Of music and sports

Janis Ian’s music has been part of my life since my grade 9 English teacher played “Society’s Child” for us as an example of how song lyrics could be used to make a powerful political statement. I couldn’t find the record anywhere in 1967 Kitchener-Waterloo, but I was determined to have it.

To this point, my parents’ record collection consisted of about four LPs – the soundtracks of Oklahoma and South Pacific, a Catherine McKinnon album as well as one from the television show Singalong Jubilee with Don Messer. I believe my sister and I may have had a couple of 45s and perhaps even a Glen Campbell LP. In other words, our household was not big on recorded music.

I don’t know how we learned about Sam the Record Man in Toronto, but someone did and — unbelievably to me still today — my parents loaded the five of us kids into the car for what was a major family outing, just so I could buy Janis Ian’s record. Yonge Street at that time was a pretty seedy area, and I remember my mother trying to keep all of us within arm’s length as we stared, awestruck, at all the wonder. Once we got home, I played that record until everyone else in the house was absolutely sick of it.

When she released “At Seventeen,” in 1975, I thought she must have gotten inside my soul, so well did it describe the angst and sense of being an outsider that I had felt in my late teens and, for many years, her music continued to tell stories about being a girl and woman and express a politics that resonated powerfully for me.

Pro women’s hockey

I don’t listen to Janis Ian as often as I used to, but last weekend, my partner, daughter, her partner and I drove to Ottawa to watch a PWHL game between the Ottawa Charge and the Monreal Victoire. Other than baseball – which is slow-paced enough that I can usually keep track of the action and which offers few opportunities for full body contact or fighting – I don’t like team sports.

Nonetheless, like many women, I have found myself infected with excitement about the rise of professional women’s sports, including hockey and basketball, so I was keen to see the Ottawa game.

We all loved it – the players on both teams were strong, the play moved quickly up and down the ice and there were no fights and only two penalties. It was great to see women skating powerfully up and down the ice, ponytails and braids streaming out behind them. I still don’t really know what icing and offside are, and I lost sight of the puck more than once, but I had a great time.

Even though Montreal is at the top of the rankings and Ottawa close to the bottom, the teams seemed well matched, with the score moving from 1-0 for Ottawa to 1-1, to 2-1 in favour of the home team, and in the last two minutes of play, to a 3-1 win for the Charge.

But what brought tears to my eyes were the girls watching the game. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, in the almost sold-out arena, decked out in jerseys, toques and baseball caps emblazoned with the PWHL logo or the logos of both teams. Whole teams were there in their league jerseys. Girls lined the route the players took to get on and off the ice in the hope of getting a high five or maybe even an autograph from their favourite player. Many carried homemade placards advertising their adulation of one player or another.The players were most obliging, and I found myself also thinking about how it must feel for those who have played for years with little recognition to now have crowds of girls screaming their names.

Play like a girl

One placard that read “Play Like a Girl” catapulted me back in time to Janis Ian’s 2000 song of that name. While her lyrics start out talking about music, they quickly move on to sports:

“I remember what boys told me/You play like a girl/It’s a matter of genetic history/You play like a girl/You can’t be in our band/You don’t play like a man. . . .

“When I was ten years old, I was told/You can’t play baseball/You’ve got to pitch it underhand/You can’t throw it like a man/You won’t be any good at all/Girls don’t know how to have fun/Girls won’t last in the long run/Girls give birth and stuff but/They’re not really tough enough . . .

“I don’t need permission/To change this tradition/When they tell me ‘You can’t play’/Well I just turn my back and say:

“Now all over this big wide world/I play like a girl.”

I suspect the girls in the TD arena on the weekend would have agreed with Janis Ian.

Paid like a girl

On our drive home, as we enthusiastically replayed our favourite moments at the game, my daughter decided to see how much these pro hockey players earn. I think we all kind of wish she hadn’t. While we knew they made much less than professional men players, we had no idea of the size of the gap. Players in the PWHL earn between $35,000 and $75,000 per year. The lowest paid NHL player earns $750,000/year, and the average salary last year was $3.5 million.

Play like a girl should not equate with getting paid like a girl, and perhaps with more and more sold-out arenas across North America, professional women hockey players will see an increase in their incomes.

If you haven’t been to a game yet, I encourage you to go. You’ll be glad you did.