Photo

Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

Colin Horgan analyses the political meaning of hockey in Canada - and why Stephen Harper is the biggest fan around:

There is a lot one can choose to take from Canada’s past – one full of interesting stories about how this place came to be – but history is there to teach us when we need it, not to be rammed in our faces as part of a moralising search for warped nostalgic national character. Which is effectively what we’re getting – not history, but historical pastiche: a medley of images and myths that are credible only on the basis of their repetition and vaunted placement in skewed narrative that is leaning more toward the political and away from merely just being. It’s not identity or sense of nationhood, it’s political messaging.