Yesterday was Capital Pride in Ottawa, the annual LGBT2QIA march that caps off a week of queer events, celebrations, and activism in Canada’s capital. Pride parades and marches are many things, but in recent years, these events provide an opportunity for a variety of groups and organizations to participate and illustrate to the wider civic community a basic level of allyship with queer folks. In the sports world, it has become conventional for teams to participate by having players and team management march in the event, by providing coverage on social media, and by selling rainbow-themed team merchandise. On its own, participation in a pride parade or hosting a Pride Night does not make a pro hockey team inclusive nor should it be viewed as an end point for queer inclusion in sport. To put it bluntly, it is simply one of the easiest ways an organization can illustrate the most superficial support for the queer community in 2017.
Unfortunately, the Ottawa Senators have once again failed to support the LGBT2QIA community in even this most basic way. This is sadly consistent with the organization’s previous behaviour. I have written about this before. I will write about it in the future. There is little evidence to suggest the Senators organization will change. Furthermore, I have yet to read a critical piece from either Ottawa’s sports media or the city’s press more broadly on the Sens queer inclusion efforts. Most Sens fans and bloggers don’t seemed bothered by this either. Consequently, there is little pressure for the team to change its ways in the 2017–18 season or for the next Capital Pride. This pathetic pattern will continue.
I should clarify that the Senators were represented in this weekend’s Capital Pride parade. Spartacat, the Senators mascot, was the only recognizable Senators presence at Capital Pride, and marched as part of a contingent which included a few Sens interns, members of You Can Play (YCP), which is a queer inclusion advocacy group, and Canadian Olympians. The problem is, a mascot waiving in a parade is simply a billboard with the team’s logo on it, it lacks the impact of queer athletes marching; it even lacks the impact of cishet athletes marching in an act of allyship. Athletes can make affirmative statements about LGBT2QIA inclusion. They can be interviewed and answers questions. They can actually take a stand and challenge the norms of hockey’s culture which emphasizes an aggressive, toxic masculinity and actively contributes to queerphobia. But a mascot doesn’t do these things. A mascot doesn’t speak, nor does it have agency. There’s nothing wrong with a mascot attending a parade, but there is something wrong with a mascot being an organization’s primary representation at a pride parade. Having Spartacat represent the Senators trivializes the challenges the queer community faces in sporting circles and the difficulties and violence LGBT2QIA folks face more broadly. Frankly, it’s insulting.
The Senators failure to support the LGBT2QIA community is made all the more noticeable because the RedBlacks, Ottawa’s CFL franchise, has made a far more consistent effort to publicly support Ottawa’s queer community. The organization, in its third season, held its second Pride Night on Saturday; a sellout and victory over the Lions. On Sunday, RedBlacks star receivers Greg Ellingson and Brad Sinopoli marched in the parade with the Grey Cup. The team’s truck/float even acknowledged the trans community by displaying the trans flag. Both the team and the players promoted the parade before the event and then shared images of the march on their social media accounts yesterday. The organization has pledged to work with Capital Pride when Ottawa hosts the Grey Cup later this year. There is still room for improvement from the RedBlacks in terms of queer inclusion and LGBT2QIA acceptance, but the football team manages to meet current conventions for pro sports teams and occasionally exceeds them, unlike the Senators.
In contrast, the Senators have never held a Pride/YCP Night. They’ve never had a player, coach, or someone from management march in Capital Pride. They’ve never worn Pride jerseys or used Pride tape at a home game. In fact, outside of Daniel Alfredsson’s YCP video, which was released when the advocacy group launched five years ago, the Senators’ most notable contributions to Pride events consists of Spartacat marching and Marc Methot using Pride tape during the Hurricanes’ Pride Night in 2017.* The Sens didn’t even bother to tweet an acknowledgement of Capital Pride on Sunday. What did the team tweet about on Sunday? The Hometown Tour, a series of public fan events around the region designed to connect fans with the team. Each stop on the tour includes several player appearances. While I think the Hometown Tour is actually a great idea, for the Sens to both undertake a week-long regional tour featuring Sens players and alumni while at the same time refusing to publicly support (beyond sending the club’s mascot to walk down Bank Street) Ottawa’s annual week-long celebration and acknowledgment of the queer community is disgraceful. The team clearly has the ability to martial players in the off-season, they simply choose not to in support of the region’s queer community. The same criticism can be levied against the team’s players. They can show up for autograph sessions, meet-and-greets, and golf tournaments, but not in support of LGBT2QIA events. Ultimately, the team’s queer fans are simply not on the organization’s radar.
But queer fans should be on the radar of hockey teams like the Senators because men’s hockey culture directly contributes to queerphobia. One of the ways it does this is through toxic masculinity. Those who discuss the game, from the players and coaches, to the commentators and the fans they influence, celebrate violence and condemn signs of physical weakness in men. This physical weakness is associated with femininity and with being gay by those who play the game at a high level. It’s why NHL players like Ryan Getzlaf and Andrew Shaw used homophobic slurs during games. Those fluent in the culture of men’s hockey believe that to be a man who isn’t stereotypically masculine, or to be a man who’s gay is a marker of weakness and believe that such apparent weakness hurts the team. In this atmosphere it becomes acceptable to make jokes and threats at queer folks’ expense, to use queerphobic slurs openly, and to discriminate against the LGBT2QIA community. As a result, men’s hockey perpetuates and entrenches discrimination against queer people, and therefore men’s hockey must do more to change its culture and combat queerphobia.
Ultimately, even by the conventional and performative standards of sports teams and leagues acknowledging and showing solidarity with the queer community, the Ottawa Senators have consistently been a miserable failure. So much so, that it becomes less a question of if the Senators will participate in LGBT2QIA events, but rather why the organization so consistently ignores even the simplest acknowledgements of the queer community. Given the increased profile of Pride Nights and civic pride events in the sports world, it cannot be a matter of ignorance but must be, instead, a willful and deliberate inaction on the part of the Senators organization.
That inaction should bother and embarrass every Sens fan. Those in the community who aspire to being queer allies must demand better from this organization. Without increased pressure from its fan base, the Senators will remain an embarrassing and disgracefully queerphobic organization.
*While I have kept very close tabs on the Senators Pride activities, it is possible I have missed various minor actions or initiatives during the last five years. It’s possible other players used Pride tape at during the Hurricanes Pride Night in 2017, or during other Pride Nights during the 2016–2017 season, but I’ve yet to find any photographs confirming this despite considerable effort.
