Sheldon Kennedy feels the burden of what’s going to be mentioned at Hockey Canada’s summit in Calgary.
The two-day “Beyond The Boards Summit” on Friday and Saturday is designed to tackle one root trigger recognized on the coronary heart of racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination and exclusion in hockey.
How masculinity is outlined in hockey — glorifying toughness and violence, the “bro culture”, the “code of the locker room” — and the way elite males’s hockey dominates the sport’s culture in Canada is on the agenda.
Kennedy, a former NHL participant and survivor of sexual abuse in junior hockey by Graham James, will communicate on the summit.
The member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame for his work in baby abuse training and prevention says the summit is a pivotal likelihood to begin making basic and wanted adjustments in hockey’s culture.
“I really feel it’s important,” Kennedy instructed The Canadian Press. “It’s crucial that we get this proper. The largest factor is the acceptance of the truth that we’ve a problem and we’d like to take care of it.
“It is perhaps awkward for some, it is perhaps thrilling for others, it is perhaps very uncomfortable, however I believe change brings all of these emotions when it occurs. We’re speaking about change. I believe the sport wants to change.
“I can relate to being an outsider. I was teased on the ice for many years about being shacked up with Graham James. People walked on pine cones around Sheldon or didn’t include him.”
All provincial and territorial members, the Canadian Junior Hockey League, the Canadian Hockey League, the American Hockey League, the NHL, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the brand new Professional Women’s Hockey League might be represented amongst summit attendees, mentioned Hockey Canada chief working officer Pat McLaughlin.
The agenda was developed based mostly on analysis by Teresa Fowler, an assistant professor at Concordia University in Edmonton, who has written hockey works nicely for white heterosexual males and never as nicely for others.
“To get to the root, we have to start peeling off all of those layers,” Fowler instructed CP. “What spills out from hypermasculinity are these issues — racism, homophobia.
“One of the outcomes of hypermasculinity that kind of brought us to this point is sexism. And in our data, sexism just stunk everywhere, but the players themselves didn’t identify it as sexism. That’s just the nature of the culture of men’s ice hockey.”
Other than a land acknowledgment and elder blessing by Wilton Littlechild, there received’t be a Black, Indigenous or individuals of color presenting at this summit. That will occur at a later summit, mentioned McLaughlin.
“This is the one in a series. We want to get at the ‘isms’ as we move forward,” he defined. “It’s really, really important that we start somewhere and so we’ve started with toxic masculinity.
“Each topic, or part of culture that we’re trying to get at, that will determine who the audience is as we move forward. This particular audience will be really around what Dr. Fowler’s talking about and it will be incredibly uncomfortable and intentionally so. It needs to be.”
Bill Proudman, a co-founding father of White Men As Full Diversity Partners and who has labored with the NHL, is among the many summit’s presenters. New federal sports activities minister Carla Qualtrough can also be scheduled to communicate Friday.
Hockey Canada has undergone a management overhaul in the 15 months because it turned public the group settled a lawsuit with a lady who alleged she was gang raped by members of the Canadian junior males’s hockey staff at a gala occasion in London, Ont., in 2018.
The allegations haven’t been confirmed in courtroom. Revelations that Hockey Canada used a part of registration charges to settle such lawsuits fuelled a firestorm of criticism and pushed the group into disaster.
The scrutiny magnified different longer-standing points, together with the unaffordability of hockey for low-revenue folks and abusive hazing that has been the topic of participant lawsuits in opposition to junior hockey leagues and groups.
Kennedy takes a one-subject-at-a-time strategy. He desires folks leaving the summit feeling prepared to change, and never overwhelmed.
“When I look at my story, it’s about bystanders and it’s about how many people didn’t do anything,” Kennedy mentioned.
“We need to be able to empower, encourage and engage those people in charge and the people participating to feel safe enough to step up and step in when they see bad behaviour happening.
“It’s about psychological safety. People feeling safe enough to be who they are, to be able to bring an issue forward, a concern forward and have it get dealt with.”

© 2023 The Canadian Press
Hockey Canada summit in Calgary to tackle toxic masculinity as root problem in sport’s culture