In the Midst of a Reckoning? Addressing Canadian National Identity and Men’s Hockey Culture

In 2022, reporters broke a story of potential sexual assault and cover-up in Canada’s national game. The story — which alleged that members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior Hockey team may have sexually assaulted a woman during a victory celebration in London, ON — spread throughout the nation, becoming one of the most important news items of the year. For the first time in memory, various national actors moved from seeing men’s and boys’ hockey violence as the actions of a few bad apples to understanding it as a systemic issue. Many in the nation declared that something was wrong with men’s and boys’ hockey culture as a whole. Talk shows devoted segments to discussing how to fix the game. Parliamentary committees called Hockey Canada and the Canadian Hockey League to hearings to discuss their role in perpetuating this problematic culture. In this talk, I will outline the complexity of troubles in men’s hockey culture, arguing that the sport’s historic and contemporary ties to the nation have done important work in securing normative forms of masculinity.

Hosted by the Working Group on Feminist Governance in Times of Crisis, this talk will raise questions about what it means when a nation celebrates these forms of masculinity and what messages that sends about whose bodies matter in the national imaginary. The talk will open space to discuss how those tied to such national symbols might resolve this issue in ways that better represent a diversity of bodies and voices within the nation.