Research
Many academics and others are conducting research and/or writing scholarly articles related to the culture of hockey and the level of inclusion experienced. Here is some of this work.
*Please share any research or other works of which you are aware and we’ll consider adding it to this page to serve as a resource to anyone working to make the game of hockey more welcoming and inclusive. Email: [email protected]
CUE’s research is changing the culture of hockey
It’s been an exciting few months for professor and researcher, Teresa Fowler. This week she testified at the House of Commons, and in the past months she’s been interviewed on national television and radio talking about research that could change the culture of hockey and sports in Canada.
Teresa, an assistant professor of education at Concordia University of Edmonton, is part of a team with Drs Shannon D.M. Moore and Tim Skuce that interviewed elite-level men’s hockey players about their experiences with sexism, misogyny and hypermasculinity in the sport. Her research shows the problem is pervasive, enduring and systematic.
Teresa is a member of Scholars Against Abuse in Canadian Sport that has partnered with Center for Children’s Rights to push for a judicial inquiry into the sport. Now she is working directly with Hockey Canada to make changes happen.
“If we really want to generate change we need to look forward,” says Teresa. “Hockey Canada may have made some bad decisions, but we need to get to the root of the issue. There is a level of unhealthy masculinity – and until we have healthy men, these problems will continue.”
Change The Game: A Hockey DEI Toolkit
Hockey historian and sportswriter Bob Dawson shared an in-depth Hockey DEI toolkit on Boxscore World Sportswire that features a collection of his articles over the past few years.
“As a former Black hockey player and contributing sports writer, I’m pleased to share this toolkit I’ve prepared that is intended to assist all stakeholders – hockey executives and administrators, coaches, players, game officials, players, parents, volunteers, spectators – with making hockey a safer, positive, more inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone,” he wrote.
The feature includes the following topics and includes brief summaries of each article with links to the full pieces. Included in his Hockey DEI toolkit are:
- Inside Hockey | The Issue of Habits & Inclusion
- Racism in Hockey, It Stops With Us!
- Change The Hockey Culture, Change The Game
- In Hockey Our Words Matter: How to Be An Ally
- Diversity and Inclusion Matter in Hockey, But It’s Belonging That Counts
- Reality Check: Hockey Through the Lens of Racism – BOXSCORE
- Reality Check: How Inclusive is Your Hockey Organization?
- Racism In Hockey: What You Say and Do Matters
Dawson was a trailblazer on the ice in 1970 at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a member of the first all-Black line in Canadian university history.
He was bestowed The CI’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award this past January for his impact on the game over the past half century.
The NHL’s Longest Game: Becoming More Diverse and Inclusive For Women and People of Color
For decades, the NHL has had issues regarding its lack of diversity and inclusion in the world’s most prominent professional hockey league. Now, they’re starting to try to do something about it.
The league has brought in many names and faces to try and change how it has done things regarding DEI. One of those names is Bill Proudman, co-founder of White Men as Full Diversity Partners. Proudman is working with the NHL to help instill a new culture in open and welcoming workplaces. “Now that he’s working with the NHL, however, Proudman wants to clarify that The lessons he’s instilling must be part of its everyday culture. It’s not for show.”
Kim Davis (NHL’s Executive Vice President, Social Impact, Growth Initiatives & Legislative Affairs and CI board member) added that over the past two years, the NHL, in partnership with the players association’s “Growth Fund,” has contributed “over $10 million in financial investments toward combating systemic issues, culture change, and fandom growth and development.”
Hockey in Canada: Indigeneity, Ethnic/Racialized Minorities and the Nation
Lloyd L. Wong and Martine Dennie (Canadian Ethnic Studies Association) examine Canadians’ strong connection to their national sport. There is a strong sense of ownership over hockey by many in Canada, predominantly by those who are more privileged than most. The paper analyzes how that ownership has limited accessibility to the country’s most popular game for minorities.
Much of the discourse surrounding hockey in Canada argues that the sport unites the country from coast to coast, no matter your ethnic background. It is presumed that If you’re Canadian, hockey is a part of your identity. However, Wong and Dennie analyze why this is not true for many in Canada. The paper focuses on how minorities have been excluded from sharing in Canada’s national pastime for too long and what needs to happen to change that.
On March 18th, 2019, settler scholar Sam McKegney and Anishinaabe scholar Mike Auksi conducted an interview with Eugene Arcand at Queen’s University’s Isabelle Bader Centre in Kingston, Ontario in the territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Peoples. This paper recaps the interview and adds context.
Arcand, a residential school survivor, speaks about how hockey saved his life in residential schools but showed him how Indigenous people are “systemically erased” from the sport due to financial and cultural reasons. As a result, indigenous hockey players are not given the same opportunities as White players. If they are, they are racially abused by everyone, from the officials to the coaches.
Notably, Arcand discusses erasure because that applies to the professional levels of hockey and its relationship with Indigenous people. Canadian hockey has done a less than stellar job over the years of recognizing Indigenous players’ and coaches’ impact on the sport. Arcand says in the interview that Hockey Canada’s hierarchy is to blame: “We have colonial hierarchy in Hockey Canada. The worst in all the provincial hockey associations are the community hockey associations. They should be ashamed of themselves. Canadians say they love the sport and are treating children and families the way they do. It’s shameful. And it’s because they don’t have the courage to make those hard decisions that should be made: whether exclusionary or inclusionary.”
Hockey and The Black Experience
Bob Dawson, who in 2012 was recognized by the Black Ice Hockey and Sports Hall of Fame in Nova Scotia for his achievements in and contributions to hockey, has always been a historian of the game. Dawson goes over the history of elite black hockey players and how they have been mistreated in the sport for over a century.
Dawson created this presentation for the University of Windsor in 2018.
“I am the Black Hockey Player. I played through the cheap shots and chipped teeth. Stick slash and broke knee. I’m a throwback to guys like Carnegie and Willie O’Ree, Marson, McKegney, or Fuhr with the Fury. Even on blades, I blind you with the speed of an Anson Carter or Mike Greer, with the resilience built over 400 years. You could club me like Brashear, but still I persevere, after all I am the Black Hockey Player. “ – Anthony Bansfield (a.k.a. Nth Digri) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL-TyEeVoJA
Some say hockey is a game. And then there are others that say it’s more than just a game. According to Canadian writer Roch Carrier, “Hockey is the history of Canadians. The game reflects the reality of Canadians in its… ambitions, character, tensions and partnerships.”
For me, however, hockey provides an important lens for examining and interpreting the wider experience of blacks in the sport, which, by the way, they helped revolutionize through the pioneering innovations of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes with the “butterfly style of goaltending” and “slap shot” that predate the NHL. For more see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxoilndlXHU&feature=youtu.be and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2QZm8llvig. For the purpose of my presentation, I’ve decided to focus my comments on the NHL.