Difficult conversations regarding hockey's 'toxic masculinity' continue at summit
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On just her fourth day on the job as Hockey Canada’s new president and CEO, Katherine Henderson was nearly moved to tears
At Hockey Canada’s inaugural Beyond The Boards Summit in Calgary this weekend, researcher Dr. Teresa Fowler presented a project where high-level male hockey players wrote what they felt the outside world perceived them as on the outside of a goalie mask, and then wrote how they actually felt on the inside.
“Boys will be boys, power, kings.” was written on the outside of one mask. On the inside: "pain, suicidal, need love." On another mask, the outside was inscribed, "smart, focused, money.” The inside read, "angry, unsure, bi."
“Looking at the reality of what young men hold inside of them and what they believe they need to display to the world is just not matching up with what’s going on inside them,” Henderson said after the two-day event concluded on Saturday. “I want that to stop. I just don’t think that any young athlete should be in that position where they can’t be their true self.”
Beyond the Boards The conference’s main focus was toxic masculinity and how it leads to other forms of discrimination in hockey, including racism, sexism, and homophobia. Fowler also presented findings about how young minor hockey players are when they first learn to adopt the locker room “code of silence” and how Canada’s pioneer and colonialist history have shaped the sport.
Hockey Canada board chair Hugh Fraser, former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy (now an advocate for safe sport), NHLPA agent Bayne Pettinger, Vancouver Canucks assistant general manager Emilie Castonguay and others shared their experiences with hockey culture and toxic masculinity.
Federal sports minister Carla Qualtrough spoke as well. Most levels of the sport, including the NHL, PWHL, IIHF, and CHL were represented at the two-day event, along with all 13 provincial and territorial governing bodies.
Hockey Canada’s chief operating officer Pat McLaughlin wanted participants to be taken out of their comfort zones and have uncomfortable conversations.
Bill Proudman, the cofounder of White Men as Full Diversity Partners, a diversity and inclusion consultancy, said there were other emotional moments during the closed-door sessions he led, including participants openly questioning their own prior behaviour and if those actions had been appropriate.
One hockey community member raised his hand during a session and asked how he could forgive himself for having grown up in a system through which he was guilty of mistreating people.
“I said, ‘Forgiveness first starts with looking yourself in the mirror and saying, ‘I did the best that I could in every waking moment of every waking day, and I can and will be better,’” said Proudman.
Hockey Canada has said there will be future summits that focus on other key areas the sport has to improve upon. McLaughlin also felt it was important to have key stakeholders physically in the same location, learning alongside one another.
“We want people to leave the summit with the recognition that there’s a lot to do but be able to identify some of the issues that need a lot of focus,” said Fraser. “There’s a willingness to change…we’ve listened to a lot of people that feel that things need to improve and that there are ways to make [the sport] safer. We’re prepared to take action.”
Qualtrough applauded Hockey Canada for hosting Beyond The Boards but emphasized that the two-day summit was just the first step in a long process.
“I think Hockey Canada is headed in the right direction, but there’s so much to say that we are not anywhere near the point of self-congratulation,” she said. “There’s a lot of governance changes that have to happen in sport. There’s a lot of culture change that has to happen in sport. Canadians have lost confidence in our sports leaders and our sports organizations and at this time of, kind of, turmoil in the country, we need to restore that confidence.”
Hockey in Canada is facing questions on both a macro and micro level regarding toxic masculinity and its effects.
The organization was heavily scrutinized for how it handled allegations of sexual abuse levied against members of the 2018 World Junior team, and a third-party report into that alleged incident has yet to be made public or sent to the government.
Henderson said the report is currently with a “third-party adjudicator” but did not offer a specific timeline beyond that. There is also the question of Hockey Canada’s authority over provincial and territorial governing bodies and accountability should new policies and rules not be followed or enforced.
On a more granular level, the sport has been criticized in the past for slow disciplinary processes when slurs are alleged to have been said during games or on the ice. Hockey Canada said it would take the findings from Beyond The Boards and may commission more research before changing its policies and guidelines on language and conduct in the locker room.
“One of our next steps may not be, ‘Here’s the recommendation,’” Henderson said. “One of our next steps might be [that] we need some more research into this area to figure out where are those places of vulnerability, where are those places those behaviours start to happen, so we can nip those things in the bud.”
At his keynote address, Kennedy spoke about how his five-year-old son recently told him he wants to play hockey.
“I’ve got to tell you,” he told the crowd before pausing. “My gut turned, and I don’t want that to happen. I want him to play hockey.”