Interview With Michael McKinley, Author Of Hockey: A People’s History

When I was approached to conduct an interview with Michael McKinley about his 2006 book, Hockey: A People’s History, I was excited for the opportunity, but slightly hesitant about reading the book. Most of us, as hockey fans, think we know anything and everything there is to know about the sport we like to call our own here in Canada, and I, of course, was no different. But the truth is that there is much we don’t know about how hockey became a national sport, our pride and a staple in our lives in under a century and a half, and astonishing feat.

The first question I asked Mr. McKinley was maybe an obvious one. What would inspire a native Canadian to put together such a detailed and thorough history of our sport together? It read as follows:

GP: I know that the CBC approached you to work on Hockey: A People’s History after you wrote Putting a Roof on Winter earlier in the decade, but what inspired you in putting together such an epic telling of the 135 or so years of hockey in this country?

The answer is probably the most resounding reason that everyone reading this should go and pick up a copy of this book today, if they haven’t done so already:

MM: I was inspired by the place the game holds in the Canadian imagination. It’s been 135 years since the first indoor hockey game, and in a relatively short historical time period (considering recorded human history) it fascinates me how one sport could so quickly dominate a country. I wanted to explore why that was the case.

There really isn’t any better way to put it. Hockey has come to be a major part of almost every Canadian’s life. Whether it’s someone whose family has resided in Canada since long before the sport’s creation, or even someone who is just arriving to the country, they’re likely to have at least watched one hockey game in their lives. When there is a game on, it’s on every screen at every sports bar, in many homes across the country, and in many Canadians’ minds, even long after the final buzzer. Americans have football, basketball and baseball. Europeans have soccer. But no sport resonates more with a single country’s population and history than hockey does in Canada.

Despite this clear connection with most, if not all of us, not many people really think of how this sport came to be such a major part of our daily lives. When The Checking Line opened its doors nearly a year ago, we added the following tagline at the top of the page, mostly in jest:

Awesome hockey discussion since 1875. True Story.

We didn’t really give it much thought, but that’s really how long hockey has been part of our history, of our nation. Through world wars, cold wars, revolutions, riots, economic highs and economic lows, controversies and moments of glory, hockey has somehow found a way to leave a mark on Canada.

Hockey: A People’s History shares with us many of these stories, many of these moments in our history, and manages to teach even the most informed hockey fans many interesting and astounding facts about both our sport and our history over the last 135 years.

Luckily for us, Mr. McKinley was kind enough to answer a few questions in regards to his book and the process of writing it, to the current state of hockey and the NHL, and to his upcoming projects as an author.

You can read the full interview with Michael McKinley at The Checking Line.

Moreover, you can find Hockey: A People’s History , which was written to accompany a CBC special of the same name,  here, on Amazon. His recent foray into the world of novel writing, entitled The Penalty Killing: A Martin Carter Mystery can be found at this link. If you are a hockey fan and, more importantly, a Canadian, both are titles that should be in your book collection.

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My thanks to Mr. McKinley and Stephen Crane of CraneCreek Communications for the opportunity and interview.