Hockey is, for Stephen Brunt, in many ways a great Canadian myth, in which Canadians chose elements from the sport to define what it means to be Canadian.
“It’s the fantasy of one nation united around a puck,” he told the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery theatre audience during Saskatchewan Festival of Words on Friday.
The sports journalist and Globe and Mail columnist read from two of his books, Gretzky’s Tears and Searching for Bobby Orr.
First reading about Orr, Brunt described the environment around which the hockey legend grew up (Parry Sound, Ont.).
“It was a small city, not unlike this one,” he said, adding part of the Canadian myth about hockey is the idea that athletes arise from rugged and small communities, their skills based almost entirely on a natural talent, rather than physical prowess.
He said, even in a largely urban nation where few people likely even play hockey, the idea of how athletes like Orr arise because of their perfect Canadian landscape surroundings is important to people’s perceptions.
For more on this story, read an upcoming edition of the Times-Herald.
