Simon Kuper’s interesting take on the rise of soccer, and decline of hockey in Canada

February 1st, 2010 | by: Mike | Comments(2)

Every nation has shared moments – snaps to stick into the national photo album. For Americans there was the moon landing and, for the French, De Gaulle marching into Paris in 1944. For Canadians, many of such moments have come from ice hockey. Next month’s winter Olympics in Vancouver are supposed to provide another shared moment: if Team Canada make the men’s hockey final, experts expect the largest television audience in Canadian history.

Hockey is still Canada’s number one national symbol. But its dominance is starting to slip. Canadian television commercials ahead of the Olympics show rural hockey players flitting over frozen ponds. But a new Canada is emerging: one that prefers soccer.

Hockey is a way for Canadians to commune with their landscape, like the Swiss skiing or Americans watching basketball in air-conditioned malls. For generations, the men who pulled on Canada’s maple leaf jersey have been national ideals of masculinity: brave, mostly rural, unmistakably Canadian. Team Canada is so beloved, it even unites the “Two Solitudes” of French and English Canada. The team’s victory in the Olympic final of 2002 drew what, even now, is the country’s biggest ever television audience. When a survey last year asked 1,000 Canadians to name the most representative national symbols, hockey topped the list, well ahead of multiculturalism and free healthcare.

Yet many Canadians now feel hockey is under threat. Americans have lured some beloved Canadian clubs south, and the immigrants who pour into Canada rarely bother with the expensive sport. About a fifth of Canada’s population, and more than half of Toronto’s, was born abroad. Some of these people do fall for hockey – the legendary television programme Hockey Night in Canada also broadcasts in Punjabi – but most stick with soccer or even cricket. In Canada, once the last soccer-free zone on earth, you can now watch the sport non-stop on cable television. Many Canadians do.

The new soccer team Toronto FC last year averaged attendances of 20,344, about 1,000 more than the iconic Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Vancouver will acquire a Major League Soccer team next year. Montreal wants one too.

Even native-born Canadians are falling for globalisation’s favourite sport. Last December, for the first time, the website of The Globe and Mail newspaper crashed due to excess traffic – during the draw for the soccer World Cup. And a recent government handbook for immigrants ends a long paean to hockey with the stolid admission: “Soccer has the most registered players of any game in Canada.”

Hockey is still easily Canada’s favourite sport, cautions Jay Scherer, sports sociologist at the University of Alberta. However, many hockey fans worry that history is against them. They know that a Canada where hockey was just another sport would not quite be Canada. Stephen Harper, the conservative prime minister, always claims to be writing a book about hockey. It will detail “aspects of early professional hockey in the city of Toronto,” he has said. This sounds worryingly like a heritage project.

Visiting Toronto this winter, I left the streets full of frozen immigrants and ducked into the Hockey Hall of Fame. It was like visiting the past. On videos inside, giant farmboys with unadulterated Canadian accents eulogised legendary coaches. Practically everyone in the hall was white. As for today’s Team Canada, says Mr Scherer, “if you look at the faces, all but one are white. That stands in contrast to a lot of the changes in Canada.”

The Canadas of hockey and soccer should coexist more easily than French and English Canada have done. Occasionally an old hockey pundit derides unmanly soccer players, but many young Canadians love both sports. Hockey still fills the national photo album. But one day all of Canada will gather around the television for a soccer game.

It is interesting to hear an opinion from a foreigner, as it is clear that other nations recognize our passion for hockey, and our attempt in recent years to acknowledge the beautiful game of soccer. I believe our love for the sport is slowly evolving, and surely a qualification to a World Cup would only boost the chances of not only improving the dismal state of the CSA, but also creating a national unity different from hockey, where a whole nation can gather every 4 years and decorate our cities in Red and White. It is a change I’m hoping, and will possibly see in my lifetime.

(article courtesy ft.com, Simon Kuper)