Remaking the Racial Composition of Winter Sports

For 400 years of winters, black people have lived in Canada. Yet, only by the 1950s, black athletes have been looked past skin colour and embraced by the public for their athleticism and skills in winter Olympic Games. 

Barriers of accessing winter sports based around race have always been in Canadian backyards yet less being talked about. 

“One of the things that intrigues me is that if you're good at sports, you're good at sports. But how come in Canada and the US, when you think of the Summer Olympics, it’s almost exclusively black, when you think of the Winter Olympics, it’s almost exclusively white,” said Jacqueline L. Scott, a PhD candidate researching the Black experience in snow-based recreation at University of Toronto.

Why aren't there more people of colour under Canadian winter Olympic teams? Is there a “racial sorting” where black kids are channelled into summer sports, and white kids are into winter sports? 

These questions can be answered by the discussion of how racism shapes who has access to winter sports, Scott said. 

Toronto, where the majority of the population is identified as people of colour, however has very few diverse players in the hockey teams.

“One of the things the Canadian hockey groups complain about is they're having a hard time recruiting people to play,” she said. “And what they really mean is that they're having a hard time recruiting white boys to play hockey.” 

“The city’s hockey establishment is not willing to do the outreach programs to reach and encourage people of colour,” said Scott.

Likewise, in the skiing resorts, or snowshoeing in conservation areas and national parks, people of colour are underrepresented in important positions, and overrepresented as the ‘labourers’ or the players. 

“There is a massive disconnect between what you see on the Toronto subway where there is a whole range of people of colour with different accents, and what you see in the staff in winter sports.” 

Lori L. Martin, professor of Sociology, African and African American studies at Louisiana State University and the author of White Sports/Black Sports argued sports can be better understood as a “social institution” —- a reflection of society. With racism, a huge factor in people of colour’s lack of access to winter sports can be racial wealth inequality.

“This [BIPOC communities’ lack of access to winter sports] can get down to school segregation and residential segregation,” she said. “A lot of sports in schools have disappeared due to funding constraints.”

Historically, in the US, young people from visible minorities are often introduced to sports which don’t require lots of specialised equipment or resources. Sports introduced in schools’ physical education are limited: there are no swimming pools or hockey teams in many schools.

Residential segregation is reflected in the city’s landscape, said Martin. Oftentimes, black and brown people are concentrated in urban areas where there's not much green space. 

“There's not a lot of opportunities,” Martin said. “A lot of these activities require leisure and transportation and all these issues that historically have hindered the success of black and brown people in a number of areas of life, but also in the world of sports.”

Before the pandemic hit, there were very few people of colour seen in winter outdoor recreation activities. Nonetheless, COVID-19 has really flipped the switch. The realisation that humans are part of nature extends into winter activities seen in the huge increase in the number of BIPOC. 

Brown Girl Outdoor World is a Toronto-based organisation which provides a comfortable space for the BIPOC community in outdoor activities and has been active since 2018.

Founder Demiesha Dennis said the pandemic has pushed people to go and explore the outdoors. The community networks that were formed around being outside have become “a safety network and an avenue for people to come together as a community and explore and enjoy what's been around us for so long.”

Dennis said there is a lack of information and community coming into a landscape that are not familiar to people of colour. 

“You are not required to have to love winter or have to love winter sports,” she said. “It's okay as well for you to just get outside and go for a walk, or go stand on your balcony because that's what you have access to.” 

Dennis also thinks winter sports shouldn’t be normalised as extreme and expensive hobbies like skiing in the resort. 

“Winter outdoor activities could be as simple as going outside with your kids in a city park and having a snowball fight. It could be a walk along the trail, it could be a walk in a ravine, it could be something as simple as identifying birds that you can see in the wintertime that you don't really see in the summer.”

As for changing the narrative of whiteness as the dominant imagery which portrays winter sports, Dennis said the initiative provides a space for people of colour to recreate and do their activities, and try to change that narrative through imagery.

Dennis suggests supporting organisations to consider “physical and psychological safety” when people enter these sports, and start looking at “active ways of engaging the community through hiring practices, through promotions and through engaging committees who are not always considered a part of those narratives.”