/ARTS WEEKLY/ CULTURE-CANADA: French TV Hockey Sent to the Penalty Box?

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Jun 18 2002 (IPS) - While soccer fans worldwide camp in front of their television sets devouring World Cup action, French-Canadian ice hockey fans are choking on the public-broadcast cancellation of the national sport.

Government-owned Societe Radio Canada (SRC) has announced it is cutting its legendary ‘La Soiree Du Hockey’ programme after it failed to make a deal with the Montreal Canadiens, one of the most successful sports franchises in North America and a symbol of French-Canadian pride.

Hockey is to Canada what soccer is to many other countries, despite the country having only six of the 30 teams in the expanded National Hockey League (NHL), which straddles the U.S. border and which is no longer dominated by Canadian-born players.

During the winter Olympic games earlier this year, many employees across the land took sick leave from work so they could stay home and watch the men’s hockey team play. It beat archrivals United States in the final game, and the Canadian women also skated to the gold medal.

When the Bank of Canada recently asked people what image they wanted on the new five-dollar note, most chose a picture of kids playing ‘shinny’ – a pick-up game of hockey on a frozen pond.

The sport enflames such passions that a storm is now brewing over which city can rightfully claim to be the birthplace of the game. A panel of hockey historians recently concluded a year of research by rejecting the claim made by tiny Windsor in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.

It said the Nova Scotia capital of Halifax, or Montreal, are the likely sources.

“All Canadians, in one part of their life, either played hockey or watched hockey,” said National Librarian Roch Carrier, a celebrated author of books about the sport.

“I got a letter from a man from Ontario,” Carrier told IPS. “He’s from Montreal, his grandfather is from Montreal but they moved and lost their French. He was telling me that the only link now between his family and the place where he comes from is this game.”

“Sometimes he will switch the channel from Hockey Night in Canada to La Soiree Du Hockey just to hear the French, although he can’t understand it.”

“That game, and La Soiree Du Hockey, is like going home.”

The show itself, however, is headed for a new home: a commercial sports cable network. About three-quarters of households in the French-speaking province of Quebec have access — but for a price. Some francophones across the country can also pick up the sports channel.

The development has landed in Parliament, where a committee is studying whether removing the 50-year-old show could violate the Official Languages Act. French and English are Canada’s official languages, though French is spoken primarily in Quebec, where it is the mother tongue of eight out of 10 of the seven million residents.

“I think it’s important that everyone who likes hockey in Canada should have the right to see it in their language,” said Heritage Minister Sheila Copps.

English speakers will still be able to watch Canada’s national winter sport on SRC’s English-language counterpart, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Its popular ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ was first aired in November 1952, three weeks after the debut of ‘La Soiree Du Hockey’, now the longest-running television show in North America.

The official languages committee plans to recall some witnesses from the broadcasters and the NHL next week, said Chairman Mauril Belanger.

“We’re wondering ‘what gives?’ because we’re getting a few contradictory or disjointed story lines,” Belanger said. “We want to get to the bottom of it.”

For example, while Radio Canada said they had a verbal deal to buy the rights from the Montreal Canadiens, the team said no agreement ever existed.

The question that needs to be answered, said Belanger, “is why is it that if you’re an English-Canadian, come September you can watch your national sport on the public broadcaster free of charge but if you’re a French Canadian you cannot?”

“Maybe Radio Canada doesn’t want hockey. If that’s the case, then that’s the discussion we should be having,” he added.

Both Radio Canada and CBC are subject to the Official Languages Act, which guarantees that in most cases, Canadians can be served by federal institutions in either language. That doesn’t mean the broadcasters have to offer the same programmes, said Belanger, but “in this case you have two traditions that have been carried out for 50 years, why cancel one of them now? Because (the parties) can’t come to a deal?”

The committee has suggested that CBC and Radio Canada could team up to buy both French and English rights to the Canadiens games.

But not all French Canadians are upset. “You have to understand that hockey is not an essential service like the news, but entertainment. Just entertainment. And when you see the on-ice fighting and the tirades of some coaches, you can only conclude that it’s not always a glorious show,” wrote Ginette Gagnon in ‘Le Nouvelliste’ newspaper.