#ElbowsUp: Why have Canadians chosen hockey as the symbol of our national unity?

Ainsley Hawthorn · for CBC News

· Posted: Mar 29, 2025 5:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Faced with American tariffs and threats of annexation, Canadians person been using hockey arsenic a mode to explicit our discontent.

Canadian fans person booed The Star-Spangled Banner astatine NHL games, and Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk — performing O Canada earlier the Canada-U.S. last astatine the 4 Nations Face-Off connected Feb. 20 — changed the lyric "in each of america command" to "that only us command" arsenic a protestation against American expansionism.

That 4 Nations last lucifer became a benignant of surrogate for the governmental struggle between our 2 countries.

The crippled was 1 of the most-watched successful North American past and, erstwhile Canada won, the celebrations had a chiseled nationalist edge.

Even then prime curate Justin Trudeau tweeted "You can't instrumentality our state — and you can't take our game."

It's possibly nary surprise, then, that ever since Canadian comedian Mike Myers mouthed the words "elbows up" astatine the camera during an quality connected Saturday Night Live, the reference to legendary hockey subordinate Gordie Howe has go a nationalist rallying cry.

In this infinitesimal of crisis, wherefore is hockey our metaphor of prime for Canadian unity?

It's been called "Canada's game" and a "national religion," but hockey's popularity as both a pastime and a spectator athletics has declined successful caller years. Youth participation has dropped 33 per cent since 2010, and hockey viewership is shrinking, too.

When asked successful 2022 however important they felt hockey is to our nationalist identity, Canadians ranked it good beneath the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our nationalist health-care strategy and our education system.

Since the weakening of relations with our neighbour to the south, the value of hockey to our corporate imaginativeness seems to person bounced back.

As a multicultural nine with a assemblage past, we person fewer touchstones that hindrance america all together.

"For a state that often feels fragmented," literate student Jason Blake has written, "the hockey arena is simply a convenient gathering spot and focal point."

Hockey reflects a neutral, earthy facet of Canadian surviving — our bluish clime — though adjacent that isn't universal. Rarely does immoderate pond connected Vancouver Island frost thick enough for skating.

Hockey besides has the payment of being a multicultural Canadian innovation, combining settler crystal sports similar English bandy, Scottish shinty, and Irish hurley with Indigenous baggataway (lacrosse). Still, astatine the nonrecreational level, hockey has ever lacked diversity.

Contemporary crystal hockey was developed by young, privileged, antheral students astatine McGill University successful the 1870s, and adjacent contiguous astir nonrecreational players are achromatic men. The NHL is the least racially divers nonrecreational sports league successful North America, and the Professional Women's Hockey League launched lone past year.

Yet contempt their humanities exclusion from achromatic men's leagues, different Canadians refused to beryllium written retired of the sport.

Women began organizing their ain hockey teams astatine the collegiate level successful the 1890s, and successful 1895 Baptist assemblage leaders successful Halifax and Dartmouth founded the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, which lasted into the 1930s. Asian leagues popped up in the mid-20th century, and Dick Loiselle and Jean Lane introduced sledge hockey to Alberta successful 1980.

Even aboriginal hockey was progressive successful its ain way. In 1870s Montreal, astir section diversion clubs were restricted to affluent English speakers. Hockey, successful contrast, accepted French and working-class players, breaking down people and taste barriers.

The athletics represents values galore Canadians stock careless of demographics, like squad spirit, tenacity, and integrity. It embodies not lone resilience but audacity successful the face of hardship: springiness america winters truthful acold our eyelashes freeze, and we'll virtually marque a game retired of them.

But hockey's acheronian broadside is intolerable to ignore.

In his poem "Hockey Players," Al Purdy calls hockey a "combination of ballet and murder," replete with officially sanctioned violence that seems astatine likelihood with our planetary estimation for courtesy. This precise aggression, though, whitethorn beryllium what's made the athletics specified a almighty and lasting emblem of Canadian sovereignty.

Hockey surfaced successful the aftermath of Confederation, astatine a clip erstwhile Canadians were keen to map retired an individuality abstracted from the British, who had antecedently governed them, and the Americans, who were hoping to govern them next. The sport's violence distinguished it from genteel nationalist games similar British cricket and American baseball.

In cross-border matches betwixt Canadian hockey teams and American ice-polo teams successful the 1890s, the Canadians' ferocity made them ascendant connected the ice. According to quality reports, "many a antheral had to beryllium carried to the dressing room," and, successful astatine least one instance, constabulary were called successful to interruption up a fight.

During the 1972 Summit Series, an eight-game accumulation tourney betwixt Canada and the erstwhile Soviet Union, Team Canada struggled against the swift, skilful Soviets until the Canadian players dialed up the aggression, roughing their mode to victory. 

Like the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Summit Series took connected governmental overtones. For the Canadian public, their team's triumph represented a triumph of ideology implicit communism and of state implicit tyranny.

Today, arsenic Canadians get the connection of hockey to propulsion backmost against a new international rival, our prime of operation reveals thing meaningful astir our national self-image.

After all, it's not casual to battle idiosyncratic with your elbow. Gordie Howe's signature move wasn't for offence but for defence — he utilized his elbows to ward disconnected opponents who were coming aft him.

Canadians won't onslaught first, "elbows up" seems to say. But anyone who threatens us had amended ticker out, whether we conscionable astatine the hockey rink oregon successful the governmental arena.

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