Debates of October 18, 2006 (day 10)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of months, couple of weeks, I was very disappointed, in fact very angry, when I first saw the CBC Television People’s History - Hockey, and that the community of Deline and the people of the Northwest Territories were shunned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in terms of their lack of integrity, respect to mention the birthplace of ice hockey in the Northwest Territories by the community of Deline in the Sahtu region. It’s the first recording by Sir John Franklin that ice hockey was played in the Northwest Territories and Deline. CBC overlooked it. Shame on them for their type of research that they’ve done and to portray Montreal as being the first official game because they had an audience in the stands for hockey. Not knowing the history of the birthplace of hockey is in Deline, Northwest Territories, and not knowing that the people in that community at the time, maybe they were already watching hockey, you know? They overlooked everything. That’s the southern attitude that the people in the Northwest Territories face from southern Canada. So, Mr. Speaker, I want to say maybe CBC should rename that history A Southern Canadian People’s History, not the People’s History, because they’re not telling the people’s history.

There seems to be many claims of ice birth of hockey in Canada: Nova Scotia; Windsor, Ontario, in the late 1800s. Mr. Speaker, the Society for International Hockey research has contested their claim. Montreal, Quebec, has the claim because it was again, as I said, the first time hockey was played in front of an audience and finally Kingston, Ontario, became the member of this claim by having letters being researched.

All these things have been contested. Why can’t Deline have a rightful place in the birth of hockey? Mr. Speaker, I urge this government, and I’ll have questions to the Minister, to put Deline on the map to promote the birth of ice hockey in Canada. Thank you.

---Applause