new study – BIG

Hockey may be Canada’s game but it has a poor track record of including marginalized groups.

At a summit in Toronto this past January, in front of a crowd of 400, the non-profit organization the Carnegie Initiative announced that it was partnering with Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) to conduct a study on how to establish the first professional hockey franchise led by First Nations owners.

The Carnegie Initiative, which is named after Herb Carnegie, a black hockey star in the 1940s and 50s who spent much of his life fighting for equality in the sport, aims to make hockey more diverse and inclusive. This was the organization’s second annual summit.

The study referred to as The Spirit Project is being led by TMU professors Richard Norman and Cheri L. Bradish. According to Norman, the study will involve undergraduate students connecting with stakeholders, such as Ted Nolan, a former NHL star, a Carnegie Initiative board member, and a member of the Ojibway tribe. The stakeholders will provide the students with a broader knowledge of the current hockey landscape and First Nations culture. Using this information and their own research, students will develop a viable plan for creating a First Nations-led hockey franchise. The plans will be presented to the Carnegie Initiative in April.

“It’s not necessarily looking at playing at the NHL level,” Norman says. “Although, I think down the road, there’s always the possibility of an expansion franchise. But really, what I think it’s looking at is multiple leagues, men’s and women’s, and also how this might play out on the international side.”

First Nations have a long history with hockey. According to the nonprofit organization Native Hockey, Europeans first observed ice hockey being played by Mi’kmaq Indians in Nova Scotia in the late 1600s, using a frozen apple as a puck.

Fred Sasakamoose from Saskatchewan was the first Native player in the NHL, lacing up for the Chicago Blackhawks in the mid-1950s. He was followed by other great players, including Theo Fleury and Carey Price.

One of the goals of The Spirit Project, which will be carried on by graduate students after the April presentations, is to see whether an Indigenous team could play as its own nation on the international stage. “There are examples around the world, like Maori nations playing rugby as a separate entity from New Zealand,” Norman says. This could include men’s and women’s First Nations teams squaring off against Canada in the Olympics.

The international stage, however, may still be a few years off. In the short term, Norman says he hopes the study will provide grassroots initiatives to help connect First Nations youth to hockey. “The professional franchise would act as a conduit so that there’s representation from the front office to the coaching staff to everywhere, showing how Indigenous folks can be connected with the game and the different aspects of how that comes together,” he says. “Then also looking at on-ice and off-ice activities for indigenous youth to help their skills and development throughout the process.”

To support these initiatives, students will look at travel time to games, how to create leagues that provide different levels of play, and what the development of the sport, in terms of social change, looks like for First Nations youth.

“Looking into the future, there are going to be tensions,” Norman says. “But if we’re looking at true reconciliation and the decolonizing of our sports systems, and what that looks like, I think it does ask those deeper questions of what does nationhood look like, and what is sovereignty going to mean within the Canadian context.”

Feature Video

The stink of skunk on the family dog, the stench of burnt campfire popcorn, and the odour of a septic tank pump-out—there are undoubtedly some smells that can easily skyrocket a cottage owner’s stress levels. But humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom to get stink stress. Researchers from McGill University have uncovered an unusual stink-induced stressor for a certain critter: it turns out that male mice are stressed by the smell of bananas.

“Stress affects almost every biological and and behavioural phenomena,” says the co-author of the study, Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, a professor in the department of psychology at McGill University and the E. P. Taylor Chair in pain studies.

Animals behave differently depending on whether their stress levels are high or low, says Mogil. For scientists whose research includes lab animals like mice, an unknown environmental stressor could end up skewing the results of their experiment.

“I think it’s really important to try to figure out all the stressors and all the confounds we can find so research in the future is better,” says Mogil.

It was students from McGill University who first noticed that male mice were behaving oddly in the laboratory. “I’ve learned over the years that when my students notice something we should follow it up,” says Mogil.

A series of experiments showed that the male mice were reacting to the presence of pregnant and lactating female mice also housed in the laboratory. The main offender for the stress turned out to be a chemical in the urine of the female mice called n-pentyl-acetate.

Male mice are known to kill the offspring of other mice. The researchers think that the n-pentyl-acetate is being used by pregnant and lactating female mice to send an aggressive and stinky message to males: back off.

“This is a new form of social signalling that’s never been described before,” says Mogil. “Mice signal to each other all the time through smell, but there are very few examples of females signalling to males on a topic that doesn’t involve sex. The message here is that there might be a fight.”

N-pentyl-acetate happens to be very similar in structure to isopentyl acetate, the chemical that gives bananas their signature odour. The researchers found that banana oil produced the same stress reaction in male mice as the female urine. “The fact that it’s banana smell that seems to be the most important chemo-signal is funny,” says Mogil.

If you’re hoping the researchers stumbled upon the secret key to halting rodent infestations, think again. The smell only works on male mice, points out Mogil—which isn’t much use if females come around. “We’re certainly not suggesting that anyone try to control mice in their house with bananas,” he says. Best to save your bananas for banana bread.