ABOUT THIS BOOK

Winner of the NASSS Outstanding Book Award

Hockey and multiculturalism are often noted as defining features of Canadian culture; yet, rarely are we forced to question the relationship and tensions between these two social constructs. This book examines the growing significance of hockey in Canada’s South Asian communities. The Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi broadcast serves as an entry point for a broader consideration of South Asian experiences in hockey culture based on field work and interviews conducted with hockey players, parents, and coaches in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This book seeks to inject more “color” into hockey’s historically white dominated narratives and representations by returning hockey culture to its multicultural roots. It encourages alternative and multiple narratives about hockey and cultural citizenship by asking which citizens are able to contribute to the webs of meaning that form the nation’s cultural fabric.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

COURTNEY SZTO is an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded researcher whose work broadly explores the relationship between physical cultures and intersectional justice.

REVIEWS

"A groundbreaking book. Courtney Szto’s insightful study of hockey’s growing significance in Canadian South Asian communities, as well as challenges faced by racialized Canadians when they play the game, makes an important contribution to the analysis of contemporary Canadian society."

— Richard Gruneau, Simon Fraser University

"Interview: Dr. Courtney Szto, author of "Changing on the Fly: Hockey Through the Voices of South Asian Canadians"
https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/episodes/interview-dr-courtney-szto-author-of-changing-on-the-fly-hockey-through-the-voices-of-south-asian-canadians

— Burn It All Down podcast

"This is a desperately-needed intervention from our most influential scholar of race and hockey through both a systematic and nuanced analysis of how multiculturalism and racism shape Canada and its beloved sport, and a powerful account of how those dynamics are experienced."

— Nathan Kalman-Lamb, author of Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport

"The groundbreaking work of Courtney Szto in Changing on the Fly captures the multiple ways that the Canadian national pastime of ice hockey constitutes an important site to examine the essential izing and shifting realms of race and belonging....[A] call to action and a demand to think about race critically in relation to sport and the nation. Changing on the Fly destabilizes the normative investments in sport and the nation while articulating forms of citizenship that can be liberating. With the increasing discussion and silence around race in professional sports, this book is vital to understanding the expansive infrastructure that secures whiteness and excludes communities of color."

— Sociology of Sport Journal

"Changing on the Fly interrogates the culture of hockey honestly, and from a place of love, offering a critique that is meant to change the nature of the sport so that everyone — not just white, straight Canadian men and boys — can truly have a place in it."

— The Tyee

TABLE OF CONTENTS