Viewpoint: Stanley Cup monument – waste of money

By Nathaniel Dove

If there’s something that Canadians do well, it’s act like we’re Canadian. We reaffirm our identity by playing up the stereotypes that the rest of the world most commonly associates with this country.

And considering so many of those stereotypes are positive — think industrious beavers and red-clad Mounties — it isn’t a surprise that as a country we lean into them.

So why wouldn’t we want to be known as the friendly, fluently bilingual country of the north filled with hockey players? Even Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland recently made a point of saying “it’s no accident that hockey is our national sport” when reassuring Canadians that the government would be tough during NAFTA renegotiation talks.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a super-sized representation of that most sacred of Canadian grails, the Stanley Cup, was unveiled recently near the corner of Sparks and Elgin streets.

In a country as big and diverse as ours, maybe it makes sense to celebrate hockey — something that brings a certain portion of the Canadian population together on a regular basis — with the attraction known as Lord Stanley’s Gift.

But then I found out the cost for this monument. This gift to the City of Ottawa cost the federal government $2.15 million.

That’s not just a waste of arts money — it’s a waste of money. Ignoring for now the tremendous good that said money could have done for arts students, say, in this city, province or country, just imagine the benefits it might have brought to some First Nation reserves that still, to this day, do not have clean drinking water.

Instead of trying to solve such pressing issues, we built a statue of a trophy. Why did we do this? We did this because many Canadians love hockey.

Maybe with all of the recent controversy surrounding certain historic figures — should we have erected monuments to John A. Macdonald, author of racist policies? — a statue of an inanimate, seemingly inoffensive object like the Stanley Cup was a good choice. But a statue for this amount of money, for such a vapid subject, is astounding.

There is more to Canada than hockey — especially NHL hockey, which isn’t particularly Canadian. While many players in the league are from Canada, the vast majority of NHL players and teams are based in the United States.

Besides that, most NHL players receive salaries far above that of the average Canadian’s yearly income. And we cannot forget that the NHL is ultimately a business. Yes, Lord Stanley originally intended for the trophy that bears his name to be awarded to the best amateur hockey team in the country, but since 1917 it has been the exclusive property of the NHL.

These are not the people or the organization that we should be celebrating with taxpayers’ money.

We could have chosen to celebrate peacekeepers or diplomats, teachers or the various legal documents that provide us with the rights we have as Canadians. We could have celebrated learning and education, artists or healthcare or any of the things that actually make us who we are and which will propel us forward as a country.

Granted, this is a very political response to a piece of public art. But when the art costs millions of taxpayer dollars, then it deserves a critical look. And when that art, in fact, pays homage to a big, New York-based sporting empire, then we need a sober look at how we spend our limited commemorative funds and whether we should focus our celebratory impulses on the accomplishments of those who already have so much.