Canada's Game: Hockey and Identity

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Contributors include Julian Ammirante (Laurentian University at Georgian), Jason Blake (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Robert Dennis (Queen's University), Jamie Dopp (University of Victoria), Russell Field (University of Manitoba), Greg Gillespie (Brock University), Richard Harrison (Mount Royal College), Craig Hyatt (Brock University), Brian Kennedy (Pasadena City College), Karen E.H. Skinazi (University of Alberta), and Julie Stevens (Brock University). From the book: The Giller Prize-winning author, David Adams Richards, tells a humorous anecdote from his days as a writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick - Fredericton. It was in 1984, on the day after Team Canada had defeated the hated Soviet national team 3 to 2 in overtime and, a committed hockey fan, he was dying to chat with someone, anyone, about the great victory the night before. The first person he encountered was a young English professor, a good but perhaps pretentious scholar who had once been overheard saying that she could not see how anyone could live without reading Henry James. Despite her erudition, like Richards she was from small-town New Brunswick, and because of this, he thought, she must be a hockey fan. "Did you see the game last night?" No, she replied, "we don't have a television ... don't approve of it," but continued on saying that her husband had been eager to find out the result that morning on the radio. "He's heartbroken," she said. "We were going for the Russians." Richards' face displayed his bewilderment at her treasonous statement. "Well we both hate Gretzky, you see." Her accent now turned slightly British ..". he's just such a Canadian." She smiled. He paused, uncomfortably, and then asked her: "You hate greatness ... or just Canadian greatness?" Contents Acronyms Introduction: Canada’s Game? Hockey and the Problem of Identity PART ONE: COMMUNITY, REGION, NATION: HOCKEY AND THE CONTEXTS OF IDENTITY 1 Big Liners and Beer Gardens: The Port Arthur Bear Cats, Shamateurism, and the Selection Controversy Surrounding Canada’s 1936 Olympic Hockey Team 2 Are Americans Really Hockey’s Villains? A New Perspective on the American Influence on Canada’s National Game 3 Confronting a Compelling Other: The Summit Series and the Nostalgic (Trans)Formation of Canadian Identity PART TWO: FORGING IDENTITY THROUGH FICTION 4 “Just part of the game”: Depictions of Violence in Hockey Prose 5 Win Orr Lose: Searching for the Good Canadian Kid in Canadian Hockey Fiction 6 The Mystery of a Canadian Father of Hockey Stories: Leslie McFarlane’s Break Away from the Hardy Boys PART THREE: BUYING AND SELLING IDENTITIES: HOCKEY AS COMMODITY 7 “There’s more people here tonight than at a first night of the Metropolitan”: Professional Hockey Spectatorship in the 1920s and 1930s in New York and Toronto 8 Between a Puck and a Showpiece: Spectator Sport and the Differing Responses to Hockey (and Its Absence) in Canada and the United States – A Canadian Poet Looks at the Fate of the Game 9 Forever Proud? The Montreal Canadiens’ Transition from the Forum to the Molson Centre 10 Manufacturing Players and Controlling Sports: An Interpretation of the Political Economy of Hockey and the 2004 NHL Lockout References Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z