How 2022 confirmed us the very best and worst of Canadian sport — and a path towards a greater future

This nation has all the time been a spot of dueling tales.

The good ones elbowing for house with the dangerous ones. The ones we rejoice casting shadows over those we disguise away. It’s all the time been a spot somewhat not sure of what it’s, filled with all of us, every somewhat not sure of who we’re, too.

And so, we search for indicators, for hints. And generally, out on the sphere, the court docket, the ice, underneath the lights, we discover them. In its finest moments, sport provides us glimpses of who we’d simply be. In its triumph and its heartbreak, its striving for one thing extra, it will possibly deliver us, if only for a couple of moments, some widespread course to intention for, collectively. Some identification, wrapped in red-and-white, to cling to, collectively.

So usually, throughout these previous 12 months of tumult, watching from the stands or on our screens, it felt like that. Like we have been pulled collectively, wrapped in crimson, in the very best and worst methods.

It’s not possible to disregard that feeling when a 12 months begins like this one did, with an Olympic flame. With nationwide icons tabbed as flag-bearers, native legends despatched the world over to signify us on historical past’s stage. We went to Beijing, and we did our greatest. We had our moments.

We had Max Parrot glinting golden first, the pleasure of Bromont, Que., topped the slopestyle king simply three years after halting his athletic profession to battle Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We had Charles Hamelin — the Locomotive de Sainte-Julie — discovering his fairytale end, the veteran’s remaining run on the Games ending with one final gold, sufficient to lift him and his medal assortment up amongst our most heralded Olympians.

We had redemption, of the sweetest type and in opposition to essentially the most satisfying opponent. Four years after the Americans left us devastated on the ice in Pyeongchang, the Canadian ladies reclaimed hockey’s biggest throne.

And main them there, who else? Marie-Philip Poulin, by some means, nonetheless, all the time, the architect of one more piece of historical past, the one participant on the planet who collects golden objectives like hockey playing cards. And beside her, Sarah Nurse and Brianne Jenner, rewriting information, making us surprise if we’d ever seen a group look fairly so dominant sporting that jersey.

It was solely the start.

Seven months later, they did it once more, Jenner, Poulin and Nurse’s fingerprints throughout one other run at glory, one other world title. The youngsters gained, too, Mason McTavish and Kent Johnson authoring their very own unforgettable extra time moments in that sweater, main Team Canada to world junior championship gold.

Off the ice? Out of the sector, with the air in our lungs? We discovered solely extra recollections.

The males on the pitch made us dream, made us imagine. For the primary time in almost 4 a long time, following within the footsteps of Christine Sinclair, they took us to a World Cup, to that area of worldwide icons so lengthy out of attain. We fell quick, however we have been there. We have been on that stage, Alphonso Davies rising up and assembly the second head-on, ensuring they noticed us, ensuring they remembered. Across the ocean, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov did the identical on the court docket, ending a century on the sidelines, writing Canada’s title on the Davis Cup for the primary time.

We had our moments. More than we may ever fairly ask sport to offer us.

But this has all the time been a spot of dueling tales. And together with our pleasure within the one, got here the disgrace of the opposite. Because boiling beneath all of those moments, wrapped in that very same red-and-white we raised in triumph, was one thing rotten.

The particulars of the Hockey Canada scandal got here out slowly. A lawsuit was settled, an allegation fabricated from horrific behaviour from a gaggle of athletes who had given us moments similar to all these others, who had made us dream and cheer, whose names we knew we’d acknowledge.

Still, by some means, it acquired worse.

The “adults in the room,” the leaders, have been pulled out of Hockey Canada boardrooms and put earlier than Parliamentary committees, given the chance to stroll us all via the small print of the fallout; to elucidate the mechanism by which, absolutely, the gamers concerned have been held to account, made to grasp the severity of what that they had performed.

But, no. Instead, all of it unraveled. The mishandled investigation; the tens of millions paid out to settle sexual misconduct instances, funded partly by registration charges paid by dad and mom throughout the nation; the revelation of extra incidents, extra scandals, from extra athletes who wore our sweater.

All this from a company tasked with placing collectively sports activities groups, with operating hockey applications, with offering a spot for youths to fall in love with a recreation.

This immense disgrace, this immeasurable failure, is as a lot part of what defines the previous 12 months in Canadian sport as the rest. What will outline the following one is the place we go from right here — what we proceed to permit, and what we determine we gained’t stand for.

For a very long time, we’ve seen the cracks within the basis of this sport. This sport that so usually brings new horrors to our doorstep — new tales of sexual violence, of racism, of homophobia, of misogyny. This sport that’s so deeply, inextricably wrapped up in who we’re, collectively; however usually falls so removed from who we inform ourselves we’re, collectively.

But as a substitute of taking good care of our home, as a substitute of constructing the fixes, we stepped across the breaks. We blocked out the noise. We stared out the window and marveled on the view.

In 2022, although, it felt like one thing shifted. It felt like we have been lastly collectively moved to ask questions, to demand solutions.

As we flip the web page, as we begin anew in 2023, we should hold asking these questions. We should hold demanding solutions, demanding modifications, demanding a path ahead that leads via this stuff we’ve uncovered over the previous 12 months, not away from them. We should demand options, not diversions.

More than something, although, we should push extra fervently, extra earnestly, to be the sporting nation we expect we’re. If we do something within the 12 months that awaits, after the one drawing to a detailed, let it’s that.