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In light of the recent events in Quebec at the beginning of October 2020, it is clear that the foreboding that gripped my guts in the depths of the first wave of spring confinement was accurate. The community of adult amateur players of our sport remains unrepresented. An orphan too old and too familiar in the minds of our peers to be given any importance.

According to indications released during a conference given to the public by the Government of Quebec on Friday October 2, our great orphan in love with his sport will have to sit on his couch, remain quiet and be silent, the lucky one. Yes ladies and gentlemen, team sports are once again, it seems, about to be banned as of Monday. Ministerial minions are currently drafting a new social sentence that would risk jeopardizing the physical and mental conditions of active adults in our society. (see Radio-Canada article).

But what about the true youth of Quebec who are also inspired by the practice of this beloved sport? Predictably, high perceptions of what matters abides by a hierarchy of importances. If we stick to the words that came out of the mouth of our Prime Minister during this conference on Friday, “Sports in school, for me, is very important. It’s part of the motivation of young people to be successful in school, so very important ”, and it can therefore be predicted that team sports practiced by schoolchildren, while perhaps better supervised, will not be banned. If we look at the notion of lobby, I would argue that the one that underlies this state of mind of the Prime Minister is perhaps the most influential of all, even if he is not registered. in the Quebec Lobbyists Registry: I named the powerful parents’ lobby. Parents of children don’t even have to lift a finger to make common sense their expectation. And you know what? We couldn’t agree with them more. For as we know, the exercise of sport is fundamental to the balance of human beings. Prohibiting sport is tantamount to a sentence that brings us back to examining our very mortality.

So yes, we also know that the current pretext used by the Quebec government to confine our old adult orphan is the health crisis which, at the alarmist rates of the traditional media, is raging in people’s minds and is obviously causing more and more collateral carnage. within the population. ‘Fear to hear the voice of responsibility’, is an article in today’s Le Devoir, by author Yves Gingras, professor at UQAM. Without explicitly elaborating on the specific case of the heuristic treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Quebec or federal authorities, the notion is nevertheless introduced there that fear in itself is a mechanical tool of the state apparatus making it possible to requisition responsibility for its subjects. History will have shown on many occasions that traditional media have a frantic tendency to adhere to this method proven over the centuries which makes it possible to ‘educate’ peoples successfully. A single recent example that comes to mind and that speaks of this super powerful device is that of the chronology of the events that led to the war in Iraq in 2003, under the claims of the Bush junior administration, claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction without ever being able to present convincing evidence to the American people. The mainstream media hammered out a news thread throughout the entire process based on fear of a devastating attack. Without going into the details that are amply documented almost twenty years later in the history books, no weapon of mass destruction has ever been unearthed in this Middle Eastern country.

Thus, twisting in all directions in the endless spiral of fear, citizens are desperately seeking meaning in the catastrophe that is raging against them. First, there is the economic disarray. Seeing that the General Directorate of Public Health was sketching out new damning containment measures on September 29 in which sections of culture were directly impacted, the cinema lobby wrote a plea in the opinion pages of Le Devoir ( Cinemas Should Not Be A Scapegoat, October 2, 2020) co-signed by 300 artisans from the film industry. Survival instincts made the industry cry foul, and even went so far as to question the logic of the state in its premises of containing the spread. She also used the excellent lever of comparison, claiming that so-called “gathering” or socializing spaces could only be limited to those linked to culture, restaurants and the bar industry. Why accept team sports, which also bring people together? The mainstream media quickly followed suit, relaying the apparent injustice of such a reflection deemed unfair by the government. As we now know, the Legault administration bowed under this powerful lobbyist pressure. Minister Nathalie Roy announced the granting of additional financial assistance of $ 50 million to support Quebec producers and presenters.

So the question now is: when will adult amateur hockey have it’s lobby? When will adult amateur hockey players come to realize that the only way to induce respect for listening to the state will come when they are fundamentally united and solidly united? In the meantime, that they get ready to hang out on their couch for the month of October, to watch reality TV shows and the oh-so-entertaining Quebec television games that seem to have become an indispensable psychotropic for all who allows to extinguish the mental faculty of each one to measure the extent of the disaster in which he is floundering. Trying to wrest hockey from the hockey player is a delicate operation that deserves more thought, or to be abandoned.

A fraction of Quebec’s arenas have come to the rescue of amateur hockey players on June 22nd 2020, shortly after the official announcement made by government allowing for the long-awaited return of collective sports within the province.

HPCQ’s first major dossier shedding light on how amateur adult hockey is experienced in the age of COVID-19. In French only presently. Accessible via ce lien: Protocoles d’usage des arénas du Québec à l’ère de la COVID-19