Mikyla Grant-Mentis, aka Buckey, is a 23-year-old hockey player from Brampton, Ontario. About to begin her third year in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), she just signed a one-year deal with the Buffalo Beauts for 80,000 USD, making her the highest paid female hockey player ever.
Early Life
Mikyla was only 2 years old when she first put skates on. Surrounded by a hockey-loving family, her dad who was a Team Canada ball hockey player was her inspiration to start playing. Following in his footsteps, Mikyla began playing organized ice hockey with her older brother Marquis at the age of 4. She played with him on many boys teams until she finally broke out of his shadow and joined the Toronto Aeros of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). After bouncing around the PWHL for some years, and being overlooked by countless scouts despite being a top-scorer in the league, Mikyla finally got an offer to play hockey at a small college in Boston, Massachusetts.
Playing Career
While playing for the Merrimack College Warriors, Mikyla established her career as a forward. As the only Black player on the team for all 4 years of her college career, she was the program’s all-time leading points scorer. She also achieved many other accolades including numerous player of the month awards, being selected for the all-star team, and was a nominee for the NCAA women of the year.
After her senior year, Mikyla was given the chance to play professional hockey for the Toronto Six of the PHF, formerly known as the National Women’s Hockey League. During her first year on the Six, to say she had a great season is an understatement; she won the Fans’ Three Stars Award, Foundation Award, Newcomer of the Year Award, and most notably, was the first Black player to win the league’s MVP award. Following a second impressive season for the Six, she just signed a ground-breaking deal with the Buffalo Beauts to earn the highest salary in the history of women’s hockey. She will start for the Beauts in this upcoming season as one of only two Black players in the PHF.
Despite all that she has accomplished throughout her career, Mikyla was not chosen to play for Canada at the 2022 Olympic Games. Many news articles and blog posts across the internet have questioned this decision by Team Canada, with some examples shown below:
If Canada loses to the United States, Grant-Mentis’ omission should be magnified as a colossal mistake by the sport’s national governing body.” –Arun Srinivasan
But it remains bizarre that Mikyla Grant-Mentis wasn’t granted the opportunity to try and make the roster. … She’s more than earned a shot.” –Sportsnet Staff
Now, I am no expert on hockey, nor am I going to speculate that the Team Canada coaches did not select Mikyla because she is Black. However, I do know that more than 85% of the women’s Canadian Olympic team is white, and many of the players have not achieved what Mikyla has. Thus, it is hard not to wonder why she was not selected for the team. I believe this, in conjunction with the fact that her race has been minimally represented throughout her college and professional career, truly speaks to the whiteness in the sport of hockey.
Whiteness in Hockey
It is somewhat ironic in that Canada is known for its multiculturalism, and many people associate hockey with Canada, but hockey is everything but multicultural (Szto, 2016). Out of any other major American sports league, the National Hockey League (NHL) is the least diverse by a landslide. Less than 5% of the players are non-white and less than 25% of the NHL’s workforce is non-white. So why is this? The answer to this question will follow, but it is important to first look at the historical roots of the sport.
Early Canadian hockey was first played by the Canadian Indigenous people in the late 17th century (Sandrin & Palys, 2021). Modern Canadian hockey was actually heavily influenced by Canadians of African American descent just around the turn of the 20th century (Sandrin & Palys, 2021). Black individuals living in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI created the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL) in 1895 as a way to attract Black men to church, as they would play hockey games after Sunday service (Sandrin & Palys, 2021). Over 400 Black individuals participated in the CHL and evolved the game into what it is now. Soon after the CHL gained popularity, white individuals adopted the sport, commercializing it through the formation of the NHL (Boyd, 2020). The reason that few people know this history of modern hockey is because the story is told through a white lens. White historians during the mid-20th century spread the false narrative that hockey was a white man’s creation, and I think his belief has carried on for the most part into today’s society (Sandrin & Palys, 2021).
This idea that hockey is a white sport is the reason that in today’s game, leagues such as the NHL and PHF are predominantly represented by white individuals. White players, coaches, team managers, and even fans perpetuate this notion of whiteness, ultimately creating an unwelcoming environment for BIPOC players (Szto, 2020). In a study conducted by Sandrin and Palys (2021), they studied 9 BIPOC players of different levels of play, including collegiate, minor professional, and the national team. They found that all the participants had experienced incidents of verbal racism on the ice, and many had experienced more subtle acts of racism resulting in them feeling a lack of belongingness. One player even spoke about an incident where he was not chosen for a team, like Mikyla and the national team, although he directly attributed his dismissal to the colour of his skin. Moreover, in an interview with Mikyla, she spoke about a time where she faced a racial comment, as shown below:
“It was a scrum around the net, and when the whistle was blown, a girl said, ‘go back to playing basketball,’ or something like that. And my response to her was ‘I don’t play basketball, I play hockey.” –Mikyla Grant-Mentis
Overall, it is racist acts like these that create barriers for BIPOC players, preventing or discouraging them from playing. Going forward, change needs to happen. By addressing the overt acts of racism as well as the underlying and subtle oppression in the sport, the narrative that hockey is a white sport can be changed, and a more inclusive environment can be established (Bains & Szto, 2020)
Fostering Change
In the past few years, many BIPOC hockey players like Angela James, Saroya Tinker, and Sarah Nurse have publicly spoken about the racism they endured during their careers. As a result, the hockey world has been under fire in a sense, and many efforts have been made to combat this. The problem is that many of these efforts are ineffective in promoting anti-racism, and many believe they only function to avoid further criticism. I’ll first examine one of these inadequate attempts at racial justice, followed by one that is more powerful.
Although I could pick apart the NHL’s ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ campaign, I thought I would discuss something more relevant to Mikyla. Earlier this year, the PHF (the league that she plays in) announced that they partnered with Wollman Park and the Carnegie Initiative in response to recent racial events happening on the ice. Their campaign, titled ‘Celebrating Black Excellence and Joy in Hockey,’ aimed to showcase significant moments in Black hockey history. To do this, they featured these moments on a Turner Sports NHL broadcast throughout the month of February. They also held a video submission contest for youth players where the winner was given the opportunity to skate on Wollman rink with BIPOC NHL players and to go to one NHL game for free. After analyzing this campaign, I believe it can be concluded that it is shallow multiculturalism, or the public celebration of difference (Stein, 2007). It could also be classified as diversity work as it raises awareness and appreciation for differences and is undoubtedly an outward facing initiative (Hartman, 2015). Furthermore, I would even argue that this campaign is a neoliberal tactic for Wollman Park. Neoliberalism utilizes diversity as a means to profit, and by Wollman Park offering the winner of the contest a chance to skate on Wollman rink, they are marketing their business while using the diversity campaign as a trojan horse (Ahmed, 2007).
On the other hand, an example of an effective racial justice effort would be that put forth by Dr. Courtney Szto and colleagues. The researchers developed a policy change proposal for Hockey Canada that targeted three factors: access, privilege, and power. Issues involving these factors are rooted in racism within sport, and so addressing them serves as a powerful anti-racism strategy (Hylton, 2010). First, they proposed the use of equipment libraries and funding public school hockey programs to improve access to the sport. This would especially help in remote areas such as Indigenous communities where there is an absence of hockey leagues and infrastructure. Second, training individuals on how to recognize racist acts and enforce punishments for them will tackle the privilege aspect. Finally, with respect to power, changing recruitment and hiring practices to include more racialized candidates will eliminate the traditional power that wealthy white men have to decide who becomes involved in the game. As I mentioned above, focusing on the direct and systemic acts of racism is the key to fixing hockey, and these proposed policy changes do this. I was unable to find any information as to whether Hockey Canada actually made these changes, but nonetheless, it is an exemplary effort of anti-racism work.
In conclusion, the whiteness and racism in modern hockey is overwhelming. It creates barriers for BIPOC players at all levels of the game and can be easily observed in the story of Mikyla. From directly experiencing racism to being overlooked as a player, she constantly faces the white narrative surrounding the sport. Fortunately, her record-breaking contract proves that the game is slowly changing, and although it will take many more racial justice efforts for the change to be widespread, it is crucial that it happens so that everyone can participate in the game that we as Canadians love.
References
Ahmed, S. (2007). The Language of diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30, 235–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870601143927
Bains, A., & Szto, C. (2020). Brown skin, white ice: South Asian specific ice hockey programming in Canada. South Asian Popular Culture, 18(3), 181–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2020.1815445
Boyd, J. (2020). How Canada’s black hockey league shaped the sport and the path to our arrival in the NHL today. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 102 (21), 1918-1921. https://doi.org/10.2106/JBJS.20.01708
Hartmann, D. (2015). Reflections on race, diversity, and the crossroads of multiculturalism. The Sociological Quarterly, 56(4), 623–639. https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12096
Hylton, K. (2010). How a turn to critical race theory can contribute to our understanding of ‘race’, racism and anti-racism in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45(3), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690210371045
Sandrin, R., & Palys, T. (2021). The hat-trick of racism: Examining BIPOC hockey players’ experiences in Canada’s game. Sociology of Sport Journal, 39(3), 278–286. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2020-0175
Stein, J. (2007). Uneasy partners: Multiculturalism and rights in Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Szto, C. (2016). #LOL at multiculturalism: Reactions to hockey night in Canada Punjabi from the twitterverse. Sociology of Sport Journal, 33(3), 208–218. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2015-0160
Szto, C. (2020). Changing on the fly: Hockey through the voices of South Asian Canadians. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press. https://doi-org.proxy.queensu.ca/10.36019/9781978807976
KNPE 397 