Episode 19: How hockey can work to be more inclusive and diverse

In recent years, there have been efforts from the NHL and all of its 32 teams to increase diversity across the league. The NHL’s 2022 Diversity and Inclusion report mentioned that recent hire, Mike Grier, became the League's first Black general manager when the San Jose Sharks hired him in July. The report also showed that the league’s full-time workforce is 3.7% Black, 4.2% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic, and less than 1% Indigenous.

On this episode of Like Nobody’s Business, we discuss how hockey can work to be more inclusive, what that inclusivity looks like, how it will impact young hockey players and the future changes to come in the sport.

Bernice Carneigie, the Co-Chair of the Carnegie Initiative and Dr. Richard Norman, a postdoctoral fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University, working with the Future of Sport Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management, discuss the power of inclusivity in hockey and what makes sport transformative to the society around it.

Transcript

Podcast Transcript – Episode 19
Cassandra Earle:	From the corner of Bay and Dundas in downtown Toronto this is, Like Nobody's Business, a podcast of thought leadership and business innovation. I'm your host, Cassandra Earle.
Cassandra Earle:	In recent years, there have been efforts from the NHL on all of its 32 teams to increase diversity across the league. The NHLs 2022 Diversity and Inclusion report mentioned that recent hire, Mike Grier, became the League's first black general manager when the San Jose Sharks hired him back in July. The report also showed that the League's full-time workforce is 3.7% Black, 4.2% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic, and less than 1% Indigenous.
Cassandra Earle:	Now, looking ahead, how can hockey work to be more inclusive? What does that inclusivity look like? How will it impact young hockey stars, current players and teammates, as well as the sport overall? To answer these questions, we've invited some guests. Today you'll hear from Bernice Carnegie, the daughter of Herb Carnegie, who was a driving force towards diversity in the sport. Now, Bernice, who joined us via Zoom call, is the co-chair of the Carnegie Initiative, an organization with the goal of making hockey more diverse and inclusive in memory of her father. You'll also hear from Dr. Richard Norman, a post-doctoral fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University, working with the Future of Sport Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management. His research focuses on the connection between race and sport, including the disparities in hockey.
Dr. Richard Norman:	I wear a bunch of different hats
Cassandra Earle	Dr. Norman explains his research and what kinds of efforts are being made to combat this issue further.
Dr. Richard Norman:	I'm really looking at of issues of inclusion, acceptance, belonging, and what does that look like moving into the future. I do some consulting more broadly within sport and it's taken me in a lot in different ways, including starting up a not-for-profit. And so I'm working with Dr. Cheri Bradish on some things. We also are a grant recipient of the Carnegie Initiative, so I'm working with Bryant and others just to understand what's going on within the world of sport, thinking more broadly about who supports people that don't necessarily see themselves in hockey, and what does that look like.
Dr. Richard Norman:	For example, the Black Girls Hockey Club is a perfect example of something that operates a little bit independently, but there's lots of examples there. I sit on the board of the Future of Hockey Lab Board of Mentors and Marion's there as well. There's the Little NHL, and I didn't know about this, but Indigenous run League for Indigenous youth. It's been going for 50 years. And how in Canada do I not know about this? Perhaps in the same way that we don't know very much about the Maritime Color Hockey League as well.
Cassandra Earle:	Bernice explains the work her father did and what they accomplished together when they visited schools, teaching young people about inclusivity in sport.
Bernice Carnegie:	I'm Bernice Carnegie, and I love both names. I love both names now. Bernice is the name my father gave me, named after his sister, and she was the first Canadian-born, black registered nurse. And Carnegie, well, what a wonderful name to carry. So I carry her name along with my father's name and very proud of it. I worked with my dad for 30 years. We were joined at the hip doing initiatives in schools. I would speak to about 20,000 students a year, and we talked about social justice issues based around his life and things that happened to him that weren't always so pleasant. But it was an effort to help young people to have a different approach or a different perspective about those they interacted with. And so I've been doing that actually for 40 years.
Bernice Carnegie:	So this new initiative, the Carnegie Initiative, was not my idea, but I'm loving every moment of it. It was Bryant McBride's idea, and when he called me to tell me where he wanted to go with this, I couldn't help but jump on board and say, yeah. Everything my father and I did in the community for so many years is all coming back. It's all one little circle.
Bernice Carnegie:	And the Carnegie Initiative is there to bring people back together. We want to bring people together, that's our first thing. We want to give them an opportunity to participate where they may not have participated before. And when they do, it helps them step out of the box so they can maybe do other things. It might not be hockey, but if they at least tried it, they might now say, oh well, I can try something else. We want to give those who are doing a good job, like Dr. Norman and his team who have been looking at different ways to bring hockey its full value. We want to help them get there. We want to help organizations to get there.
Dr. Richard Norman:	Now, I also say that you really have to take a look at Herb's life, impact that he had was so vast and it's affected so many people surrounding hockey. It's the legacy that he is a national hero and a treasure, not just the hockey, but to the rest of society. And part of the thing it highlights is his life and the situation he was in and all the adversity that he had to overcome just to exist in that and not get a shot at the highest level of hockey is part of that whole conversation that I think we need to raise around this issue.
Dr. Richard Norman:	So to me, it's the story that we should be telling. What I think is unique about the Carnegie Initiative is that if raising these stories up so that everybody knows about them now is so important so that you see this next generation, but also the legacy of how it connects past, present to the future, that's a beautiful thing.
Cassandra Earle:	When it comes to research into race and sport, Dr. Norman explains that the subject is studied, but with hockey specifically, there's more to learn in terms of solutions and how to move forward.
Dr. Richard Norman:	When you take a look at race and sport there is research out there, I will say. One of the issues that we have in Canada is that most of the research tends to involve either a North American context or an American context. And so when we start to go down the road of, all right, so give me all of the research that's looking at hockey from a racialized perspective in Canada, that's when we start to find, oh, there's not a lot out there. And so it's not that people don't know about it, and it's not that there isn't great stories out there, it's really just making sure that we can collect that information and expose it.
Dr. Richard Norman:	So there are different organizations that have done research, and there are academics out there who are doing scholarship, but it's not necessarily focused on a lot of the questions that we really need to answer, which I think, when we think about ideas of belonging, when we think about acceptance, when we think about coming together as Bernice was talking about, there's not a lot of research that are looking at that. There's lots of knowledge within hockey, there's lots of understanding about the issue around racialized folks within hockey.
Dr. Richard Norman:	But to move it forward, I think we need to have new and innovative types of thinking. We need to have new, even ways to frame the problem. And I bring this up a lot when I talk to people or even in the classroom setting. It's like, if you can tell me if we removed tomorrow, eliminated systemic racism, what does that look like? What does our society look like? What does sport look like? Does it look exactly the same? Would hockey actually resemble the same sport that we have to remove all those barriers?
Dr. Richard Norman:	And it's a question that I can't answer, and I study this all the time. But bringing a whole bunch of people together and then asking that question, we can get really different answers about where we need to go. And I think that that's what I really want to get to in the research that I'm doing. And I think that there's an opening for other research, not just to document how many cases of racism exist in hockey today or how much of X and Y and Z, but also saying, these are the pathways that we need to take to really change. And we can borrow from all the existing other research that's out there to do something different. And that's, I think, the kinds of things that we need now.
Dr. Richard Norman:	We look at the crisis of sport, everything from the sport minister in Canada saying, everything has to change, to people that have been on the ground, like Bernice, working for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, I think that we need to make those bridges, but we also have to open up new ways of doing things. And that's hopefully what even the grant from Carnegie Initiative will help me do in my pathway in terms of research. But I also think that there's just so many smart people out there that once we start to reframe things a bit differently we can get to some different answers.
Cassandra Earle:	With Dr. Norman's suggestion that collaboration of ideas can help to further change in the way of hockey and racism, changes will be made over time which will create an impact on sport. But how will this impact society as a whole? How will a more inclusive and welcoming hockey environment influence the society around it?
Dr. Richard Norman:	One of the things I love about sport is that it just opens up questions to society very well. And there's lots of people who have done research in this area, and you can look at it from a couple of different ways. It can expose social issues that are affecting society in one way, but there's also this emancipation and this advocacy for sport being places where you can see change before it actually happens in society. So I like that spectrum that there's lots of stuff that is going on within the context of sport, the cultures and the traditions. There's really rich traditions. I mean, it is bringing out the Maritime's Colored Hockey League. I mean, that is part of the NHL, it's part of hockey in Canada, it really is. It's not just a story, but there's a legacy that connects past to present.
Dr. Richard Norman:	The reason why I focus on that is because it's not well known. And so then when we take a look at, even in that case, all the social issues coming from Africa, all the way up to the legacy of the people who played in that, the changing of the game, all that stuff. You can take any aspect of that and then look at society. And so you take a look at racism or not being able to enter into the NHL at the time, or professional leagues, right. Well, that commentary is not encapsulated within sport. It's a real societal issue.
Dr. Richard Norman:	At the same time, you look at Herb, you look at Willie O'Ree, who broke those barriers and broke everything down so that now we have a different position to take a look at within society. And so that, well, how does society then have to change to get to that place? And that's why I love sport because anything that you want to look at, you can look through the lens of sport and it gives you a different perspective that people can connect to because sport, generally speaking is universal.
Dr. Richard Norman:	Even if you don't play, there's the entertainment value, there's fandom, there's participation, there's community building. So I don't see it separate from society. I think it's like a microcosm of how to get to those deeper roots and the connections that go there. Or even take a look at the legacy of Herb and so using sport and then creating a whole legacy around how do we make better citizens. That's an amazing thing that comes from just a pathway through sport.
Bernice Carnegie:	I totally agree with everything that you said. I couldn't have said it better.
Dr. Richard Norman:	Sure you can.
Bernice Carnegie:	But sport is life. So you can't separate sport from all of the other issues in life because those issues appear in absolutely everything that we do. Everything. And what happens is that some sports at different times, the issues get magnified in those sports and we become more aware of what actually is taking place. But what's taking place in the sport is also taking place in our lives.
Bernice Carnegie:	And one of the things that I'm very aware of is that my father took his skills in sport and applied them to life. So he started in his craft as a hockey player right out of high school, 17 years of his life. And then he started the first hockey school in Canada the year after he finished. And he was well aware that that hockey school wasn't just about skills and training in hockey, it is about life skills. And that's why he called it Future Aces. Future, always striving to be the ace in ourselves, to be the best of who we can be.
Cassandra Earle:	The ability sport has to create such transformative change is unique. And Dr. Norman believes it's stories like Herb Carnegie's that make that possible.
Dr. Richard Norman:	It's these stories that you can see that it's beyond the game of hockey. Sport has a way of transcending and infusing itself and connecting. It's the way we bond. It is the social connections we form. It's the friendships. It's the impact. It's the skills that are learned. And those all come from the play. But I think if you boil down sport, to me it's this fun. It's this play, it's this bonding, it's this expression. It's a way to show everybody who you are and be the best possible person that you can be. And I think that for me, if that can be the core of what we have in sport in Canada and the rest of the world, then I think we've done our job.
Cassandra Earle:	Bernice believes that sport is transformative because of the skills you learn and the challenges it presents you, which have to be overcome.
Bernice Carnegie:	Well, it certainly is an expression of skill sets that you might have. Not everybody is built to be an athlete, and it tests your body in many ways. But it goes beyond testing your body. It tests your mind. Because sport is made up of all kinds of experiences where you're challenged. And the challenge can be either exciting and good, or the challenge can be negative.
Bernice Carnegie:	And what you do when you're faced with the negative is a real test of who you'll end up being as a person. We cannot get through life without experiencing the shady side of things. And who are you really when you're faced with these things, who do you show up as? Do you show up as the person that's higher minded and actually strive to find solutions?
Bernice Carnegie:	My father was in a unique position of not always being able to do anything about certain situations around racial issues. For him it was, this is how I support my family. And he had three children and a home. And so when systemic racism showed itself, he even says in his book that he didn't always show up in the way he had wished he could have, but he made up for it. He made up for it when he left to try to do something about it.
Bernice Carnegie:	I mean, that was the one thing that I admired my dad so much for. He navigated around racism and all the other isms with such grace, determination and commitment to want to make our world a better place. Our challenge is to empower young people to find that in themselves because there's not always going to be someone there to pat you on the back.
Bernice Carnegie:	Now, sports gives an opportunity to pat people on the back and you get medals and the red light goes on. Well, our motto is a red light. In my father's writings he said, one of his coaches said, put the red light on. When someone calls you names or tries to downplay who you are, put the red light on.
Bernice Carnegie:	But put the red light on isn't just about hockey. Put the red light on is about life. We want to score in life. And how do we score in life? By being a better person. By standing up for the right thing to do, just because. Just because it is the right thing to do.
Cassandra Earle:	Dr. Herb Carnegie was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in a ceremony on November 14th. Bernice says this is a big part in recognizing the work that he did for social advocacy in hockey.
Bernice Carnegie:	I love what my father did. I love carrying on what he did. I love that I become a better person because of what he gave to me. And I love sharing it with other people so that they can feel as wonderful as I feel now. So this is his recognition. This is his recognition, not just for him, for our family, for all of the people that loved him because he was such an amazing person. It just closes the door nicely or opens the door nicely to allowing others to believe that when you do good, good can come from good.
Cassandra Earle:	Like Nobody's Business is a presentation from Toronto Metropolitan University's Ted Rogers School of Management. For more information, visit torontomu.ca/tedrogersschool. Thank you for listening.

See All Episodes