By Donald M. Taylor

Ice hockey is Canada’s game, it is our game, it is my game. That was true in the day, but not any more. Oh ya, we win our share of Olympic gold medals and world championships in ice hockey, but these days every team in the best league in the world is populated with Canadians, Americans, Russians, Swedes, Checks, Fins, and on and on. Still, ask any true-blooded Canadian and you would think these other countries are “posers” who simply stole the game we own. Ask me about the game and I will bore you with tales of honing my skills as a child for hours on an outdoor rink in minus twenty degree weather. I will droan on with hockey anecdotes involving on-ice fights, getting hit with pucks and being stitched up in the dressing room so as to resume playing, and endless bus rides throughout the vast Canadian hinterland to play against rival towns and cities. And I will finally, like all Canadians, end up elevating the game to the ultimate symbol of Canadian identity. It is a fast, tough, team game played in the dead of winter, across a vast desolate landscape—what could be more Canadian than that eh?
 

Is national, cultural, or group identity in general, so superficial that it can be aligned with a simple game? Is there no substance to group identity? This is not a trivial question, and recent events surrounding a play-off series between two of the best hockey teams in the world forces us to reflect on the psychological underpinnings of group identity. The two teams in question are the Montreal Canadians and the Philadelphia Flyers. They are locked in a seven game series, and the first team to win four is the winner. The venue for the games alternates between the two cities so that each enjoys the benefit of 20,000 fans screaming nonstop support for their team. Philadelphia is in the USA, Montreal is in Canada, specifically the largely French-speaking province of Quebec.
 
Now each game begins with the singing of the national anthems of both Canada and the United states; a ritual designed to elevate the game to an epic international struggle. To add to the international drama, Philly fans have on occasion taken to booing and shouting derision during the singing of the Canadian anthem, while standing reverently with hand over heart at the singing of their own anthem: Nothing like provoking national identity to add drama to a simple hockey game. But, wait a minute! It turns out that most of the players on the Philadelphia hockey team, the sporting heroes the fans adore, are, in fact, Canadian born. And, the Montreal team has a number of American born players. Oops!
 
Now it gets better. Philly fans have been known to shout colourful racial slurs at the Montreal players, and the gaggle of Montreal fans who make the trek to Philly to watch the game. Given that Montreal is located in a French speaking province of Canada, these racial slurs take the form of “Go home you **** Frogs.” Now, these partisan Philly fans are all wearing Philadelphia Flyer hockey shirts with the names of their heroes on the back. Names like Brière, Laliberté, Laperrière, Gagné and Giroux, all so called “Frogs,” or more appropriately, French speaking Canadians. And, following the game cars with Quebec (Montreal) license plates find their tires slashed and lights broken.
 
How do you reconcile a USA versus Canada identity conflict when the very team that for you personifies your USA identity come from the very identity you are railing at? How do you reconcile an English versus French clash of identities when the “we” (English) include a bunch of “them” (French), and the “them” have a bunch of “us?” At one point during a hotly contested game, Philadelphia scored a crucial goal and Philly fans went nuts, and a deafening chant of USA-USA-USA reverberated throughout the hockey arena. The irony is that the Philadelphia player who scored the goal was a Canadian, indeed a French speaking Canadian from the region of Montreal.
 
This is not a rant about Philly fan. Hell, Montreal fans celebrate a victory by taking to the streets of Montreal and trashing stores and looting. But it would seem that when it comes to understanding important group identities, culture, religion, national or gender, insights may be gained from the antics of “Philly fan.”
 
First, it is clear that identity is a psychological phenomenon. That is, it is clearly satisfying important psychological needs, so important that being illogical does not deter a strong, passionate, group identity. Second, “Philly fan” reminds us that we all have multiple group identities, and that these might differ in terms of importance, size, compatibility, and embeddedness. Most importantly, group identity seems to be context driven. Rooting for your favourite sports group doesn’t really trump national identity, but in the heat of the game it does for that short-term period. The fact that “in the moment” something as seemingly superficial as sports can predominate, to the point of evoking national identities that defy logic points to the power of context. The implications are important. It suggests that our myriad of group identities become evoked by context. A national South African identity may well dominate group identity based on colour. But change the context and colour could come to replace national identity. Muslim and Hindu neighbours may peacefully coexist for years because religious identities are a distant second in importance to community and country. Change the context and neighbours can become enemies. French and English, Black and White, Young and Old, Woman and Man—all group identities that in the right context can surface with all the passion and lack of logic as “Philly fan.” I remember as a hockey player several instances where brothers would play for opposing teams. Never once did one brother treat the other in a manner different from anyone else on the opposing team. It seemed odd at the time, but it makes sense in the context of the context of the primordial significance of group identity.