John Ralston Saul
Culture and Foreign Policy
Republished with permission

The general view of international sport is that we must do well in it. But there is another factor of equal importance. We must ensure that international sport reflects our characteristics; not simply those of others. In particular, it is ridiculous that the major northern nation should spend its time conforming to a much more urban, southern view of what constitutes winter sport.

It makes no sense at all that, for example, the Winter Olympics do not include long-distance snow-shoeing events or biathalons such as snow-shoeing-shooting, snow-shoeing-archery, ski-archery or, for that matter, dog-sled racing.

Why do so many Canadian sports leaders shrug when this is brought up? Why are other people's agendas considered more important than our own? It's a matter of having self-confidence in who we are and what we stand for.

In the Summer Olympics field lacrosse and marathon canoeing (80 - 100 miles with portages) are obvious examples of what we ought to be fighting for.

a) Arctic Games and North American Indigenous Games

We should be putting a particular effort into these two games and using them as a showcase to which foreigners journalists and others) are brought.

The rather slick organizations around the Olympic movement would not understand this argument. But nor do they seem to understand the cultural or indigenous aspects of sport. Their obsessions are abstract and, as a result, the benefit to Canada is often not what it ought to be.

Both the Arctic Games (started in 1970) and the North American Indigenous Games (started in 1990) are international, were created by Canadians and are Canadian-driven.

The biannual Arctic Games are expanding from their base of Canada, Alaska and Greenland. Two Russian regions are now taking part. It is largely funded by the federal government, but we do not make the use of it that we might. It is a potential focus point for international recognition of Canada as the Northern nation. My suspicion is that journalists and other foreigners interested in sport - who are rather jaded by the over-produced professional amateurism of most international competition - as well as others interested in travel, environment and indigenous peoples would be very attracted to these games.

As they might well be to the more recent North American Indigenous Games. Interestingly enough, although a Canadian-driven movement, there are no Canadian National Indigenous Games and provincial programs are in general badly organized (B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan are the best). As with the Arctic Games a great deal of the activity is cultural.

The point that I am trying to make is that an interesting image is not necessarily created simply by doing well against other countries in world sports. We may accomplish as much by embracing what is original or proper to our own experience. And in the long run this is more likely to interest outsiders.

A final example. There is a Canadian Championship in Marathon Canoeing. These 80 to 100-mile races with portages are very much the product of our history. They retain a wild, uncontrollable element. A sense of reality, of cultural relevance. We should be making more of these sorts of events and bringing outsiders to them.

John Ralston Saul is an essayist and novelist. He is the author of many books, including The Doubter's Companion - A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, Voltaire's Bastards: the Dictatorship of Reason in the West, and Paradise Eater, which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in 1990. Mr. Saul has a Ph.D. from King's College, London.