In honour of the looming Stanley Cup final, I’d like to rebut the common charge that hockey inspires no great art or literature, as baseball is said to do. “Can you deal with this?” my editor asked, about a New York Times Book Review essay called In Search of the Great American Hockey Novel. It claimed boxing and even football do better. A Canadian poet laureate, George Bowering, has written a book called Baseball Love. Okay, I will reply in concrete, not theoretical, terms, using two recent films: The Rocket and the CBC miniseries Canada Russia ’72. I’ll toss in some theory later.

The Rocket covers the career of Maurice Richard from 1942 through the night in 1955 when Montreal fans rioted to protest against his ban by NHL president Clarence Campbell — who was a reincarnation of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. The transcendent scene happens after a game in which the Rocket is almost killed by an opponent but returns, concussed, to score the winning goal, itself a work of art. He sits in the dressing room and starts to sob. It’s too much, he gasps, not even knowing what he means.

The symbolic burden carried by Maurice Richard on behalf of Quebec’s people has been depicted before. I once took a stab at it myself in a play. But what hadn’t occurred to me was the emotional toll on him. It’s hard enough for political leaders and heroes to carry the weight of their society’s needs and hopes. But at least they applied for the role.

The Rocket didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it, and probably didn’t understand it. It’s all in that scene. It reminded me of an amazing moment in Ted Allan’s film script about Norman Bethune in which the Communist Canadian doctor criticizes himself to Chinese peasant soldiers for being unaware of the “fascist in all of us.”

Canada Russia ’72 is an even stranger achievement. It seems sheer docudrama. Like many docudramas, it apparently lacks subtext. The Rocket compensates in the usual way: with little domestic scenes etc. But this miniseries is entirely about that hockey series: each game, goal, even practices. The actors look like the players they play, yet avoid mere mimicry. And it still manages to be about something other than what it’s about. Which is?

In another issue of The New York Times Book Review, about the best U.S. novel of the past 25 years, A. O. Scott writes that the finalists attained “the illumination of epochs, communities, the nation itself. America is not only their setting, but also their subject.” You can say that about Canada Russia ’72 and, in fact, The Rocket as well. Canada (or Quebec) is their setting and subject. Like the Rocket, the players in the Russia series are befuddled and distraught, as their fellow Canadians hate, then hail, but above all need them. They thought that they were just hockey stars, that they had it made in the shade. What the hell had they got themselves into?

There’s a sage detachment in this approach (i.e. reflecting large realities by narrowing in on perplexed individuals). It tends to work late in a society’s development, after the sunnier enthusiasms of, say, Quebec nationalism in the 1960s or English Canada in the 1970s. There has been time for doubt, disappointment and a little wisdom to settle in.

In Quebec, for instance, some artists now equivocate on independence after 30 years of experience with PQ governments. Instead of ardent patriotism, you get an “existential nationalism,” a term used by John Watson in his recent book on Canada’s greatest intellectual, Harold Innis. You accept the fact that you must embrace what you are, but there are no easy certainties or glib celebrations.

I’d say the maturity of these films is reflected not just in their content but their style. I am filled with admiration that the makers of Canada Russia ’72 resisted showing that last-minute winning goal in slo-mo, as Americans surely would. (Think The Natural.) Or that they ran credits over the team hesitantly returning to the Moscow ice long after the game, and just sitting on it, full of wonder at what they’d been through together.

Okay, there it is. Now can I go back to carping about Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.