The outcry caused by the omnipresence of English in junior hockey has once again highlighted the imperial reign of social media and their effect on young people. In short, French is not cool.
This explains why young hockey players like those of the Drummondville Voltigeurs prefer slogans in the language of Don Cherry, consistent with what they see everywhere, rather than the incongruity of French formulas without resonance (in their eyes).
We all know that the cultural universe of millennials has adopted, since the advent of social media, the social codes of Anglo-Saxon culture. This includes music, television and virtually every aspect of their cultural life. But another aspect of the new reality seems to have been evacuated from the analysis, at least in the world of hockey that we are talking about here: the disappearance of mentors or, if you prefer, of French-speaking heroes.
Let’s start with our legendary team, the Montreal Canadiens (CH), the one whose birth 115 years ago was intended to serve as an inspiration to the French-speaking people who were then called the “Canadiens”. Tell that to a teenager today and they’ll probably give you one of those doubtful looks that would make even Gary Bettman lose his composure.
Because, for a long time, the Canadian stopped being interested in the Quebec Major Junior League, today renamed the Quebec Maritime Hockey League (to be in line with a certain colonialism), where it very sparingly drafts players. players. And the French-speaking presence is accordingly: two or three French-speaking players in the lineup and no stars. And this has been going on for over a decade.
In fact, the last real French-speaking star of the team was called Patrick Roy and wore the CH uniform 30 years ago. Generation Z to which Junior players belong today was not even a vague project when “Casseau” was traded to Colorado…
Heavy trend
If the CH hardly offers any source of inspiration in the language of Michel Tremblay, this trend is true across the entire NHL. The Quebec draft having not been very enthusiastic in recent years, neither among the CH nor among its NHL competitors, things are not likely to improve in the short term.
We can even venture to predict that the excellent news of the return of NHL players to the Olympics in two years will not be good news for French-speaking hockey. Because it’s a safe bet that the Canadian team will not have any French-speaking players in its ranks. And if by some miracle there were to be one or two, they would certainly not be the pillars of the club, far from it.
Not enough to excite the pride of a teenager in need of heroes. Generation Z and beyond will continue to set their sights on Canadian, American or European players and think that diversity in professional sports is only about sexual orientation or color, not language.
This new reality of hockey forces us to question not only the deleterious role of social media for Quebec culture, but the famous one-way (Anglo-Saxon) diversity in different environments, including sport.
If sport, in particular hockey, which we still call “our national sport”, makes no room for French, perhaps certain foundations should be reviewed. Demanding that junior clubs like the Voltigeurs give it a better place would undoubtedly be a first step. But more must be done.
Wouldn’t it be time, for example, to make this old idea of a Quebec presence at the Olympic Games a reality? The Scots, still members of the United Kingdom, have one in soccer. Why not us ? It seems to me that a Quebec national team would give a thousand times more visibility to Tremblay’s language than any regulation imposed by politicians, which would only serve, in any case, to disguise reality.