Description
In the late 20th century, ice hockey became a microcosm of the Cold War. Its gameplay evoked Doomsday time consciousness, its culture embedded militarism in liberal democracies, and its self-understanding as a violent ‘battle of wills’ epitomized nihilistic realism. Moreover, international competitions like the Olympics and the World Championships became referenda on the superpower clash of identities and ideologies. This paper examines the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. It occurred during a period of ontological insecurity in Canada, with the Quebec secession question and the quiet revolution well underway. By contrast, the USSR seemed ascendant, having crushed the Prague Spring only years earlier. The series featured noisy claims about national identity and ideological propositions repackaged around ‘style of play,’ few disputed that national and Cold War prestige were at stake, and there was no shortage of backchannel diplomacy throughout the eight fraught games. Decades later, collective memory of the Series exerts influence on Canadian national identity. Drawing on archives and memoirs, this paper unpacks ontological security in the Summit Series to further elaborate spectator sports as a mode of anxiety management and ontological security seeking.
