Welcome to the Centre for Sport Policy Studies, in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto.
The Centre is an internationally recognized hub and repository for research into sport, policy and development (broadly defined). Members and associates of the centre conduct research in three broad areas:
Inclusive and equitable sport for all
Healthy high performance sport
sport for development and peace
UPDATED : Sex testing Q & A for athletes
In March 2026, the International Olympic Committee announced new guidelines for sex-based eligibility in sports as well as genetic sex-testing requirements. In response, Centre for Sport Policy Studies members Marcus Mazzucco and Professor Bruce Kidd prepared a ‘Q & A’ for athletes navigating this new policy landscape, in collaboration with Madeleine Pape (University of Lausanne), Silvia Camporesi (KU Leuven), Sone Erikainen (University of Aberdeen), Michele Donnelly (Brock University), Katrina Karkazis (Amherst College), and Payoshni Mitra (Humans of Sport). Click the link above to access the Q & A.
In April 2026, Centre for Sport Policy Studies members Marcus Mazzucco published a position paper entitled
MANDATORY GENETIC SEX TESTING IN SPORT UNDER CANADIAN LAW: A POSITION PAPER AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Essay
The Cultural Struggle for Hockey and Masculinity in Canada
by Simon Darnell October 27, 2026
Years ago, I was a PHD student in the (then) Faculty of Physical and Health Education (PHE) at the University of Toronto (today I work as a Professor in the same Faculty, now named Kinesiology and Physical Education). As part of a research seminar, the esteemed investigative journalist and overall rabble rouser Andrew Jennings came to speak to members of the faculty. Jennings had developed a strong reputation for taking on the highest levels of power brokers in the world of elite, high-performance sport, and specifically focused his ire on The International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the governing body for international soccer.
Jennings spent a significant portion of that seminar in an important takedown of the corruption embedded within international sport, and by extension (both explicitly and not) he suggested that elite competitive sport at the international level was an overall detriment or net drain on both sports culture and society at large. Jennings made a compelling case on an impressionable graduate student, underpinned by his years of investigative journalism and backed up by real facts and data.
At the conclusion of his talk the Dean of the Faculty at the time (and one of my mentors both then and now) Professor Bruce Kidd joined Jennings at the front of the room to discuss the implications of his presentation. Something that Kidd said has stuck with me since then. Kidd argued that Jennings’ critique and expose of the corruption within the world of sports was important and necessary but Jennings’ overall approach was limited by the fact that he was willing to afford very little agency to those within the world of sports to make any kind of change in response to the corruption he had uncovered. Kidd’s simultaneous respect and frustration with Jennings was palpable; Kidd felt grateful to Jennings for exposing the limitations of the structuring of sports but frustrated with Jennings for not leaving room for the necessary reforms that would allow the benefits of sports to come forth and flourish.
I don't entirely know why Kidd’s argument has stayed with me all these years, but his response to Jennings is similar to the ways in which I think about the recent treatment of hockey culture in Canada, in particular the culture of abuse and toxic masculinity that is recurrent within the game. My engagement with two recent texts in particular has made me reflect on hockey in a way that I believe Kidd was encouraging us to do so with the Olympics and the World Cup during his tete a tete with Jennings.
One of the texts to which I am referring is Rick Westhead's 2025 book entitled We Breed Lions in which he rather meticulously examines incidences and structures of abuse and exploitation within elite competitive hockey in Canada. Westhead is the TSN reporter who originally broke the story of the five Canadian world junior hockey players who were accused, tried and subsequently acquitted of sexual assault of a woman in a London hotel room following a team celebration in 2018. The book examines systemic and recurring abuse and exploitation, both by hockey players and of hockey players, and brings into sharp relief the question of whether elite competitive hockey is a force for good in Canada, despite or even because of its ongoing intimate connection to Canadian nationalism.
The second text is arguably less intellectual, yet I have found to be no less compelling or influential in thinking through the relationship between hockey, masculinity, nationalism and culture. This is the show Shoresy, a drama produced for the Crave network and written and directed by Canadian actor and creator Jared Keeso. Shoresy tells the story of the titular character, a hockey-mad player, and eventually coach, who moves to Sudbury Ontario to play for the Sudbury Bulldogs in senior men's hockey. The show is profane, unapologetic, filled with real hockey players and, seemingly without reservation, embraces the contradictions that make hockey so compelling to some and problematic for others. The strongest characters surrounding Shoresy, one could argue, are women or Indigenous people, or both in the case of team managers Miigwan (played by Keilani Elizabeth Rose) and Ziigwan (played by Blair Lamora), which in structural terms serves to upend the notion that hockey is run by and for men. At the same time the show celebrates the violence and sexism that is at the very heart of Westhead's critique of what elite competitive hockey looks like in Canada. The main hockey-playing characters in Shoresy fight, drink and fuck and do so in ways that condone the aggressive, dominant, competitive masculinity that arguably led to the incidences that were at the heart of the Hockey Canada sex scandal in London.
Now is the time to say that I have loved watching Shorsey. Keeso, a former junior hockey player himself, is something of a genius. At one level the first five seasons of the show demonstrate a remarkable ability to capture a sporting subculture in dramatic form, both for those who barely know the sport and for those that have been around the game and understand the emotion, the excitement, the risk, the drama and the passion of hockey. Shoresy is a love letter; it's entirely effective in capturing what hockey looks like and feels like and what it means to the many Canadians for whom the game is a central part of their lives, their identity, and their understandings of nationalism. If the role of art is to tell the truth Shoresy is successful art-making.
At the same time, and in ways that might not receive much attention, Shorsey goes some way towards complicating (in the best sense of the word) who hockey players are. On the one hand Shorsey himself, played by Keeso, is profane and violent and sexist. On the other hand, not only is Shorsey loyal, responsible and in service to the community but he's also emotionally vulnerable and respectful in ways that run counter to the idea of toxic masculinity. It feels significant that a show that celebrates hockey culture in its most traditional and profane way would simultaneously be built around a central character who regularly cries for joy, takes care of everyone around him, insists on respect for elders and parents and the service workers at the rink, and is deeply committed to a respectful monogamous relationship with a woman (Laura More, a sports reporter played by Camille Sullivan). That Keeso also builds Shorsey's character surrounded by, and in constant antagonism with, women, people of colour, members of the working class and Indigenous folks, situates his masculinity and his Whiteness amidst and against a cultural bricolage that is in so many ways quintessentially Canadian.
Indeed, the character of Shorsey is himself an orphan, raised by a single dad (played by Canadian legend Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall) and his adopted siblings are all racialized and/or queer. What this suggests is that while the show is unapologetically celebrating masculinity in and through hockey, it's also going out of its way to illustrate that this masculinity regularly negotiates complexity and that Shoresy’s manhood can not only connect to diversity (rather than crush it or dominate it) but that he is better off for doing so. Nothing in Shoresy feels like it was done by accident and these choices of character and structure that Keeso makes and puts on the screen send a productively complicating message about what White male hockey players in places like Sudbury are actually like, what they are doing, and how they connect to the diversity of their communities.
Engaging with Shorsey while reading Westhead is complicated in the best ways. To be fair to Westhead, he is consistent throughout that the purpose of his book is not to disparage hockey as irredeemable. I respect this a great deal. My issue with the text is that it walks the line of essentialism, not always successfully, and when it sometimes falls over into intrinsic or universal arguments it becomes the antithesis of quality representation or nuanced analysis. Much of what Westhead is writing about is the world of elite male hockey, particularly major junior leagues like the Ontario Hockey League or elite youth development leagues like the Greater Toronto Hockey League. (As a sidebar, I spent the last two years as a parent of a son playing in the GTHL). Westhead's analysis and critiques of that league as overly competitive, too demanding on players, and undermined by parents with unreasonable expectations of their children's hockey prospects are accurate and valid. But they're also overly essential in at least two respects. One is that while the GTHL is made up of, or at least includes, overly ambitious parents, it’s also comprised of countless examples of community, of service, of empathy and of commitment to others, all of which produce or at least contribute to positive cultural and social impacts, for the players, fans, parents and organizers that all come together to make the league possible.
I say this not only as a hockey parent but as a social science researcher who has been interested for many years in the social implications (and potential contributions) of sports. We know that when organized intentionally, and with care and awareness, that sports can offer a social and community-based activity around which social bonds form and through which positive social implications and outcomes (both individual and community level) can be produced. That sports are also toxic because they are overly competitive, elitist, classist, racist, misogynistic and exclusive does not make them essentially so. Which is the second level at which Westhead's book essentializes; there's a sense in the text that elite competitive hockey somehow represents the totality of hockey culture. Westhead may not have intended this to be the case and he's certainly not the only one who falls victim to this equivocation but it's factually false to imply that the kids who are playing in the GTHL or the junior players in the OHL represent the totality of hockey culture in a country as diverse as Canada. Hockey culture in Canada also includes shinny on outdoor rinks on frigid February days, it includes newcomers and immigrants who connect with NHL teams as a form of social capital and local identity formations, and it includes all the kids playing house league across the country who don't have any designs on ‘making it’ as a hockey player but love to go to the rink on a Saturday because playing the game is just so much damn fun.
The truth is that hockey is everything all at once. It is the ultimate team game (a team can’t break the puck out of its own zone without buy-in and sync from all five players) and hockey is sometimes (even regularly) a truly magical example of the emotion and vulnerability that are central or fundamental to what it means to be a human being. At the same time there is no doubt that the structures and systems underpinning the current cultural format of hockey in Canada facilitate and enable abuse, dominance, and exploitation in ways that many Canadians are still hesitant to analyze or embrace. Indeed, the most damning element of Westhead's critique isn't that abuse and toxicity occurs within the game of hockey, it is that for so long people within the game have refused to acknowledge this, reflect upon it, or propose anything substantively different.
My argument is not that Shorsey as a cultural text solves these issues in any way, or that it necessarily represents an alternative to hockey culture in Canada, but I do think that Shorsey helps us to understand that the challenge facing Canada's relationship with hockey is not about the essentials of the game itself, it is about the relationships that the game affords or does not afford. And it encourages us to think about the cultural significance of the values that we ascribe to and learn through the game. Put differently, my point is not to defend the game but rather to guard against the essentializing of hockey, which is bad research, or to give up on reform, which is bad politics, both of which are inspired by the ways in which Kidd responded to Jennings those years ago.
There are ways forward, and they're evident in Westhead's book and in Shorsey. Westhead writes that within this crisis hockey has lost its cultural identity. Hockey has gone from being the quintessential team sport to what is effectively an individual pursuit, characterized by outrageously expensive equipment, never-ending aspirations towards a better team or pro career, and a belief that there is never too much ice time. But again, elite hockey players and elite hockey thinking of this kind don't represent hockey culture and we need not yield the game to capitalist-inspired individualization especially at a time when connection to the land, to community, and to each other is so desperately needed. There are clear thematic elements that align with this thinking in Shorsey. It's significant that the team that Shorsey plays for is a senior amateur team in a small town in northern Ontario. This is not a show built around the NHL but rather one that tries to tell the story of what hockey means in community. In fact, an ongoing storyline in the show is the importance for the team's directors (Miigwan and Ziigwan, as well as General Manager Nat, played by Tasya Teles) of hockey in the community, illustrated by the Bulldog’s slogan ‘By the community, for the community.’ Hockey is a hub for social development, Shorsey is telling us, if we are willing and able to see it in such terms.
The other aspect that begs for analysis is the treatment of masculinity in both We Breed Lions and in Shoresy. While there are strong female characters in both texts, the central analysis is of masculinity and how it is constructed and contested within the game. A theme running through Westhead's book is that hockey provides a space in which unfettered toxic masculinity can run wild, with no checks and balances, because of the cultural significance afforded the game and the ways that this encourages people near the boys who play it to look away when they see something bad, rather than to act. In Shoresy, masculinity receives a slightly more nuanced treatment, albeit one for which critics, particularly those looking through a feminist lens, may have little sympathy. What cannot be denied though is that masculine friendship underpins so much of the hockey culture that Keeso is describing and demonstrating in his show. Yes, those male hockey players are sexually promiscuous, they drink and they're violent, but they're also connected. And in the crisis of contemporary masculinity, in which the manosphere recruits young men as dominant individuals rather than members of a collective, denies their individual complexity and vulnerability, and teaches them to fear diversity, there is a sliver of hope in the relationships that Keeso is modeling in his show.
In positing such an argument, I am entirely prepared for the fact that this line of thinking will be rejected by critics of toxic masculinity and dismissed as apologetic. What good are masculine connections, such critics will say, if they're built upon dominance over women through sex, over other men through violence, and over the rest of the culture through celebrating hockey as if it is entitled to its own recognition. This is an important and valid counterclaim. And yet a sliver of reform remains, and it is in both texts. It remains in Westhead's concluding chapter in which he documents men that are now leading reforms within the game about what it means to be masculine in hockey and engaging with and training hockey players to embrace versions of manhood that are strong yet vulnerable, and connected to, not dominant over those around them. And hope remains when considering the totality of Shorsey as a character, one who seeks to dominate on the ice but also hugs players while they cry and leads them through reflections on their feelings of uselessness and impotence. And perhaps the sliver of hope is cracked open the widest at the conclusion of season 5 which is highlighted by a soliloquy delivered by Nat, the Bulldogs GM and one of Shorsey's main antagonists. Addressing two church leaders who are disgusted by the antics of male hockey players, Nat says:
“You said, when was the last time you read something good about a hockey player? I’ll acknowledge there’s some bad stuff out there. You said, hockey players are all the same. That there’s a culture problem with the sport. And that’s where I’m going to stop you. I’ve been around hockey players a long time. And I know the culture is very important to them. So I’m here to defend it. I want to tell you about my guys. They’re not perfect; I’ll say that loud and clear. They’re flawed, just like the rest of us. But hockey players are not all the same. They have their own on-ice styles, personalities, and they’re married to them. They can’t help it. But off the ice, my guys are always growing. My guys have taught me that hockey players can be more than sluts. They’ve taught me, hockey players can be many things. They’re community leaders. They take care of the people that take care of them. They’re loyal to their community and their community is loyal to them. And while always being there for Sudbury, they’re always there for each other. That’s the culture of hockey. Loyalty, dependability, team first. You guys wanted a peaceful environment in the rink and my guys didn’t bring that. I’m sorry. Some guys play like psychos. But away from the game, my guys are family men who call their parents and cry when they talk about their siblings. But they can also be who you saw at the rink yesterday; killers. And the world needs people like that. People who, in the service of others, will disregard themselves. People who will give their blood, their sweat, people who will push through the pain. The world needs fighters. So, you see, hockey players are not all the same. And the culture of hockey is just fine. That’s what my guys have taught me.”
On the one hand, her speech serves to assert a defence of contemporary masculinity in hockey in ways that will make some uncomfortable. But Nat’s speech, written by Keeso for a female character, is also a public assertion or recognition of the complexity, the non-essentiality, and yes even the positivity of hockey culture and of masculinity within that hockey culture. Perhaps most importantly, Nat’s soliloquy demonstrates self-awareness; it is Keeso telling us “I've heard these critiques, they're valid, and we can do something about them just so long as you don’t throw it all away.” It's the same tone that Kidd brought in response to Jennings when Jennings wanted to dismiss all of sports out of hand because the IOC and FIFA are undoubtedly corrupt.
This embracing and defense of the complexity of what it means to be human, in this case a human who is a male hockey player, is not only an accurate representation but it is also a sorely needed act of social and political reform. It is only in the embrace of the tensions and complexity and totality of masculinity that reform towards new healthy action is possible. Reform cannot be an act of denigration, of repression, or destruction, but rather one of growth, encouragement and blossoming. In Robert Augustus Masters’s book To Be a Man, he writes:
“Manhood is not a matter of repression, of subjugation of what we fear or don't like about ourselves, nor is it a matter of transcending such qualities. A healthy man neither hides in nor abandons his maleness. The power that comes with maleness is not his to decry or apologize for but rather to harness, to ride, to enjoy, and to use responsibly. Claiming his full power does not make a man less of a man but permits him to embody his real nature in all its depth and wildness.”
To me, this is the problem facing young male hockey players; they're given the keys to this incredibly powerful cultural machine but until recently have been offered almost no guidance on how to cultivate or harness such power towards positive ends like community, inclusion, diversity and justice. Until we embrace this point, we are unlikely to make any headway in the meaningful reform of hockey. Further, we will be missing the opportunity that hockey offers all of us to build more connected and sustainable communities. The good news is that when reading We Breed Lions and watching Shoresy we can see a blossoming public awareness about what the sport of hockey can mean and can do in Canada, especially if we're willing to embrace the truth of its complexity, and to reject the tendency to essentialize while also refusing to take this team game and allow it be reduced to the acts of individual dominance and consumption in and through which abuse runs rife. We owe it to young hockey players not to let hockey continue this way. And we also owe it to young hockey players not to give up on them or the sport that so many of us love.
Questions and comments can be directed to Simon Darnell, Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at simon.darnell@utoronto.ca
RECENT EVENTS
On May 7th, 2024, a research team led by Dr. Kyle Rich (Brock university) hosted a policy workshop at the Centre for Sport Policy Studies, part of a SSHRC-funded project focused on mapping the role of provincial/territorial sport policy in Canada. The workshop was attended by 25 experts from sport organizations and academic institutions. click here to read the report and its recommendations.
Click HERE to listen to Dr. Simon Darnell’s Recent Appearance on the Parenting Ed-Ventures Podcast
The Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies is Dr. Simon C. Darnell. Contact him at: simon.darnell@utoronto.ca