Sporting settlers: Brett Pardy, ‘The White Settler Imagination of Hometown Hockey’, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 53, 3, 2021, pp. 103-120 | settler colonial studies blog

Sporting settlers: Brett Pardy, ‘The White Settler Imagination of Hometown Hockey’, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 53, 3, 2021, pp. 103-120

03Dec21

Abstract: Rogers Hometown Hockey emotionally regulates and expresses sports fandom through colonial logics. The program’s pre- and post-NHL game segments tell stories of a nation where “small” towns build the right character to create elite hockey players (and assumes that this is the peak of Canadian accomplishment) and is “proof” they also create the ideal citizen. Using Sara Ahmed’s (2004) concept of affective economies and data collected from a season of Hometown Hockey broadcast, I argue that it invests hockey, traditionally a warm affect for many Canadians, with the colonial myth of the white settlers’ struggle to make a life for themselves in the untamed wilderness. Rare episodes which deal with racism (almost always in the past) are linked to a current or recent NHL player’s appearance on the show. Anyone can play hockey, but the very act of playing hockey is presented on Hometown Hockey as proof that the white settler state is heartwarmingly “good” at its core. The emotional investment in this mythic past creates negative emotional reactions in many settlers to ideas of decolonization. By presenting hockey in this way on TV, it politicizes the sport to make imagining a better nation difficult.

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