How can promoters of the upcoming Memorial Cup junior hockey tournament involve the community’s ethnic minorities, young and elder alike, in an activity from Canada, known as “The Great White North” for more than snow drifts?
Or as the Rev. Charles Coleman, Saginaw Board of Education president, formally phrased the concern, “For African American males, hockey is not something they would (normally) take an interest in.”
Answers to liaison delegates from the school board, City Council and County Board include:
- History lessons on blacks in Canada’s national sport, starting with the “Jackie Robinson” of the pros, Willie O’Ree, a minor league journeyman who achieved a pair of stints more than 60 years ago with the Boston Bruins. This would be part of a Hockey Hall of Fame walk-through at Heritage Theater.
- Promote “ball hockey,” the gymnasium or street version with a tennis ball, and at the same time offer ice skating lessons, making use of Bayside Ice Arena, out past Tittabawassee Road. (School Trustee Ruth Knapp, retired elementary teacher, said after the meeting that to her knowledge, floor hockey no longer is part of phys-ed in the city district.)
- Conduct a downtown interfaith, interracial Sunday ecumenical service, organized via the Saginaw African American Pastors group.
- Involve people in vendor opportunities outside The Dow Event Center for the 10-day tourney, May 23 through June 2. To sell tacos or BBQ or apparel, for example, one need not understand hockey rules like offsides or icing.
- To make hockey more affordable for young players, “gently used equipment” can be made available for a fraction of the price. The Detroit area’s Urban Hockey Initiative is a model.
Organizers are saying the Memorial Cup, hosted by the Saginaw Spirit, is similar for Canadians to the NFL’s Super Bowl or college basketball’s March Madness. But in the planning, a Gus Macker atmosphere emerges with a boatload of extras — live music, films at the Temple Theater, a classic car show, social hours near the Henry Marsh mural under the the I-675 overpass. The strategy is to keep an estimated 17,000 Canadian visitors with their estimated $25 million in vacation cash occupied in the downtown and in Old Town, rather than becoming homebodies at their outlying hotels.
The main difference with the Macker, of course, is activities will be for visitors rather than hometowners.
The Canadian Hockey League develops high schoolers into future stars like Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky, or Grant Fuhr, the star goaltender for Gretzky’s championship teams who was black, generally unknown to casual fans because he wore a protective facemask. In the National Hockey League, 97 percent of players are white, either from Canada, U.S. suburbs or northern Europe. The Detroit Red Wings franchise ranks at the bottom for integration, even as one of the NHL’s “Original Six” teams prior to expansion to 31 total cities that began during the 1960s. At the same time, the Wings formerly deployed a “Russian Five” unit of all Soviet players.
There are three junior leagues with a combined 60 teams, one west, one east and the central Ontario League, which includes Saginaw and Flint across the border. Three more U.S.A. franchises are in the Pacific Northwest, and the most recent to host a Memorial Cup was Spokane in 1998. The Spirit’s Kayla Pionk, local event manager for the Memorial Cup, said planners are well on the way to signing up 500 volunteers for the 10 days with bookends of May 23 and June 2. Anyone interested may contact her at kpionk@saginawspirit.com, or by calling (989) 525-7583.
