Carnegie Initiative Summit is revolutionary
February 8, 2023
People of colour and difference don’t consume hockey only because of cost and lack of infrastructure is a misplaced notion, says National Hockey League (NHL) Senior Executive Vice-President Kimberly Davis.
“In my way of thinking, those things are controllable,” she pointed out during a panel discussion at the second annual Carnegie Initiative Summit in Toronto on January 21. “What we learnt from the research is that what people feel is that the sport of hockey is not what we have now dubbed culturally available. The sport has not made itself feel welcoming to other index audiences. Not being welcomed doesn’t mean you are not explicitly excluded. It means you are implicitly included.”
Davis provided an example of what explicit exclusion looks like.
“Imagine you peeking inside a building and seeing people doing things you might be interested in and there is nobody at the door saying, ‘Come on in and let me show you how to navigate this or let me show you people that look like you that will make you feel welcomed’,” she said.
During a six-month consultancy with the NHL to talk about the work it needed to do to continue to grow, Commissioner Gary Bettman was impressed with Davis’ recommendations and thought she could fill a meaningful full-time role in the league’s front office.
In a league still viewed as exclusionary, The Hockey News 2023 Game Changer is committed to making the sport more attractive to minority players and fans.
“We are on a journey to make the sport feel more welcoming by doing all the things that make people feel welcomed,” she said. “It starts with education and making sure people understand and can create some empathy around what it might feel like to not feel welcomed through their own experience of maybe, at some point, not being welcomed. Leadership and helping our leaders understand how to step up and be courageous is another way. It takes a level of fearlessness to take an organization through change.
“It really is about the missed opportunity that the sport has if we don’t embrace audiences that represent the future of North America. Our business is not going to thrive if we don’t do that. I talk to our Owners and Presidents through that lens. If we want our sport and business to survive, we will have to think differently about what the future looks like.”
Sensing there was a loose model of accountability in the NHL, Davis and her team developed a framework focussing on best practices.
“We call it the seven dimensions of excellence and inclusion and we helped to identify from the very top of the organization all the way down to the clubs seven dimensions that we said are important for you to understand, execute against and hold yourselves accountable to,” she said. “It starts with leadership, education, employment, marketing, youth participation, partnerships and community and civic engagement. What we said to the clubs is that you can’t be just doing one of those things and think you can take a victory lap. All of the dimensions have to be working in tandem and you have to put the systems in place so that when people leave the organization, their passions for change don’t leave and the organization can continue to thrive. That’s how it works and that is why I always talk about a movement and not a moment.”
Noting that Bettman ‘is one of the biggest supporters of this movement’, Davis said the process of change is not easy as she learnt recently.
Bettman and Davis’ call for more diversity in the sport and a tweet from the league’s official Twitter account saying, “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real’, triggered sharp reaction from controversial right wing television host Tucker Carlson who bashed the league for so-called ‘woke’ ideologies.
“As a result of Tucker Carlson, I started getting death threats,” she said. “I have had to have security at my house. They have pictures of my grandchildren. These are places you would not imagine you would be all around the sport like hockey.”
Hockey was not a game that Davis’ family consumed even though she was raised in Chicago which is a sports town.
“It didn’t seem to be a sport for us and it wasn’t a sport in our neighbourhood,” she said.
Davis was turned on to hockey two decades ago through her son who played the sport as a 10-year-old in an all-boys school.
“It was one of the required sports and he was a very good athlete,” she said. “During a tournament, he gets called the ‘n’ word and we were shocked as we could not imagine we were still in a sport that was still doing that. People were concerned about how he felt and, frankly, he was appalled that the sport was still doing that. As a result of that, he didn’t play anymore. I always say hockey lost the opportunity for a great athlete as he went on to college and played sports, one of which could have been hockey.”
Davis was on a panel with new Hockey Canada Chair Hugh Fraser, Team Trans Ice Hockey co-founder Daniel Larson and Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL) player Ajay Rai discussing ways of creating sustainable change.
Ajay Rai (l), Daniel Larson, Hugh Fraser & Kimberly Davis (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
When Fraser and his younger brother joined their parents in Eastern Ontario seven years after his birth in Jamaica, he learnt to skate and play the sport on outdoor rinks because his parents couldn’t afford to put him in an organized league.
“I became a fan and collected the cards and medallions,” said the former Canadian Olympian and retired judge whose son, Mark Fraser, played 45 games with Toronto Maple Leafs a decade ago.
“When the game came on, me and my brother would watch our little black and white TV intently to see what the score was. I remember one Saturday night the Boston Bruins were playing and my father, who didn’t watch the sport because he didn’t understand it, was surprisingly there watching when he suddenly jumped up and shouted, ‘There he is, there he is. That is Willie O’Ree’. My brother and I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about until dad explained that O’Ree is the first Black man to play in the NHL. That night, my dad did something very Canadian by watching a hockey game with his kids on Saturday night and hockey had a new fan. That was 60 years ago.”
Rai, 15, started playing hockey seven years ago after his dad introduced him to the sport.
“I started on the street at first because I had to learn how to skate,” said the Toronto Young Nationals forward who took part in the 13th annual GTHL Top Prospects game on January 24 at the Herbert H. Carnegie Centennial Centre. “I took some lessons and just went on from there.”
Subjected to racial taunts that he says he doesn’t allow to affect him, the teenager has suggested that more efforts should be made to educate players.
“We need to move beyond coaches and administrators,” Rai added. “It really helps when you have your peers and teammates standing up for you. It is gratifying and comforting to know someone else has your back and you are not alone in this.”
Relocating to San Francisco for work, Larson joined a LGBTQ team and soon became captain.
“We made it to the Vancouver Pride Cup which was a lot of fun and then we went to the Gay Games in Paris where everyone was welcomed to join and compete,” Larson said. “I saw one other Trans person that whole time and it was someone I volunteered with at a summer camp. I just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had this for Trans people?’
Aiden Cleary, a member of the New York City Gay Hockey Association, and Boston Pride Hockey President Greg Sargent joined forces with Larson to start a collective of Trans and Non-Binary players.
“We are so thankful for the support we have received from the NHL,” said Larson. “People are building this community.”
Last December, Fraser, 70, was named Chair of Hockey Canada Board of Directors after the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors stepped down two months earlier in the wake of widespread criticism of how they handled alleged sexual assault investigations.
“We think there are things we can do to change the culture of hockey by being transparent and committed to doing things in a very principled way,” the former Dubin Inquiry Commissioner pointed out.
The Carnegie Initiative summit brought together stakeholders to discuss issues of racism and inclusivity in the sport.
Davis said the forum is revolutionary.
“There was never something like this to bring people together to talk openly and honestly about these kinds of issues,” she noted. “That has changed.”
Bernice Carnegie & Bryant McBride co-founded the Carnegie Initiative (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Bernice Carnegie, the daughter of late hockey pioneer Herb Carnegie who was recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and entrepreneur Bryant McBride, co-founded the Carnegie Initiative.
McBride was the NHL’s first Black executive hire in 1993.
