The Canadian Inferiority Complex, as Expressed Through Hockey by Boogaard, Rypien and Belak

This has been a horrible summer for the National Hockey League. Three of its players known primarily for their pugilistic talents -- Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak -- died over the last few months under circumstances that call into question the continued need for fighting in the NHL. The howls from certain people in the public have grown only louder for rules to be changed to ban players from dropping the gloves during a hockey game.

You're probably wondering why I would write a blog entry on this situation. After all, most of my commentary focuses on the political realm or on the art form I practice. In fact, like most Canadian kids I was raised with the notion that hockey is one of the things that defines us as a people. So from that perspective, talking about hockey is intensely political -- especially when the topic is fighting.

From Don Cherry on down there is a large, predominantly Canadian, faction within the NHL sphere who will not countenance a league without fighting. However, as Jack Todd writes, most fights in the league are now set pieces that have little or nothing to do with the actual flow of the action, as fights once did in a bygone era. They are nothing but interruptions, brutish sideshows, and increasingly dangerous ones at that.

The Neanderthals who would keep fighting in the NHL try to argue it's intrinsic to the nature of the game. They espouse the ridiculous notion that people come to games for the fights, they are entertaining, and without them the game will lose its edge. Despite the fact that other equally fast, strength-dependent, violent sports like rugby and football thrive without fighting, and that the international game and the Stanley Cup playoffs get along excellently without fisticuffs, these NHL tall foreheads refuse to listen to reason, or join the rest of us in looking for root causes for the alarming rate at which former and present players are being damaged by injuries such as concussions and fight-related trauma. 

I could write a seriously long entry on all the intricacies of this issue, because it bothers me that much, but let me say this: the way we Canadians view hockey is, in a sense, a reflection of the way we view ourselves. 

For decades, we have suffered from something of an inferiority complex. Canada has never been able to exercise primary policy-shaping influence in world affairs. We have existed as a middle power neighbouring a superpower, and that has played upon our national psyche for a long time. We have always looked for approval from our "big brothers" on the international stage -- first France, then Britain, and now the United States. We have been forced through the dual accidents of history and geography to literally hack an existence out of the wilderness while sleeping next to a proverbial elephant. The society that emerged from this combination of ruggedness and neighbour envy produced a sport for the world -- hockey -- that perfectly reflects this personality.

But times have changed. We no longer need to instigate a fight with others to make ourselves feel bigger, or to catch the attention of our southern neighbours. Canada has enough going for it to gain plaudits for a variety of laudable reasons. In the same way hockey has become an international athletic staple, played at a high level in dozens of countries and recognized as one of the world's great team sports, the originator nation of that game has come over time to stand on its own, independent of past colonial entanglements and respected as an important player on the global stage. 

We as Canadians must relieve ourselves of childish things for we are no longer children. It is grown men who are suffering as the result of the NHL's infantile approach to head injuries and fighting in the league, and these men are orphaning actual children in the vacuum created by league inaction. The NHL claims fans want this paradigm to continue. It's time for all of us to maturely state this is no longer tolerable.

As the originators of the game, and as a mature society, it's on us to demand an end to the suffering.