How Canadian Ice Hockey Reflects, Defines Male Canadian Identity

Ice hockey has long been a significant part of Canada's national identity, serving as a rallying point for far more than sports (Gruneau & Whitson 273). While ice hockey has certainly played the usual function of sports, including serving as a way for physical skill to be displayed and physical energy to be discharged and bringing communities together around a common interest and exciting their enthusiasm through competition, the sport has been assumed to be somehow essentially Canadian (Gruneau & Whitson 273). Ice hockey, first of all, requires certain climatic conditions, whether played indoors, as in a professional game, or outdoors. The game, fast and rough, requires exceedingly good hand-eye coordination, swiftness, and, above all, physical, mental, and psychological toughness, the last trait being one which most Canadians aspire to embody.

Although it is undeniable that both professional and amateur ice hockey teams have a substantial female fan base, there is something about the participation, observation, and ritualization of the sport that has been almost exclusively and unapologetically masculine. Gruneau and Whitson contend that the masculinization of the sport has had at least two negative consequences for Canadians. First, it has created a culture of aggressive men who believe that skill and strength are displayed through physical action. Second, it has assumed that there is no rightful place for women within the sport, particularly on the ice. As women have struggled and fought to earn a place on the ice, Gruneau and Whitson note, the traditional ice hockey culture has felt threatened.

Gruneau and Whitson write that there has been "endless discussion about the kind of common culture and Canadian identity that best identifies the"national interest and the nature of the way in which we" imagine and create a "national community" (273). The readings included in this course have substantiated that ice hockey has certainly played a significant role in that "endless discussion" and in the formation and sustenance of a national identity; however, the texts have also alluded to the fact that emerging variables and changing traditions may ultimately decenter ice hockey as the primary interest and past-time that binds people together. There are two variables, in particular, that portend changes in the future of ice hockey with respect to the function it plays as a social adhesive and marker of Canadian national identity. As women make their mark on a traditionally masculine sport, thus changing the gender dynamics of the game in terms both of who plays it and who watches it, the exclusivity of the old-boys' club of ice hockey may be threatened, potentially changing the very construction of gender in the country (Etue & Williams 6). Secondly, as sports become less about the celebration of athleticism and national identity and more a vehicle of corporate commercialism (Silver 22), the meaning of this traditionally Canadian sport is likely to become diluted.

Women, though, are not likely to withdraw from the ice now that they have taken their position on it (Etue & Williams 7). Women are developing a rapidly increasing fan base of their own, and are changing the traditional perception that ice hockey is exclusively for men. As women's teams continue to increase in popularity, Canadians will be forced to confront through the lens of their national sport critical gender issues that will impact the society at large. Women's transition from the position of marginalized spectator to that of professional sports star or rabid fan represents a radical shift for the traditional Canadian ice hockey culture. At this point, women's hockey is still a bit too young to offer a thorough assessment of the consequences it has had in Canadian culture, but this variable, along with the next one to be discussed, stand to dampen the sport's popularity as a symbol of national identity.

A second variable that is changing, and which will continue to change, the role of ice hockey in the construction of Canadian identity is the corporatization and commercialization of the sport (Gruneau & Whiston 35; Silver 9). The seizure of the sport by corporate interests, whether at the level of the franchise, as Silver explains, or at the level of powerful and insistent advertisers with deep pockets, is changing the spectators' ability to devote all of their viewing attention to the game. At the franchise level, the politicking that leads to the constitution, fragmentation, and dissolution of teams affects the fan base and their interest in the sport significantly. Imagine, for instance, what happens if one's favorite team is disbanded or moved to another province. Fans recognize that "their" sport has been corrupted, to a certain extent, by franchise owners and other moneyed interests, who have clearly demonstrated that they do not care about Canadian national identity and the role that ice hockey plays in propping it up; instead, their concern is money, which is about self-gain, not national unity.

Advertising is another serious threat to the traditional function that ice hockey plays in constructing and sustaining national identity in Canada. The spectator's attention, whether he is rink-side or watching from a bar or the comfort of his home, is distracted and fragmented by constant interruptions, presented in the form of imperatives or appeals about other consumer goods that are portrayed as just as constitutive of Canadian identity as ice hockey itself. Molson beer, for example, is just one of the many products that manufacturers and marketers are piggy-backing on ice hockey in order to leverage the sport's traditional power as a marker of national identity to associate the product with that same notion. Molson has developed an entire series of print and electronic media advertisements that directly acknowledge the role of ice hockey in Canadian society, a blatant attempt to boost sales and to make the relationship between a national sport and a commercial product a seemingly natural one. It is worth noting that Molson has also developed an advertising campaign that is specific to women's hockey, an acknowledgment that the variable discussed earlier is clearly changing the sport, too.

For years, ice hockey has been considered the national sport of Canada, and despite the intentional and unconscious exclusionary practices of this position, particularly with respect to gender and race, the sport has been a means for Canadians to construct and defend a national identity that is uniquely their own, setting them apart from their closest neighbors. In recent years, however, various threats to this historic position of ice hockey have emerged and are changing the face and the function of the sport with respect to national identity. Although both of the main changes-the entry of women's teams onto the national ice hockey scene and the saturation of spectators' attention with advertisements and commercial conflicts-are too new to permit one to predict definitively what will happen to ice hockey in Canada, what one can say with confidence is that Canadians-and sooner, rather than later-will be confronted with the necessity to re-evaluate the position of this sport and its function in the construction and maintenance of Canadian national identity. Works Cited

Etue, Elizabeth, and Megan K. Williams. On the Edge: Women Making Hockey History. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press, 1996.

Gruneau, Richard, and David Whitson. Hockey Night in Canada: Sport Identities and Cultural Politics. Toronto, ON: Garamond Press, 1994.

Silver, Jim. Thin Ice: Money, Politics, and the Demise of an NHL Franchise. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 1996.