Sport and Unity: Contrast Need Not Divide Us. | 
Today marks Thanksgiving for the United States. Not so for we Canadians north of the border; ours was weeks ago. Yet, for all that may seem to separate us, there is much to link Canadians and Americans, not least of which is sport and the way that sport exhibits itself in our society.
North America, and the Americas in general, are known as the “New World” and sport is an interesting way to contrast our “new” ideas with those of “old” Europe. First, let us establish some seemingly obvious facts about sport in our home, North America.
As Canadians, we are known for our hockey. It defaults internationally as the sport for which we are most reputed, if we are reputed for any sport at all. Now, when we look at the organization of hockey in North America we usually do not identify the anomalous aspect of it – the league is an international league. The National Hockey League is made up of teams from both Canada and the United States, and it has always been this way. It is obvious, but looking at the greater world, the greater world of sports, and especially European sport, this becomes extremely odd. Perhaps this all goes back to the origins of hockey as a sport that could be played only in certain conditions, namely cold, and these being initially prime in the well populated Great Lakes and East Coast of North America. Whatever the case, we now have an NHL that continues to constitute itself of teams from both sides of the border.
By its very name, National Hockey League, this should not be the case. Nations and nationalism together make up a field of study in history and the social sciences at large which is vast in scope and output. We could write it down as a mere misnomer, but if we instead choose to explore a little further, this paradoxical situation has much to say about the ideology of North America in contrast to that of Europe.
Of course, we should note that the NHL is not the only professional sports league that crosses that American-Canadian border. As we all know, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer all have their token Canadian team hailing from Canada, though the NBA and the MLB used to have one more, and there seems to be clamouring for another in the MLS. Also of note is that the Toronto Blue Jays are part of the American League and not the National League. Nevertheless, for some strange reason, we in North America allow our professional sports to trickle over that long border that we share. What is this reason?
Perhaps some contrast and some history can serve us here. Bear with me and we’ll get through this and back to sports.
When we look at professional sport in Europe the division of sport comes invariably down to national lines. The meaning of nation in Europe, historically, has been seen in two ways and there is a tale to tell. The idea of the nation is interpreted by the modernist historians of nationalism as being a construction that came into being only recently in history. At about the time of the French Revolution and its aftermath, the Napoleonic Wars, there was first a movement in France to centralize power to the state in the metropolis. At this time there was less of an idea of “French-ness” because people by and large did not move around all that much. They had their little region that they knew and the priests and nobles of that region told them they belonged to a king (or, in some cases, did not tell them this and kept the power to themselves). Much of the language that these people spoke was nowhere near the standardized French that we know today. Yet, with the French Revolution came the attempt to do just that – standardize language, religion, and identity away from the regional and into the central bigger idea of being a part of France.
As we all know, the French Revolution faltered with the Reign of Terror, but was curbed into something new by Napoleon Bonaparte. Using this spirit of “newness” and central power, Napoleon mobilized all these people of what was becoming “France” by using this idea of the French nation. The nation was the people themselves, people spread across vast distances who could never know each other and who invariably had different dialects, traditions, and customs. How to cope with such difference? Both the Revolution and then Napoleon used the notion of the outsider, the foreigner, who was even more different than the people of France. Those few things that did connect people of France were then unified into an identity against the threat of outsiders like the English and Germans, among others. Yet, with first the defence of France against the invasions of other European power and then conquest of Italian, Spanish, and German lands, the tables were turned. Napoleon was conquering and these European lands now felt vastly wronged by having above them a foreigner. Napoleon fell, but the idea of the nation had been created.
In the New World, what did we have? Being first the colonies of Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain, these definitions have over time lost much of their meaning as these old ties to Europe have faded with new traditions and immigration that gives us such a plural background. There is less of an organic nationalism in North America because we cannot agree on religion or tradition, but have instead made our own – think about Thanksgiving. The concept of nation in North America has had to mean a broader idea of first shared plight with survival in the new world, secondly common representation in government, and finally a mutual obligation as fellow citizens. We call this a civic nationalism where we are citizens who share a government, but not necessarily all the language, religion, and tradition that goes along with organic nationalisms of Europe. This is how an immigrant can quickly be as American or Canadian as anyone else, because they share common ideas and respect the mutual obligations that we have for one another as citizens.
So now back to sports (I told you we would get back there). What does sport look like in Europe? If we first look at the biggest sport in the world – football or soccer, however you like it – each league is definitively based on a national league. Unlike North America, there are not only leagues for France, England, Germany, and Spain, but also leagues for nations that have never been given complete autonomy as nation-states. An example is the Scottish Premier League in soccer, since Scotland itself remains part of Great Britain in terms of states, though the Scottish identity spans back to that same period of around two hundred years ago with invention of tradition where the kilt was invented, along with the purely Scottish literature of men such as Sir Thomas Scott. If we now look on the international play scale with how teams are constituted, England, Scotland and Wales all receive their own national teams, though they are technically all under the state apparatus of Great Britain. The fact is that sport is a weapon to show your national pride in Europe.
We might even look within one of these supposed national leagues, like the Scottish Premier League, and see that there is nationalism afoot in there too. Sometimes it is as simple as Glasgow having the Rangers and the Celtics as their two city football teams. The Rangers represent the naturally Scottish Glasgow element, while the Celtics represent that portion of Scots in Glasgow with specifically Irish roots – the rivalry is fierce. Since Celtic followed the example of Hibernian FC in Edinburgh, we might also look at that city. Also with two teams, Edinburgh had the same split of loyalties across naturally Scottish Edinburgh citizens cheering for Heart of Midlothian FC, while the Irish Scottish citizens created their Hibernian FC which literally means “Irish” FC from the Roman term for Ireland. If we look at this name of Heart of Midlothian, it is also highly charged with Scottish nationalist sentiment as the name derives directly from a novel written by Sir Walter Scott as part of his creation of distinctly Scottish literature to define the nation. But the plot thickens.
Remember how the French Revolution and Napoleon happened to centralize and standardize France? Well, they never quite were able to do that perfectly. Regional divisions remain all through European countries – or nations, if you will. In Portugal there is a North-South divide between the big clubs of FC Porto versus either Sporting or Benfica of Lisbon. Seemingly the smaller the team, the greater the hardened fans espouse the regionalism. Take Sunderland FC, a team that has struggled for years falling out and then jumping back into English Premiership play. The specific “Mackem” regionalism of Sunderland is quite definitely opposed to the South of England, but also fiercely antagonistic with their northern neighbours of only a half hour metro ride away, the “Geordies” of Newcastle upon Tyne. There are teams that draw an international crowd like Barcelona, Manchester United, and Inter Milan, but with many teams there is a level of regional representation at stake with their team, and a cosmopolitan attitude towards allowing foreign players can only be reconciled with their need to win and prove their own sense of regional validation.
Since the rise of professional sport has coincided timing wise with the rise of nationalism in Europe, hockey too aligns itself with a more European model of national and regional identity. Again, there are no hockey leagues that transcend borders in Europe. Again, a team like HV71 in the Swedish Elite League (Eliteserien) is stigmatized as being from the city of Jönköping and thereby being from the most religious part of Sweden. Though it is far from politically correct to say it, many antagonists to HV71 would call it out as the team from the “Jerusalem” of Sweden and refer to the deathly silence of Kinnarps Arena because none of the Christian crowd wishes to cause a ruckus. Likewise, the Frölunda Indians hockey team from Göteborg (Gothenburg) in Sweden are painted as the outsiders of Sweden – as people from Göteborg always are seen by the rest of the country. I was going to go on, but the example needs not be exhausted with examples from the Swedish Elite League. Suffice to say, there is regionalism at play here too.
How do we wrap up this odyssey through both history and international sport? As in all Odysseys, we must make our way back to the point of departure; we must get home. Hockey in Canada and the United States is much more cosmopolitan in nature than its European counterparts and it comes down to the difference in the idea of sport between New World and Old. When we grow up in Canada, we are not always close to a metropolitan centre that has a NHL hockey club. Sometimes we cheer for hometown players who move time zones away from us. Due to the nature of NHL history with franchises moving cities, loyalties are bound to shift across the continent – from Quebec to Colorado. The nature of NHL hockey, and greater sport in North America, is one of entertainment. Just the fact that teams in North American sport always default to using the gimmick of a name besides the name of the city, Anaheim Ducks or Florida Panthers, goes to show the lack of history interred in the naming process of modern teams. In a great many European sports teams there is no further need for naming beyond the city or region that makes up the team.
Should we be ashamed of this overwhelmingly entertainment base for our sports?
Hardly.
Though we might be criticized for falling prey to gross marketing gimmicks in sport, North American sport has achieved something special with their idea in sport. Alike to our form of civic nationalism in North America, we choose which team to cheer for and we need not use it as a weapon of pseudo-political legitimacy. We use sport as a form of mutual association and common obligation. It is a unifying creation that has much less association with locale than our European counterparts. A North American fan from the city of their choice team will not shun a fellow fan who travels vast distances to see a live game, whereas many hometown supporters in Europe would see these sorts suspiciously as outsiders with no whimsical reasons for interest in their team. Our tendency to separate any of our ideas about regionalism from our sport is commendable. It means that there is more room for the sharing of the love of the sport.
These discussions may seem like plastic and semantics, but I assure you, for one who has spent three years in Europe in three different countries and with three different nationalisms, that it is refreshing to come home to Canada and see openness in sport as opposed to a divisive militancy. Refreshing and promising. If sport of the ancient Olympics helped lead to a Hellenic unifying ideal for Greece, then there we have the precedent to use sport as a unifying force.
North America is doing just that. In the future we might shed those ugly regional tendencies in sport which also permeate society. After that: the end of nationalist nativism. We Canadians have some work to do in that regard, especially with hockey. We all know who represents that disgusting tendency and the relevancy of his opinions died at the time when I surpassed his education by graduating from High School.
It’s about time for some fair play.
Happy Thanksgiving, United States of America. Though we two are different, we Canadians share a lot with you. We like the “United” part in your name.
Stephen Webb
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bruce Hollingdrake, Laura. Laura said: Holy crap: this connects sports, nationalism, colonialism, and the French Revolution. And hockey. Excellent read! http://bit.ly/5hg3dA [...]
I only read the first 25% of this before I went to bed. I just wanted to say that the NHL is the NHL because players from each nation can qualify to be a member of a team within the league. Although it may be argued against, the NHL has begun to branch out, playing its initial games of the regular season in different nations across the Atlantic Ocean.
Good so far Webby.
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I stumbled across your piece quite by accident and might as well state at the start I have no knowledge or care for ice-hockey. However as sport transcends all barriers I read your piece with interest.
Firstly I’m a Scot, born and living in Glasgow and actively supporting one of the ’soccer’ teams you mention in your piece. To say there is an identity issue and historical significance in this is to understate sport in Europe quite considerably. However I’d point out that North America by not having this regional identity link in sport is the exception. Africa, Asia, South and Central America also follow the European ‘model’ in regional and nationalist identities in their local sports team. Whether this is good or bad is moot.
The one area where this hasn’t really happened is when North American sports are launched in Europe. For example Belfast, a city more striven by nationalist identity you would be hard to find, has a professional ice-hockey team called the Belfast Giants. They have so far managed to avoid any association with a specific part of the community. They are unique in this regard where all other sports clubs in the city are very clearly aligned with one group or another.
I suppose the immigrant nature of Canada and the US have led to a different mind-set, both countries are basically continents rather than countries in the European sense at least and perhaps the shear size of your countries has led to a less parochial attitude.
All that being said at its best European sporting passion and rivalry is energising and exciting but at its worst it can be violent and sectarian. This may of course simply be a reflection of the society around it.
Thank you for your comment John.
I had heard of the whole issue of hockey in Belfast before and it is fascinating. If I knew more, and I hope to know more somewhere down the road, I would love to research into it as a case study. Then again, there is a great documentary that delves into the subject at great length. It’s called “When Hockey Came To Belfast” and here is a link for more information:
http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=51357
Needless to say, I’d be loathe to retread this ground without some new insight, but it is intriguing.
In writing this I found myself often torn in being too favorable to the North American style of sport. Indeed, sport in Europe is just like you’ve said in the last two lines, and our Canadian and American spirit of sport follows much the same in international play – when rivalries are most fierce. It would be nice to move farther back to the ancient Olympic tradition of cheering more for the prowess of individual athletes than simply associating them with our own nationally formed identities, but it is hard to disentangle these two aspects.
The perennial idealist in me looks to the potential of sport at its best, while the academic and teacher in me tries to make the reality function towards a goal. In much the same way that Simon Schama in his recent book “The American Future” uses American history to attempt a realigning of the future made from the best of the past, I too seek to find some origins and give us the most optimistic tangent towards the future. It is a bit pretentious, but we may as well strive.
Again, your contrasting point at the end about the best and worse of sport is a wonderful summation to all that I attempted to say within, and coupled with the societal aspect you ended on… well said sir.
I think North America’s mega-sport structure also plays in to how our leagues are marketed. In order to secure the money necessary for huge contracts, teams try to attract anybody as fans instead of solely local followers. Merchandising is crucial for sustenance, and by dissolving regional identities teams can acquire fandom based on a pretty logo.
Buffalo, for example, raises ticket prices on games where they host the Leafs because they know Leaf’s fans are willing to pay good money to cross the border. The Sabres organization uses this as a way to make money, and has complete disregard for the fact that the only thing that makes their team the home team is the line changes.
Now with that said, there are regional rivalries. San Jose and Anaheim fans are not fond of each other, nor are Toronto and Ottawa fans. But these rivalries are more based on appearances in the playoffs and competition rather than solely on geography. We can all remember that it used to be a Toronto-Montreal rivalry, but that quickly changed when Toronto encountered Ottawa 3 times in 3 years (i think) in the post-season. Toronto fans being able to cheaply infiltrate Scotia Bank Place for $50 also helps raise tensions.
But I certainly agree with what you said. People can choose their teams at whim here. Last year in my student house there was a Devils, Red Wings, Penguins, and Leafs fan — all Ontario natives who chose their favourite team many years ago and stuck with them.