Canadian sports journalist Julian McKenzie’s landmark book introduces readers to the Black hockey players who’ve served as “trailblazers” in the sport in this country and beyond.
Black Aces: Essential Stories from Hockey’s Black Trailblazers, was released Feb. 3 in Black History Month. Since then, the author, who writes about the Ottawa Senators for The Athletic, has been on tour signing books and meeting fans of his writing and of hockey in general. An event was held recently at Perfect Books on Elgin Street.
McKenzie’s book talks about the backstory of Black players, including Calgary Flames legend Jarome Iginla, Olympic champion and PWHL star Sarah Nurse and U.S. women’s hockey luminary and broadcaster Blake Bolden.
McKenzie tells how Nurse — part of Canada’s silver-medal team at the Milano-Cortina Olympics last month, and assistant captain of the PWHL’s Vancouver Goldeneyes — was playing hockey as a seven year old when she was at her grandparents’ house in 2002 to watch the Canadian women’s team win Olympic gold at the Salt Lake City Games, fuelling her own dream to win gold one day.
The Hamilton, Ont. native “was inspired by the Canadian women’s national team, as were many other young Canadian women that day,” writes McKenzie. “Nurse played hockey on a boys’ house-league team with a female teammate, but she had no idea of any women’s teams playing hockey at any level.”
In the book, Nurse is quoted saying, “I remember thinking we’re the only two who are doing this; there are no other girls who play hockey. When I got to my grandparents’ house that night, I was just blown away that there wasn’t one team of girls, there was two teams of girls — and they’re playing on TV. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Like, I have to be on this team one day.’”
Nurse became an Olympic champion herself as a member of Team Canada at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“Twenty years after (Salt Lake City), Canada secured a gold-medal win over the United States. When the final buzzer sounded, Nurse became the first Black female hockey player to win an Olympic gold medal,” McKenzie writes. “Thanks to an assist on Marie-Philip Poulin’s second goal of Canada’s gold-medal win over the United States, Nurse had broken (Hayley) Wickenheiser’s record for assists and points in a single Olympics.”
McKenzie, who previously covered the Calgary Flames for The Athletic, has spent a lot of time around the game. He said he chose to put together the book after being approached by a literary agent.
“I hadn’t seen one, I guess, to this magnitude that I did it — where I had, like, 16 different chapters and all these other stories woven through,” he said.
As a big hockey fan, McKenzie said he was most nervous to interview Iginla, the Flames’ all-time leader in goals, points and games played. He’s described by McKenzie as “just one of the best players to ever play.”
He grew up admiring Iginla, seeing a player who looked different from everybody else on the ice. McKenzie noted that Iginla came up at a time when Black players were thought of as enforcers. And while Iginla did have a good physical skill set, he was seen mainly as a great goal scorer.
“He still commanded that respect, in spite of whatever hurdles he went through coming up in the game or playing in the NHL. … There’s a massive cultural impact when you see a guy like Iginla play as impactful as he does, and people from all walks of life look at him and they say, ‘Wow. I want to be like that guy.’ ”
Apart from Iginla, Edmonton Oilers goaltender Grant Fuhr — a multiple Stanley Cup winner in the 1980s — is another prominent name in the book. McKenzie said Fuhr too paved the way for many Black players who came after him.
While the NHL says it wants more inclusion, McKenzie said “they want more people who look different playing in a game. … But also it’s a whole other thing for the NHL and other hockey leagues to actually act upon it, and they’re basically just working off of whatever’s been done before them by the players who have entered.”
McKenzie said he hopes his book will help bridge the colour gap in the predominantly white sport, and help shed light on great moments hockey’s Black stars have had in the history of the sport.
He also said some smaller positive stories are getting some attention now, such as Kenya entering the International Ice Hockey Federation and Haiti winning a ball hockey tournament.
“I think anytime they step on the ice and do something cool” is a story worth telling, he said. “Hopefully the book is able to do that.”
