Читать книгу Let It Snow. Keeping Canada's Winter Sports Alive онлайн

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Hockey defines Canadians so much now that politicians use the winter sport as a benchmark to create new legislation.

One has only to consider a proposed Federal holiday brought forward in February 2009 by Linda Duncan, an Edmonton MP. In her proposal, Duncan argued that the third Friday of February be declared, as one might have already guessed, “Hockey Day.”

Duncan’s proposal, not surprisingly, was quick fodder for the national media. Any story involving hockey and politics gets the attention of Canadians. Its presence on websites inspired a flurry of comments and sparked vigorous debates from Canadians throughout the nation. Some comments by Canadians online spoke directly to the state of Canada’s culture. Some wondered how Canadians have got to the point where the nation, once joked about as being a hockey-playing, beer-drinking, parka-wearing fraternity, now had politicians proposing holidays directly catering to some of these oversimplifications. Had we become a country requiring a holiday to tell us what we already knew to be our story? Duncan defended her proposal, saying, “Hockey has served as a unifying force throughout our history and it is a significant facet of our national identity.”