The Best Game You Can Name

(But first, happy birthday to the best sister ever! Love you, Debra!)

I’ve been thinking about the Canadian dream. Well, a Canadian dream; I know there are lots. But the one I’m thinking of is one sold to us Canucks by everything from Tim Hortons to beer ads to Heritage Moments. It dekes and sings in made-in-Toronto movies; it jumps to its feet spilling its pint when Crosby scores on the screen above the bar; it wears a plaid suit and a yellow tie and has a dog named Blue; it’s murals in College TTC station, it’s shifting from skate to skate as you sing the national anthem, it’s yelling “Car!” and hauling the nets out of the way.

Funny that I should have started thinking about this Canadian dream, the one that tucks its jersey into the back of its pants, when I began writing this blog entry years ago, in the middle of South Kensington, London. But even outside Canada, it infused my life. I missed ball hockey on Thursdays and Fridays, power skating on Wednesdays, shinny on Sundays. I wished there was a rink nearby so I could practice.

I watched Score: A Hockey Musical on the plane on the way overseas, and it made me grin from ear to ear. And yet, even as I cheered the final scene with its chorus about the best game in the land, I felt in two parts.

The first part loves this game, loves cheering on “my” team*, loves learning more about stickhandling and crosscuts and positioning. It imagines slicing past two defense to flick the puck over the goalie’s shoulder, the red siren blaring as the crowd goes wild.

The second part says: wait. That dream can’t be my dream. Not because I’ll never be good enough to play pro hockey, which is true: I have yet to play at an intermediate or, god forbid, competitive level. Believe me, my imagination has no trouble ignoring my lack of various skills, happily pottering along on daydreams of writing the next bestseller, wowing famous people with one of my treasure hunts, or hip-checking a jerk twice my size into the boards.

But the stumbling blocks my imagination can’t ignore are things that are part of my identity, that make up who I am. And the piece of me that trips up my Canadian dream is this: I’m a woman.

I know there are women’s hockey teams. I know our gals won gold at the Vancouver Olympics. And I’m not saying that what they do isn’t worthwhile or exciting. But I think anyone who even cursorily follows the sport would have to admit that the atmosphere can’t compare to the amount of attention and excitement the nation focuses on men’s hockey.

I’m also not saying that women’s hockey and men’s hockey are equal in everything but attention. I can’t claim to know enough to go on about the differences at length, but they’re certainly there in important areas like funding, social encouragement, ice time, level of competition, and who knows what else.

Finally, I also don’t want to suggest that being a woman is the only social space that creates difficulties for hockey dreams. Far from it. Hockey’s an expensive sport that requires huge time commitments, making it difficult for people from certain backgrounds or walks of life to make time or budget for it. As if that weren’t enough, although many are working hard to change things, there are a lot more ways to be born that make navigating the sociocultural road to hockey tough than make it easy, and being a straight, white, cis-gendered, middle-class, Western, physically able woman like me is one of the easier ones.

But recently, pro hockey has started to give me the same not-for-me itchiness as watching great TV shows about men. Sure, it’s fun, and sure, I’ll keep watching, but when my diet consists of only this type of entertainment, I can’t help but feel like I’m replacing my dreams with other people’s.

I hate the feeling, because I love hockey, and I love the people I play it with. And being down on hockey, any part of it, feels like I’m denying my buddies their dreams, the same way around Christmas time I feel like I ruin the spirit of the season for others just by not actively taking part in it. Worse, I do it by not-being — by not-being male, by not-being Christian (secular or otherwise).

But at the same time, having something special ruined because not everyone experiences it the same way you do is the problem of the person having it ruined, not the person who is-not. The only way you can change what you are-not is by changing what you are, and that’s a steep price to pay because someone else’s enjoyment depends on how others perceive something instead of how they perceive it themselves.

And honestly, I don’t know how to end this blog entry, because I’m still conflicted. I really love hockey, including the stereotypically masculine competitiveness, posturing, and not-the-kind-on-the-ice power plays. I really love other things that are not as open toward women as they could be, like Sherlock Holmes adaptations, House M.D., and the Chronicles of Narnia.

In the end, my problem is finding ways to enjoy these things without losing sight of the ways they exclude me and others — without forgetting that they can be changed to accommodate new participants and audiences and that such changes are both possible and necessary. I’m a lot better at doing that with stories, since I’m used to re-writing or re-imagining the aspects that interest me to create something new. But how do you do that with an activity — and not just any activity, but one that’s so rooted in community and other people?

Right now, the best answer I can think of is first: to always be working to keep the dialogue open. To enjoy hockey for what it is while listening to the people on the team and at the game who don’t find the atmosphere welcoming or positive but would still like to play. To avoid shouting down the negative experiences of others or dismissing them as over-reactions. To be aware of whatever comfort I feel within the community being a privilege, not a given, and to try to maintain an environment where everyone is aware of their own comfort level and respectful of those of others.

But second, and most important: to keep on having fun. Because the solution to being presented with dreams that aren’t mine isn’t giving up on dreaming; it’s learning how to come right back with dreams of my own.

She shoots, she scores!

* Even if it sucks so bad that sometimes even the Leafs come out ahead of them.