice rink.” This was the question CBC Manitoba asked its readers—and answered for them—in December 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave. A month later, firefighters in rural Ontario were filling backyard rinks for residents, and CTV highlighted pandemic induced backyard rinks from Ottawa to the Maritime provinces.

Outdoor ice rinks play a significant social and cultural role in the construction of a collective Canadian identity; from the romantic images of children scrimmaging on frozen ponds in commercials for Tim Hortons coffee shops, to the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic games, outdoor hockey is painted with nostalgia and innocence, as the game in its purest form. So, when backyard rinks had a renaissance during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not surprising the Canadian media viewed such a development as worthy of celebration. Yet, as we face another winter marked by the pandemic, it is important to consider that, despite these media images, many Canadians have not been able to stick-handle “around the pandemic on [their] backyard rink.”

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A view of Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks in Banff National Park. The smooth blue water of a lake is seen in the foreground, while snow-capped mountain peaks are visible in the distance.
The formation of spaces like Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada occurred through the active removal of Indigenous people (photo via Wikipedia Commons)

Recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, made a memorable campaign stop in Sudbury, Ontario. After paddling a canoe around a local lake, Trudeau emerged to make an announcement related to land and ocean conservation during the federal election campaign. Specifically, he outlined a Liberal Party promise to teach young Canadians to camp by Grade 8 and provide support for 75,000 lower-income families to spend time in provincial and national parks. This announcement points to the iconic place the “wilderness” and Canada’s park system play in the Canadian imaginary. In the following narratives, I draw on some of my own experiences with Canada’s park system to situate outdoor recreation in a broader and more troubling history rarely considered in Canadian mainstream media, classrooms, or politics.

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Members of Canadian Parliament wearing jerseys to honour the Humboldt Broncos. Photo from Toronto Star.

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.

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2017-2018 Humboldt Broncos. Photo from The Globe and Mail.

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.

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“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

 

Photo: Bikes Without Borders

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.

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Photo from Sports Politicus USA.

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.

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