Over sixty presenters and guest speakers from across North America and Europe are expected to meet virtually to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Hockey Conference, an academic conference on ice hockey that was founded at Saint Mary’s University twenty years ago. Hosted by the Saint Mary’s University Centre for the Study of Sport & Health, the theme for this year’s conference is hockey in a changing world.
The conference, happening online June 4-6, will feature keynote speaker Angela James, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and a trailblazer for women’s hockey and Black hockey players in Canada. Other guest speakers include Kaleb Dahlgren, who survived the Humboldt Broncos bus crash; Kurtis Gabriel, an athlete in the National Hockey League; Jessica Platt, the first transgender woman to play professional hockey; Kieran Block, the first Black parahockey athlete on the Canadian National Paralympic team, and Rhonda Taylor, the first woman to sit on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (which eventually became part of Hockey Canada).
“We had to postpone by a year as a result of the pandemic and move it online, but I think we’ve still managed to come up with a solid event despite the setbacks,” says conference organizer Dr. Cheryl MacDonald, who is also the Associate Director of Outreach at the Centre for the Study of Sport & Health. “My main goal was to celebrate Dr. Colin Howell, who founded the conference in 2001 and just retired after 50 years at Saint Mary’s, so I’m glad we can still make that happen for him.” Dr. Howell will be giving the inaugural Dr. Colin Howell Distinguished Lecture at the conference as part of the celebrations.
Local guest speakers will include Ryan Francis, a member of Nova Scotia’s Mi’kmaw community, Nicole Durand of the parahockey community, Serge LeBlanc of the Acadian community, and Savannah Newton from Hockey Nova Scotia’s female high-performance program. SMU men’s hockey alumni Bob Dawson, a member of the first all-Black line in Canadian university ice hockey, will also be speaking briefly about Black hockey in the Maritimes as he introduces Angela James’ keynote speech.
The Hockey Conference is an interdisciplinary event held every two years in a different city. It brings together scholars and community members and facilitates a range of analyses and discussions on the sport in its many forms. Presenters have come from diverse fields such as history, economics, sociology, human kinetics, and business. Notable guest speakers have included Jean Beliveau, Hazel McCallion, Ken Dryden, Jenn Botterill, Billy Bridges, and Ted Nolan.
The conference is free for observers, and all are welcome. Registration is required on the conference website at www.thehockeyconference.ca.