Reprising the Trail Smoke Eaters : men's hockey in a mid-twentieth century Canadian resource community
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Date
2015
Authors
Szilagyi, Steven
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
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Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Kinesiology and Physical Education
Abstract
The Trail Smoke Eaters hockey club remains the only Canadian club team to have
won two World Championships. The 1939 and 1961 World Championship teams have
become mythologized through narrative accounts and popular folklore that remain the
focus of memorializing these teams. This study considers the impact the team had on the
community and the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, and who
benefitted from this winning team. Relationships between company management,
players, and the community are examined to aid in explaining the degree to which
workers, who were also hockey players, structured their own lives and the degree to
which their lives were structured by the company. Company support followed the success
in 1939 in the form of gift giving and player recruitment. The Smoke Eaters became
mythologized by narrative accounts in an effort to equate both victories and tie the 1961
championship to the community.
Description
Keywords
community relations , company relations , senior men's hockey , team relations , winning team folklore