REGIONALISM AND PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY

Submitted to The Lethbridge Herald for publication by Reginald W. Bibby, Deparment of Sociology, The University of Lethbridge, January 17, 1977. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: R. W. BIBBY

Reginald Bibby was born in and received his B.A. from the

University of , M.A. from the University of , and Ph.D. from

Washington State University (1974). He taught at York University in Toronto for one year prior to coming to Lethbridge, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. Professor Bibby is the author of a number of journal articles and is presently writing a series of papers based on his recent major national survey, "Project Canada: A Study of Deviance, Diversity, and Devotion in Canada." His current interests include Canadian Society and the Sociology of Sport. c c 1 "The best way you can help the manufacturers of Canada is to fill up the prairie regions of Manitoba and the Northwest with a prosperous and contented people who will be consumers of the manufactured goods of the east." -W.S. Fielding, Canadian Minister of Finance, turn of the century

In a very real sense, eastern Canadians continue to have a colonial

attitude towards the west. They assume, for example, that the most successful

people in a wide variety of occupations will sooner or later gravitate to Ontario

or Montreal. Thus the journalist, the broadcaster, the executive, the doctor,

the lawyer, and the professor who lusts after success feels the nagging pressure

to sooner or later abandon the boonies of the west and show one's peers that she

or he can cut it in the heavy traffic of the eastern big-time. Very significantly,

such a geographical move does not necessarily mean a higher income than that

possible in the west, but simply the need to move away from the colonies and

succeed among more advanced people.

This colonial mentality of easterners can further be seen in their tendency

to equate importance with that which transpires in their part of the world and

triviality with what happens elsewhere. A cursory peek at the cities from which

Canadian Press stories originate makes it clear that those things perceived as

important in Toronto and to a lesser extent Montreal are those things deemed worthy.of sharing with the rest of Canada. In disseminating research findings,

I quickly discovered that the path to media exposure begins in Toronto; if

Toronto believes, the word will be spread across the land.

But the most disturbing aspect of this eastern domination of the minds of

the folks out here is not that the easterners try to pull it off—it's the fact

that with the generous assistance of some of our own kind, namely, the media,

they usually succeed.

In recent years, a prime example of the dominance of eastern over western mind is an area dear to the heart of every true Canadian—professional hockey. c ( 2

As a young boy growing up in Edmonton, I watched players such as ,

Norm Ullman, Eddie Joyal, and Bruce MacGregor move through the Edmonton minor hockey program to the junior Oil Kings and then the minor professional Flyers of the old Western League. There I saw them joined by the likes of ,

Keith Allen, , , and . I remember well the bewilderment I felt in those days when these future NHL stars were called up by the parent . Edmonton, I soon learned, was allegedly too small a city to afford these players, who seemed to disappear into another world seen only through the sports page and the radio. Prestige hockey was the pre­ rogative of only six North American cities, Toronto and Montreal among them.

And then in 1967 an important thing happened—this exclusivistic sextet decided they would like a piece of the rich U.S. TV revenue melon, and accordingly added six more teams, all American and all strategically selected with television in mind. By the early ’70s the NHL numbered 18 teams, with the

Canadian entries now up to three, following the reluctant admission of .

TV priorities, however, had resulted in the bypassing of the likes of Quebec City,

Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Ottawa in favour of hockey-mad areas such as

Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Washington.

With little hope of getting into the NHL, four Canadian cities—Edmonton,

Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Ottawa—decided in 1972 to do the next best thing: become part of a new major league which would compete with the NHL. When the laughter died dowm, the teams from those four cities skated onto the ice along with eight American partners, forming the .

One would like to think that such a gallant and financially risky attempt on the part of those western centers would have been greeted with enthusiasm and support by the Prairie sporting fraternity. At last the possibility was there— major league hockey, an opportunity to keep the best and recruit the best. And clearly such a venture, with its important implications for publicity of the 3

Canadian cities involved, community identification with the teams, and the

economy of the cities called for government interest and even support, notably

through the publicly-owned CBC.

The league is now in the midst of its fifth season. Its struggle for

survival has been a difficult one, -but the league lives on with four Canadian « entries—Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Quebec City.

The WHA has shown a degree of permanence. Further^ its high quality has been demonstrated in international competition and exhibition games with the NHL,

as well as the comparable contributions players moving between the two leagues

appear to make to their two teams. Most important, the league has given these

four Canadian cities an opportunity to compete for the best hockey players in

the world. There need no longer be subordination to Toronto and Montreal and a

small number of eastern U.S. cities.

However, the hesitation of the Canadian public to widely accept the major

league status of the new league, as well as the difficulty the league has had in

generating its own stars, should hardly come as a surprise. Apart from the

actual product, social perception is highly dependent upon the extent and nature

of media exposure. The WHA has been blessed neither with adequate exposure nor positive coverage, which brings me back to where I began—eastern Canadian

domination of the Canadian mind.

The east’s vested interests, of course, have never been with the WHA, but

rather with the NHL. Consequently, news releases from the east since the inception

of the WHA have given excessive attention to the NHL, continuing to portray the

older league as "bigger-than-life." A key perpetrator of pro-NHL propaganda has been The Toronto Globe and Mail with the generous assistance of Toronto lawyer

Alan Eagleson, who just happens to head up the NHL Players’ Association. The

Globe and Mail has shown a remarkable penchant for creating news via Eagleson 4 whenever the sports schedule is slack—watch Tuesdays, for example.

The Toronto-based, privately-owned CTV network has hardly given undue

attention to the WHA in view of the Toronto-Montreal market factor. Yet given

that CTV does have outlets in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg, its emphasis on

the to the exclusion of the western teams has on occasion bordered on arrogant obscurantism. Recently after the Russian national team had barely defeated the in an exciting international exhibition game witnessed by a record 16,000 people in Edmonton, CTV’s "Canada AM" sports segment merely mentioned the score and proceeded to show the nation highlights of the

previous night’s game in Toronto between the Leafs and that awesome power to the

south, the Colorado Rockies.

Perhaps most unfair to -the league and the three western franchises

specifically has been the failure of the CBC to divorce itself from the NHL—

or at least consent to a polygamous marriage by inviting the WHA into the royal

chamber. The CBC continues to subsidize professional hockey in Toronto, Montreal,

and Vancouver, while giving Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Quebec City nary a

dime. Through its weekly "Hockey Night In Canada" telecast the CBC perpetuates

the outdated myth of NHL exclusivisity, not so much as mentioning WHA scores

involving Canadian teams. Even more distasteful is the fact that a new postscript

to the "Hockey Night" production entitled, "Overtime," and purporting to bring

fans up-to-date with professional and amateur happenings in Canada, pretends that

no WHA exists. Three television screens form the set, with the respective captions

"Toronto," "Montreal," and "Vancouver" proclaiming to viewers where the hockey that

counts is played in this country. Preposterously, the. day the show made its debut

the WHA's had handed the mighty Russian national team one of its worst defeats ever right in Quebec City, yet no mention of the game was made on the

CBC show. This continuing alliance of the CBC with three Canadian cities while C ( 5

thumbing another four—three of which are on the Prairies—is unpardonable. That

fans and sports commentators in the west remain glued to "Hockey Night in Canada" without responding to such blatant regional favouritism is a travesty no less

inexcusable.

Ideally enlightened, perceptive sports media personnel would be sensitive

to such things as the social and geographical sources of what is deemed news­ worthy, the powerful influence of media in shaping public perception, the inter­

action between the sports world and the economic and political spheres, and the

role sports plays in defining communities and their relative power and significance.

Unfortunately the sports fraternity is all too often excessively preoccupied with

scores and measurements. One only needs to compare radio, TV, and newspaper

items to conclude that announcers and writers regurgitate Canadian Press and

other wire service releases, usually without comment or conscientious edit.

It is therefore indeed strange but not at all surprising to. find that some

of the most cynical and negative responses to the Prairies’ quest for big-time

hockey has come from, of all people, the Prairie sports media. While media

support of the Jets has been relatively strong in Winnipeg since the birth of the

team, the skepticism and even antagonism in Edmonton and Calgary through the

current season has been flagrantly evident. The Edmonton Journal seemingly was

determined to destroy the Edmonton Oiler franchise during the 1975-76 season, and

only recently has given the team and the league favourable copy. During the WHA’s

maiden season, one well-known Calgary sportscaster flogged the Association as

"a minor league." One prominent Calgary sportswriter couldn’t comprehend why

Edmonton would construct a 16,000 seat arena when they couldn’t fill the antiquated

5,200 seat Edmonton Gardens, and at another point chastised the Aeros for

drafting the Howes, seeing it as a cheap publicity stunt on the part of a league

which was "whistling past the graveyard."

Now with Calgary in the league, media coverage in the foothills city continues to be skeptical, occasionally cynical, and hardly reflective of the

existence in town of a major league club. Even on nights when Calgary’s WHA

entry plays at home, the CBC outlet regularly commences its sportscasts by

offering Calgarians NHL scores, turning secondarily to the results of the

Cowboys’ game. A station such as CFCN, along with the CBC, commonly draws on

the abundant, Toronto-made, network film features, contributing to the bigger-

than-life image of members of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Needless to say, the

Toronto media types do not return the favour with respect to the .

In a smaller Prairie city like Lethbridge, the sportswriters and sports­

casters constantly put the knock on the WHA with a peculiar sadistic delight. No special attention is accorded Calgary or Edmonton, with newspaper statistical summaries and, usually, lead ^adio and TV hockey items limited to the NHL.

There is far more at stake here than the mere survival of a professional hockey league. I could care less about the WHA per se. What is of central importance to western Canadians is that three of their largest cities are attempting to assert equal status with other major North American cities—to cease functioning as a colonial-like hinterland which serves and adulates the east. The tragedy is that the very institutions which are capable of making such a possibility a reality—the government and the media—have been the league’s worst enemies. As I quipped to an anti-WHA Lethbridge reporter recently, when the media and fans in bars across the country tip their glasses to the demise of the WHA, forgive me if I don't raise mine. Somehow’ that death will represent a dream never understood, a possibility strangely sabotaged by an alliance of friend and foe.