Hockey doesn’t embody Canada’s national identity anymore. It undermines it.
By Sandi Rankaduwa for Berners Bowie Lee
Ten years ago, as the Vancouver Winter Olympics approached, a rousing Coca Cola commercial ran throughout the country: a blond boy plays street hockey, aiming a pop-can at an open net. His goal launches a rapid-fire series of scenes: middle-aged men hugging in a living room; an old home video of a child wielding her hockey stick triumphantly; school-kids in a gymnasium watching TV and leaping to their feet; spectators in stands, fans clustered around a car radio, hockey players themselves — all cheering. The ad’s tagline? “Let’s make sure everyone knows whose game they’re playing”.
Canada loves its hockey. It’s interwoven with Canadian identity, and not just because it’s our national winter pastime. (Lacrosse — our summer sport — gets far less buzz). As our nation’s most-watched sport, it dominates our airtime. And it’s a sport we dominate ourselves: thirty years ago, over three-quarters of NHL players were Canadian. Numbers have since dwindled, but Canada still produces the most NHL players (not to mention, the most illustrious, both past and present). And in case you needed reminding: Team Canada won gold in both men’s and women’s hockey in Vancouver.
But this proud pillar of our identity seems at odds with another cornerstone of Canadian culture: the country’s diversity. Hockey’s racial make-up exists in stark contrast with the multicultural mosaic that our country claims to embrace and embody. In other words, hockey’s synonymity with Canadianness and the sport’s racial exclusivity together can imply that non-white Canadians are essentially outsiders, that they don’t completely belong. Perhaps that’s partly why hockey — something often purported to unite Canadians — seems broken.
Don Cherry proved this in November 2019, when the famed hockey commentator — once voted 7th greatest Canadian of all-time — condemned immigrants on air. Cherry’s xenophobia had been fairly well-documented over the years, but this was finally enough for the bonafide hockey institution to lose his job. And Cherry’s firing seemed to signal a shift. Later that month, former NHL player Akim Aliu tweeted about how veteran coach Bill Peters had called him racist slurs and tried to get the Nigerian-Canadian demoted when he was in the minors. (Peters resigned from his position as coach of the Calgary Flames four days later.) A co-founder of the recently-established Hockey Diversity Alliance, Aliu has since gone on to speak frankly about his other experiences of racism and alienation. Meanwhile other players of colour, as well as racialized Canadians in general, have opened up about their fraught relationship with the sport, with many admitting they ultimately chose to give it up. Before this watershed moment, such stories would often be met with silent indifference, dismissal, or even outright hostility.
Some might still claim Cherry and Peters were just a couple of bad apples. Or they might deny that this is a problem unique to hockey — after all, racism is pervasive throughout society. But racism is not natural and the deluge of traumatic hockey stories from that November was so undeniable, it felt like a reckoning. Hockey’s roaring popularity had clearly coasted off of a culture of silence and hidden racism, and now its toxicity was out in the open. And while it’s true this type of racial discrimination often festers in homogenous, white spaces, that leads us to the question: why is hockey so white? And what does that say about Canada?
It’s worth pointing out that Canada isn’t exactly the multicultural utopia it’s reputed to be (and multiculturalism doesn’t automatically imply equity anyway). It may be glorified as the country to where formerly enslaved Black Americans escaped, but Canada engaged in slavery too. We’re a nation rooted in white supremacy, founded on cultural genocide, Japanese internment, and bad-faith treaties. It’s no surprise the current state of racial, ethnic, and cultural politics in Canada is far from perfect — something that more and more minorities are being vocal about. Nevertheless, the country’s diversity is persistently worn like a badge of honor, something we’re quick to claim. And if we want to maintain this point of pride — or, rather, work towards it — hockey needs a drastic overhaul.
Given the expensive nature of hockey and the fact that people of colour are consistently and comparatively underpaid, the sport’s lack of diversity isn’t all that surprising. But based on the images we are presented with, it would appear as if hockey’s always looked like this. Hockey and its marketing rely heavily on romanticization and nostalgia: old-timey games of pond hockey and quaint childhood memories of waking up at the crack of dawn to get to practice. (Rich Cohen’s 2020 op-ed in the Globe and Mail, “Why There’s Nothing Quite Like The Good Old Hockey Game”, is ripe with such imagery.) And the majority of these dated depictions center white people. So it’s no wonder that the sport itself seems to exist in a time capsule; its lack of diversity and aggressive toxic masculinity certainly make it feel antiquated.
But what’s perhaps most frustrating is how hockey’s overwhelming whiteness has been more intentionally cultivated than a natural phenomenon. While the Mi’kmaq are often credited for making the best ice hockey sticks, what’s less discussed is how the very roots of the sport are Indigenous and, when hockey was a fledgling formalized sport, it wasn’t uncommon to see players, and even entire teams, that were Indigenous. (Some even toured around.)
There are other forgotten pioneers. Over 60 years before Willie O’Ree broke the NHL’s colour barrier, an all-black hockey league was founded in Atlantic Canada. Players of the so-called “Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes” were innovators: they originated both the slapshot and butterfly goaltending, and their fast-and-fierce style of play resembled today’s hockey more than that played by their white contemporaries. But, despite the league’s significance, its place in hockey history is mostly either unknown, ignored, or concealed.
Knowledge of this history can be transformative. I directed a short documentary featuring Josh Crooks, a black teen from Cole Harbour whose connection to the sport deepened by learning about the league. Response to the film has been largely positive (particularly from viewers of colour), but its claim that black people helped pioneer hockey has had its share of incredulous detractors. This in itself points to a larger issue; hockey has been so entrenched with whiteness that ideas suggesting the contrary are seen as preposterous.
Another recent documentary, Willie, follows the trailblazing story of O’Ree. Last month, a high-profile screening of the film and a post-screening Zoom discussion occurred with thousands of participants from over 40 nations. “In the middle of it, somebody in the chat rebrands himself as Adolf Hitler and starts throwing out the N-word. Then there were 2 or 3 people [doing the same],” says Bryant McBride, a co-producer of Willie. “And they traced it to three countries: Portugal — who knew? — Bosnia, and the third person was from Canada.”
McBride has had a lifelong relationship with hockey; he grew up playing it in Sault Ste. Marie and eventually worked as the NHL’s Director of Business Development (thus becoming the league’s first Black executive). To him, the Zoom incident illustrated Canada’s need to confront its homegrown racism while also exemplifying what people of colour still face when engaging with the sport — even someone as celebrated as O’Ree.
It’s worth noting that the influence of racialized players isn’t just a thing of the past. More and more players of colour are defying the odds (and often hostile environments) to make their mark on the sport. Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition has been on the air for over a decade while OMNI Television programs a show that teaches Hockey 101 in Mandarin to new Canadians. While anti-Indigenous racism persists on the ice, events like the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships draw First Nations teams from across Canada. Meanwhile, groups like the Hockey Diversity Alliance, Apna Hockey, and the Canadian Chinese Ice Hockey Association prove that there’s a multicultural interest and push for accessibility and inclusivity in the arena.
And yet, the images of hockey that we’re presented with remain largely exclusionary or tokenizing. The use of nostalgia as a marketing tool can be effective, sure. But it’s been overused, tired, and ultimately can make the sport feel like a relic. Given the conversations that are now being brought to the arena, there’s an opportunity to give hockey a much-needed makeover by abandoning an image of hockey that’s not only hurtful, but outdated and inaccurate. And for what it’s worth, people are actually interested in the truth; this past Juneteenth, the NHL’s Twitter account celebrated the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, and it became their most-liked tweet to date.
Still, expanding the image of hockey isn’t just about banking on intrigue. Frankly, the very future of hockey is at risk. If the sport is so embedded in the culture of Canada, but not all Canadians feel welcome to engage with it, its cultural relevance will erode. This becomes especially clear when considering our shifting demographics. In just 10 years, Statistics Canada projects that one third of the nation will likely be visible minorities. Further analysis has led experts to predict that Canada will be a “majority-minority” country around 2060, and almost 80% non-white within a century. By expanding hockey’s inclusivity, its talent pool (both on the ice and within the establishment) as well as its potential fan-base would grow significantly.
And while diversifying hockey could preemptively secure its fate down the road, the issue has present-day stakes too. After all, the sport effectively operates as a microcosm of Canada and how racism dulls its potential. “Hockey’s just a metaphor,” says McBride. “This is about opportunity. This is about life chances. Everyone’s born with a certain bundle of life chances, and if we’re not doing what we can to add to that and ensure that they can live those out, we’re in the wrong. And if there are barriers in place, be they policy ones or culture-oriented, they’ve got to be addressed.” It may sound obvious or redundant, but a Canadian sport should be accessible to all Canadians.
If the country wants to go beyond virtue-signalling and maintain a reputation of diversity, fairness, and multiculturalism — again, a reputation we have not entirely earned — it’s imperative that hockey become more inclusive at every level and more honest about both its past and present. The sport’s marketing and associated imagery can’t afford to be homogenous, performative, or tokenizing; it should accurately reflect the entirety of the nation’s population, instead of the small (and shrinking) slice it caters to now. More than anything, these focused changes need to be a priority, not a passing interest or side effort. Too much time has been wasted already. “When I started there were 3 Black players in the NHL. There’s now 30 to 40, depending on who’s up or down in the minors. That’s 10X. On one side, that’s good,” says McBride. “But on the other side, it took 30 years — that’s way too long. So how do we do 10X in the next ten years? That’s the challenge.”
Hockey functions as a barometer of how the country at large is flourishing or failing, and for too long it’s pointed to the latter. Still, there’s hope. The steps to rehabilitate the sport are clear, concrete, and actionable. Meanwhile if serious action isn’t taken and hockey culture ultimately fails to improve, not only will Canada’s foundational values be scrutinized, but the country would risk losing the game it so loves to win. Or as McBride, who still believes in hockey’s potential to change, puts it: “It’d be like missing an open net.”
