An official sport should be the one the country already treats as its own

The argument

Proponents argue that an official sport is a recognition rather than a selection. Its purpose is to name the game a country has in fact made central to its public life, and on that test, they argue, hockey is the only serious candidate. It is the sport whose professional league dominates Canadian broadcasting, whose international matches stop ordinary activity, whose results are carried as general news rather than as sport, and whose equipment and vocabulary are familiar to people who have never played anything. The argument extends to the game's reach into childhood. Proponents point to the density of rinks relative to the population, to minor leagues organised in towns too small to sustain much else, and to the early-morning practice that is a shared memory for families across the country regardless of region or background. A sport learned in that way, they argue, is not merely popular but formative: it supplies the metaphors, the heroes and the sense of a shared calendar that an official designation is supposed to acknowledge. Proponents add that the climate argument is not sentimental but practical. For much of the year the surface available across most of the country is ice, and hockey is the game that arose from making use of it. A country's official sport, on this account, should be one its conditions actually produce rather than one adopted in spite of them, and hockey is the clearest instance of a Canadian game emerging from Canadian geography. Naming it, proponents conclude, records something already true instead of attempting to direct public affection somewhere else.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those favouring curling reply that popularity measured through professional broadcasting records the reach of an industry rather than the character of a country, and that the cost of equipment, ice time and travel makes organised hockey one of the least accessible sports in Canada rather than the most representative. They add that a designation which simply ratifies whatever is already dominant does no work at all, and that the climate argument applies equally to curling, which is played on the same ice and in the same months.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That an official sport recognises rather than selects is offered as the function of the designation and is itself the point at issue. The opposing position holds that a symbol is chosen for what it expresses, and the premise settles that disagreement by definition. [Rejecting P2] The evidence of centrality is drawn largely from broadcasting and conversation, which measure the reach of a professional industry rather than how the country plays. Equipment cost, paid ice time and travel make the organised game one of the less accessible sports, which the premise does not weigh. [Rejecting P3] The climate argument does not discriminate between the candidates, since curling is played on the same ice in the same season. A premise that applies equally to the alternative cannot support choosing between them.