#youpeople: Don Cherry and Canadian Social Divides-FR

Event Details:

Dr. Kristi Allain provides analysis of hockey commentator Don Cherry’s comments made on November 9th and the public’s response, arguing that there is value in taking Don Cherry seriously. She examines Cherry as a marker (and maker) of nostalgic remembering. The press and the public both revere and revile his performance of manliness, and the style of masculinity that he advocates, as a throwback to simpler days. For Cherry, these simpler times, which contrast with the idea of a current-day masculinity in crisis, privileged the ‘‘self-made man’’ who, through hard work, could make a way for himself in the world. Allain argues that Cherry’s articulations of morality are linked to discourses of masculinity in crisis, taking the form of a nostalgic privileging of an anachronistic style of masculinity that locates an appropriate sense of masculine style within a particular class consciousness, namely working class white men, and a particular geographic locale, namely small-town Canada.

Kristi Allain is an associate professor of sociology at St. Thomas University. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Physical Culture and Social Life. Her work examines the intersections of national identity, gender and physical culture. She has previously examined the representation of Canadian national identity in hockey media, writing on popular representation of Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and Don Cherry. She has also examined the ways that hegemonic hockey masculinity is produced in the Canadian Hockey League. Today her work looks at embodied aging in Canadian winter sport.

All are welcome to attend.

Building: Kinesiology

Room Number: 201