Memory, Modernity, and the City: An Interpretive Analysis of Montreal and Toronto’s Respective Moves From Their Historic Professional Hockey Arenas by Lisa Anne Gunderson A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2004 © Lisa Anne Gunderson 2004 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to understand how and if the popular claims that hockey is an integral part of the culture in Toronto and Montreal are referenced, oriented to, and/or negotiated in everyday life. Taking the cases of the moves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens from Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum, respectively, the thesis asks: What can these similar cases tell us about the culture of the cities in which they occurred and, if it is possible, in what ways can the culture of the cities (as a shaping force) be made recognizable in the discourse generated in, around, and by the moves? The perspective taken is a "radical interpretive" approach, involving a critical blend of interpretive theories and methodologies – including semiology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical analysis – that aim to reflexively question the themes that the cases themselves bring to light. The thesis thus concerns itself with issues of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity as well as the concomitant questions of identity, commitment to place, and practical social action in the modern city. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to gratefully acknowledge the tremendous contributions of a number of individuals on my behalf throughout the process of my work on this thesis. First, I must thank Dr. Jim Curtis, who, as both a member of my committee and in his unofficial capacity as graduate student mentor, provided much-needed encouragement and advice on numerous occasions. Secondly, I thank Dr. Rick Helmes-Hayes, whose thoughtful and perceptive readings of initial drafts of this work helped me immeasurably by making me both question and refine my ideas. I extend thanks as well to the sociology department’s graduate secretary, Ilona Kosa, whose kindness and generosity of spirit are evident in everything she does, including all the administrative and personal help she gave me during my two-plus years in Waterloo. I thank also my family and friends, whose love and support made the journey both possible and so much more enriching than it would otherwise have been. Finally, I thank my supervisor, Dr. Kieran Bonner, whose gifts as a teacher and theorist first inspired my love of sociology as a first-year undergraduate student, and for whom my respect and admiration continue to grow. Thank you, Kieran, for allowing me to ‘learn by degrees to endure the sight of being.’ iv DEDICATION For Mom and Dad. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction ……………………………………………………….……… 1 Chapter Two: Literature Review….………………………………………………….… 14 a) Hockey and the Canadian City i.) Nationalism ii.) Americanization iii.) Globalization b) Social Theory and the City i.) The Political Economy of the City ii.) Interpreting the City Chapter Three: Theory and Method…………………………………………………….. 37 a) Radical Interpretive Sociology i.) Semiology ii.) Phenomenology iii.) Hermeneutics iv.) Analytic Theory b) Data Collection i.) The Use of Case ii.) Lived Experience, Archive Research, and Phenomenological Methods Chapter Four: Before the Moves…………………………………….….………………. 57 a) The Cases: Montreal (1989-1996) and Toronto (1995-1999) i.) Montreal ii.) Toronto b) Gadamer’s Conception of “The Game” c) Hockey Arena Mystique Chapter Five: Moving Ceremonies…………………………………….………….……. 82 a) Outlining the Cases i.) Montreal ii.) Toronto b) Ceremonies and Rituals iii.) The Political Economy of Ceremony iv.) The Hockey Scene v.) Commemoration c) Hockey Arenas in Place and Space vi d) Particularities of Case in Montreal and Toronto i. Montreal: The Language Issue ii. Toronto: The Problem of Commemorative Recognition Chapter Six: Aftermath…………………………………………………………...…… 111 a) The Habitable City and its Places b) Nostalgia: Desire for the Lost Past c) Postmodernism and the Consumer Relation to Place d) Nihilism, Commitment, and Practical Social Action Chapter Seven: Conclusions……………………………………………………...…… 140 a) Montreal b) Toronto Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 159 vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION One of the abiding Canadian legends is about the special relationship that this country has with its ‘national pastime,’ the game of hockey. That is, the claim has often been made throughout this nation that Canadians share a unique and specific kind of attachment to the game itself. While this special relationship to hockey is claimed throughout Canada, it has historically and culturally been captured to a great degree by the cities of Montreal and Toronto. Both of these cities have taken the game - and particularly their respective professional hockey teams – as a kind of avatar into which they have poured their local mythologies, histories, traditions, and symbols. Even a cursory review of the popular literature and newspaper articles reveals that both the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs are commonly thought of as integral aspects of the cities’ respective identities. In a phenomenological sense, these sentiments are taken for granted; they are part of what Husserl called the “lifeworld” of people in Montreal and Toronto. It is this idea that first interested me in this topic. It is commonly known that both of these cities have a particularly strong and unique orientation to hockey and to their teams especially. However, this claim contains an implicit and generally unasked line of questioning: what does the claim of a strong bond between hockey and the Canadian city mean in terms of the culture of these cities? What is the nature of this bond? How has hockey become linked to the cultural identities of Toronto and Montreal? In what ways? More generally, what is the relation of a hockey team to its city, and what can we learn about a city through its hockey team? It was these questions that I had in mind as I began my work on this thesis, which comes as a result of my involvement with The Culture of Cities: Berlin, Dublin, 1 Montreal, Toronto. This is a SSHRC-funded, multi-university and international project which takes the city as its central focus of interest. Culture of Cities collaborators see “the city as an object of analysis from the perspective of culture. An object in this sense is not intended as a concrete ‘thing’ but (sociologically) as a distinction that exercises in varied ways a vital force in the lives of people” (Culture of Cities Midterm Report: 6). Therefore, researchers on this project have been afforded an opportunity to see cities – in all their numerous and varied landscapes, communities, and ‘scenes’ – as having a “unique identity” (6). Such an identity is created among the city’s members as a commonplace and taken-for-granted dialectical activity – a back-and-forth of shared, negotiated, contested, and accepted meanings. This is the concern of the above reference to the city as a ‘vital force’ in the lives of its citizens in the sense that it is the city – its presence, its multiplicity of perspectives, and the structural and meaningful identities that it creates – that inherently shapes the conversation. Researchers for the Culture of Cities Project “assume that this ‘living dialectic’ as reflected in the creativity of social practices, requires in its turn, a creative methodology commensurate with such an image of the vitality of the city” (6). The method most generally employed is the deep and critical reflection upon a particular case study, particularly where such a case offers the researcher a vivid contestation between two opposing perspectives on living in the world and more specifically in the city. In Blum’s words: The research undertaken by the Culture of Cities Project searches for critical occasions or case studies that bring to view in various ways concerted collective engagements with this question of the common bond of the city, questioning that tacitly includes consideration of how the city is the same and the other, is the same by virtue of being other than the others (2001: 10). 2 Thus the Culture of Cities Project is interested in the concept of ‘the city’ as both an archetypal construct (i.e. all cities are the same because they share certain characteristics), and as a potentially unique emplaced entity that absorbs and portrays all the specificity of locality. Through this use of the case, the claim that a city has specificity, that there is such a thing as a ‘common bond’ shared between its citizens, is brought to light. As such, this claim to a specific culture (which is sometimes posited by people in the city, including many people involved in the Maple Leaf and Canadiens cases) can be pursued and explored. As well, it is in the dialogue that occurs between interlocutors in cases where there is a direct engagement with an issue or ideology that the city makes problematic that is most effective in making visible (or, in the language of the Culture of Cities Project, ‘material’) the specificity of the city. Thus, we can say that the methodology is qualitative rather than quantitative, and more than that, it is interpretive. While the term ‘interpretive’ is generally thought of in sociological circles as denoting a theoretical orientation to the social world, the following work is based upon the concept that theory and method are inextricably intertwined (Bonner, 1997; 2001). As such, a large portion of the methodology is reflexivity, the deep and thoughtful application of theory to a particular question about the world.