Earlier this month, when Maclean’s magazine came out with a cover story anointing Winnipeg as Canada’s most racist city, many of its residents jumped to its defence, arguing that such a ranking was unquantifiable and they didn’t need someone from Toronto swooping in and telling them what a horrible bunch of bigots they all were. The mayor even held a press conference to address the issue, which seems, from a public relations perspective, somewhat of a doomed proposition, like coming up with an answer to the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” There’s little doubt that some of the people who read the story and actually live in Winnipeg or have visited the city agreed with the premise. Just as certain is that others with direct knowledge of Winnipeg disputed it. And there’s nothing to say that both sides aren’t right. Different people can inhabit the same environment and have different experiences of it. As they say, there’s two sides to every story.
Last week, Thompson experienced a bit of the same thing, on a smaller scale, when unnamed witnesses and a parent of a hockey player, who was also anonymous, told Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) news that Norway House North Stars players and their families had had to be escorted by police from C.A. Nesbitt Arena after a midget AA hockey game against the ThompsonKing Miners was abandoned midway through and spectators scuffled in the stands, with some witnesses alleging that racial slurs had been used. Some people immediately accepted that the initial APTN report – which was based on allegations from an unknown number of people – was accurate and heaped scorn on the Thompson players. Others argued that the report gave Thompson an undeserved black eye. One of Thompson’s players, Lucas Hanlon, contacted APTN to offer a different version of what happened, disputing the contention that this was caused by racism and pointing out that Thompson also has several Métis and aboriginal players.
People who were at the game can agree on certain facts: a Norway House player was tossed out of the game and later, so was the team’s coach. A fistfight or some sort of violence broke out in the stands. RCMP were called to the arena and, to ensure people’s safety, stuck around until the teams and their families left. But beyond that, given the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and the different ways that different people perceive the same events, the picture is a little muddy.
No one in their right mind should claim that racism is not a fact of life in Thompson or even that you need to self-identify as a racist to harbour prejudiced beliefs or believe in racial stereotypes. Racism is present to some degree throughout Canadian society and most likely in every other society around the world. At the same time, we can’t definitively say that what happened at the arena on Feb. 8 was directly caused by racism. Hockey, like other sports, particularly those that include sanctioned violence, causes emotions to flare up, not only among participants, but also among those in the stands, particularly when the participants are their relatives or friends. Incidents of violence have occurred in hockey arenas all over Canada, sometimes involving players, sometimes referees, sometimes coaches and sometimes spectators, too. The common denominator in all these incidents isn’t racial tension, however, though it certainly sometimes plays a part. But every one of these incidents does involve a very fallible and easily recognizable group: human beings.
