Dear Theoren Fleury, You might not know me, but I have watched you play since I was a child. Even though I was a Vancouver Canucks fan growing up, I was amazed by your competitiveness and skill despite your smaller physical stature. I was too young to truly understand why the Calgary Flames traded you…
By Alvin Ma I don’t know if there’s a better way to discuss Don Cherry than to provide a 6-minute Coach’s Corner-style stream of consciousness rambling and saying the following: “How much time do I have? Let’s roll this clip!” This Molson Bubba beer commercial featuring Cherry was launched a week after making controversial comments…
By Alvin Ma “Players from the Canadian Women’s Hockey League are in town!” reads the poster at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. It was CWHL Community Day, and numerous events were held around the National Capital Region the day before the championship game: a ball hockey clinic in front of the Canadian Tire…
By Alvin Ma “Teams descend on the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, the biggest stage of hockey.” This quote came from a World Cup of Hockey advertisement on the jumbotron but many similar messages came from the players and the organizers of the CWHL All-Star Game, held for the second consecutive season in Toronto. I’ve…
By Alvin Ma “Is this where I get off for the New York Islanders’ game?” I asked. The driver of the Nassau Inter-County Express bus route n43 responded, “Yes, to your right.” I stepped off the bus, checked the time (the bus had breezed through the 30 local stops and arrived to the closest stop…
By Alvin Ma “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” goes the saying by legendary commentator Foster Hewitt, whose name is engraved on the broadcast booth of the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. In order for this article to be written, I am grateful to the Canadian Women’s Hockey League media…
By Alvin Ma “It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A” goes the refrain of the famous Village People disco song. As someone studying sport policy, I decided to see if it’s true. What is the experience of a new visitor to a Toronto-area YMCA drop-in ball hockey program? Some students at an English language centre…
By Alvin Ma At a recent conference, I presented on Asians in my university’s kinesiology program and drew upon the “Proud Fathers” commercial from Tim Hortons (Mark Norman has also written about this commercial on this blog). Tim Hortons initially ran that ad during the 2006 Winter Olympics and followed up with another multicultural ad…
By Alvin Ma “It is one of the most disgusting, brutal parts of NHL hockey…it seems absurd, so why doesn’t it change?” By now, many people have seen or heard of the head injury that George Parros of the Montreal Canadians sustained in a fight on the opening night of the National Hockey League season.…
By Alvin Ma “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than…
Hockey in Society / Hockey dans la société 