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 Edmonton and received his B.A. from the University of Alberta, M.A. from the University of Calgary, 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 Johnny Bucyk, 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 Vic Stasiuk, Keith Allen, Al Arbour, Glenn Hall, and Bronco Horvath. I remember well the bewilderment I felt in those days when these future NHL stars were called up by the parent Detroit Red Wings. 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 Vancouver. 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 World Hockey Association. 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 Toronto Maple Leafs to the exclusion of the western teams has on occasion bordered on arrogant obscurantism. Recently after the Russian national team had barely defeated the Edmonton Oilers 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 Quebec Nordiques 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.