The National Hockey League (NHL) occupies a solid mental space in the consciousness of the Canadian public. As a hyper-capitalist, megametropolitan sports cartel, which is not without its labour difficulties, it has been naturalized as the premiere hockey league in North America and probably the entire world. On Saturday nights from October to June in Canada, millions tune their televisions simultaneously to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) during the hockey season to watch oversized and unnaturally strong men skate swiftly, pass precisely, and score smartly. In all likelihood, some will engage in fisticuffs. The success of the league was not...

The Shamrock Hockey Club (HC) of Montreal is usually referred to as theIrishhockey team offin de siècleMontreal. The success of the Shamrocks, Stanley Cup winners in 1899 and 1900, is often pointed to as proof positive of the diffusion of the sport of hockey away from its elitist Anglo-Protestant roots at McGill College (now McGill University) in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Shamrocks also represent an evolution away from the elite-level amateur Anglo-Protestant clubs of the city, the Montreal HC (affiliated with the legendary Montreal Amateur Athletic Association [Montreal AAA]) and the Victoria...

It is hard to conceive of a more important crucible for national identity formation than military conflict. Nation-state formation is often connected to violent revolution or military conflict with other nations. Even when national survival is not at stake, war may figure prominently in national mythologies. Canadian national identity formation is often seen as having suffered the absence of such a formative conflict, a clear break point provided by an American-, French- or Russian-style revolution that dated independence and began the national myth.¹ This void has been filled with a national narrative based on the gradual acquisition of ‘peace, order...

Canadians are inundated with images and representations of hockey.¹ Reinforced by daily visual reminders, such as the sentimental scene on our five-dollar bill, ice hockey, and the mythology surrounding the sport, is deeply intertwined with Canada’s national identity and the concept of ‘Canadianness.’ Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, Michael Robidoux argues that ‘the task of defining a national identity is a creative process that requires constructing a shared history and mythology(ies) that best suit the identityimaginedby those few responsible for responding to this task.’² Through an ongoing process of negotiating what it means to be Canadian,...

Contrary to some popular opinion that hockey violence is growing worse, violence has been a central part of hockey culture for more than a century. David Seglins argues that from the game’s beginnings to today, ‘violent forms of hockey have been tolerated, legitimized, ritualized and at times celebrated by players, fans, organizers, commentators and the Canadian state.’ Since the late nineteenth century, violence in hockey has been accepted ‘as just part of the game.’¹ Lawrence Scanlan writes, ‘My overwhelming impression from reading the literature, from hearing the testimony of players from the early to mid-1900s, and from poring over news...

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been characterized as a relatively volatile period of change and accommodation for Canadian sport where various groups attempted to influence how sport ought to be experienced. Individuals and groups who represented differing views of how and for whom sport should be organized asserted their beliefs on issues ranging from who should control sport to the place of female athletes at all levels of physical recreation. These differences often resulted in incidents of confrontation and conflict.¹ In addition, historians who have examined these and other developments within Canadian sport have often focused primarily...

Professional hockey emerged from elite-level amateur hockey at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a new model of organization in the business of hockey, professional hockey went through a period of growing pain and opportunities until the mid-1920s. Local businessmen who had the entrepreneurial spirit and/or connection with elite-level amateur hockey struck out to establish leagues across the northern part of the North American continent. In 1904 the International Hockey League, based in the northern Michigan peninsula, first proclaimed its status as a professional league. By the early 1910s several professional leagues operated in Canada, which, by that time,...