Hockey and Climate Change: A "penalty" against Inuit youth

It was a beautiful and sunny day in Pangnirtung. The snow is starting to form on the glacial mountains in the panoramic skyline. We continued our youth-focused photography and video workshops at the local high school.

We're collaborting with Christine Germano, a fellow youth facilitator, who is from Vancouver and also happens to be in the community working on a climate change-related project. In the classroom, we're getting youth to pick a climate change topic and to write an associated story. Once the students have their narratives hashed out, we're taking them outside to take a picture that helps explain their story, and we're video taping the entire process.

So, this morning, I'm sitting at a table with four young men, and I'm asking them "how has climate change affected you?". A sharp young Inuk named Johnny Kilabuk immediately said "I want to write about hockey". In the back of my head, I'm thinking, "ok, a little off topic, but let's see how this might fit". I asked Johnny "how does climate change affect hockey?". Johnny proceeded to tell a slap shot of a story that he subsequentliy wrote down on paper. In the afternoon, we walked with Johnny down to the local rink to document his story and find the photo that represented it.

Johnny told us how the local rink building is actually cooled by the outside. In the fall, the community pours water onto the rink surface and opens the doors and waits for mother nature to take care of freezing the ice surface. It's a common sense strategy to freezing a rink in this normally cold climate. However, with climate change freeze up is taking about a month longer now, and the thaw is happening about a month earlier. Johnny elaborated on how this was seriously affecting his life, and that of many youth in the community.

As an avid hockey player, Johnny explained how his team's ice time was being shortened by approximately two months each year now, and that they had to work harder and harder to compete against other teams on Baffin Island. Given this, apparently some youth in Pangnirtung have decided to not play hockey anymore because they're not having as much fun in the league. Climate change is acting like a social, physical and cultural "penalty" against these talented and active youth.

If youth hockey enthusiasts in the south were affected by climate change like this, I bet hockey moms and dads the world over would be up in arms ready to "drop the gloves" with government and industry in order to tackle climate change. In Canada, hockey is our national pass time, and if we can't get Canadians to support reducing climate change, let's appeal to their zeal for the game. SAVE HOCKEY FROM CLIMATE CHANGE AND YOU MAY END UP SAVING THE WORLD!!!

 

 

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08 October 2009

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