Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kyle Rich, Associate Professor of Sport Management, Brock University

The Canadian TV show Heated Rivalry recently went viral and garnered a worldwide audience far beyond its domestic market. Based on the popular novel by Rachel Reid, the series follows the secret romance between two professional hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, in a fictitious league.

The queer hockey romance was reported as the most watched original series on Crave and one of the top-rated non-animated series on HBO Max.

The show captivated audiences with steamy sex scenes, but similar to predecessors like Schitt’s Creek, it’s being touted as a Canadian cultural export and has people talking about the intersection of culture, sports and Canadian identity.

Queer people in sports

Queer inclusion in sport has become a political flashpoint. Heated Rivalry offers a timely opportunity to reflect on queer sports in the media, our communities and our national identity. It also illuminates how sports teams may lag behind other parts of society in their thinking about inclusion.

In recent years, there have been increased efforts to exclude and restrict the participation of 2SLGBTIQA+ people in sport. Governments in the United States and Alberta have introduced controversial policies targeting trans athletes specifically.

At the same time, professional sports leagues in many countries have taken steps, such as the introduction of Pride-themed events, intended to welcome queer people. But many have been criticized for tokenism and lack of authenticity — a phenomenon dubbed “rainbow washing.”

Hockey and inclusion initiatives

The NHL, and hockey more broadly, is experiencing a time of change. The league was an early partner in inclusive sport movements like the You Can Play Project and launched campaigns such as Hockey is for Everyone in attempts to reach wider audiences and “celebrate diversity and inclusion in hockey.”

However, in 2023, the league introduced a controversial policy that was widely interpreted as a ban on Pride Tape and likened to a “don’t say gay” policy in sports. Then, in early 2024, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman showed up at a Pride Event during All-Star Weekend in Toronto to make a donation to a local gay hockey league.

Globally, Canada is often recognized as a leader in relation to sports inclusion. A long history of celebrated queer Canadian athletes — including Mark Tewksbury and Marnie McBean — as well as hockey players like Angela James, Brock McGillis and Harrison Browne have been outspoken advocates for inclusive sport. Browne, notably, also appears in Heated Rivalry as one of Rozanov’s teammates.

This reputation is reflected by Canadian sport governance. The government of Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee have clear positions and resources listed on their websites.

Sport Integrity Canada has commissioned research and taken a clear position on trans inclusion in sport. These initiatives are being implemented within national sport organizations such as Skate Canada.

However, professional sport leagues like the NHL operate outside of the sport governance system. As such, they are free to do their own thing. While they get much of the media attention, this doesn’t mean they are in touch with how Canadians feel about inclusion.

Are sport organizations out of touch?

In many ways, Heated Rivalry and the online response to it highlights how some professional sport organizations lag behind societal attitudes toward queer inclusion, and of gay men in particular. Our own research on Australian sporting organizations has shown how sporting institutions often trail broader social change.

While some teams try to leverage support for 2SLGBTIQA+ causes or interests to gain cultural capital and kudos, they often largely fail to advance genuine inclusion efforts towards queer athletes and staff in their own organizations.

There have been some important community-level efforts to make sport organizations more inclusive, and some national, provincial and community sport organizations in Canada are progressive in pursuing change.

However, organizational cultures are experienced differently across contexts, meaning inclusion is experienced unevenly and change remains slow.

While professional teams like the Professional Women’s Hockey League are champions of queer inclusion, men’s hockey seems to be lagging behind. In this context, gay hockey leagues provide important sport opportunities and act as advocates in their communities and the sport system.

For players in these leagues, Heated Rivalry invokes the fantasy to tell a story that we don’t yet have in real life.

Can ‘Heated Rivalry’ influence sport culture?

There has been a lot of online commentary focused on whether Heated Rivalry can lead to actual culture change in the NHL, ice hockey and sport more broadly.

The show draws attention to openly queer professional athletes. Athletes often hide who they are or moderate their behaviour in order to conform to dominant norms in sport.

This remains a persistent issue for many queer people in sport. A recent study shows that young athletes still choose not to come out to teammates for fear of being treated differently.

Hudson Williams, who plays Shane Hollander, has even spoken publicly about being contacted by closeted athletes who saw their own experiences mirrored in the show.

This is where where queer sport organizations play a critical role. Across the country, community-based queer sport groups have been working to offer safe and inclusive places to play.

What comes next?

We know that discrimination remains a key barrier for queer people in sport. In all contexts, addressing homophobia and broader 2SLGBTIQA+ discrimination must be a top priority. Homophobia in men’s sports is also a tool used to police masculinity and cause harm to straight men, meaning everyone stands to benefit from safer, more inclusive sporting environments.

The cultural relevance and global success of Heated Rivalry provides sports organizations, especially in Canada, an opportunity to step up efforts to make sport more inclusive for queer athletes.

It’s also a call for sports to listen to their fans and audiences. The show is a unique opportunity for queer athletes to imagine inclusion as a reality that could be realized beyond fantasy or utopia in a book.

The show has been renewed for a second season, with international releases now underway. Team Canada has even quipped that the fleece jacket featured in Episode 2 may be in the running as official team Canada merchandise. As such, this important and timely conversation is likely far from over.

Kyle Rich receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ryan Storr consults to The Diversity Storr and Proud2Play. He has received funding from VicHealth and the Australian Sport Comission. He is affiliated with Proud2Play and the Diversity Storr.

– ref. What our love of ‘Heated Rivalry’ tells us about the state of queer sports in Canada – https://theconversation.com/what-our-love-of-heated-rivalry-tells-us-about-the-state-of-queer-sports-in-canada-272979

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tanya White, Associate professor, Fashion, Toronto Metropolitan University

Seated on the stone floor of a medieval fortress in Italy’s Tuscan hills, students rip thin, one-inch strips of fabric. They then knot the strips together to create extra chunky yarns. With these chunky yarns, they use oversized, thick crochet hooks, knitting needles and six foot-by-six foot tapestry looms.

This is in the Fortezza del Girifalco, in Cortona, in the Tuscany region of Italy, affectionately known to our group as “the castle.”

As a fashion and textile designer and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), I am here with students who are participating in the The Creative School’s Global Learning program.

I create with different yarns and software, developing art-to-wear, objects, sculptures and installations. Creating with textiles is how I express and process my ideas. Yet the purpose of this creative textile work with the students in this program goes far beyond exposing them to textiles. It’s about exploring processes through which we can unearth radical new forms, concepts and esthetics.

Students are from diverse programs at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University (fashion, interior design, graphic communication management, journalism, professional communication, media production, performance and sports media). Over three weeks, we’ll create a substantial textile exhibition for peers, visitors and the Cortona residents.

Site of creative life

The Fortezza del Girifalco is a site of creative life. It has been repurposed and renovated for new visitors, artists and audiences. Most notably, it is the centre of the international photography festival Cortona on The Move.

Yearly, the Fortezza is reimagined, with new interior work, additional and updated partitions, floors and surfaces to facilitate the design of this world-class exhibition. It has a bistro, with coffee, drinks and food.

Planning such an educational-immersive experience involved a great deal of collaboration: discussions with the university dean’s office and professor Kathleen Pirrie Adams from the School of Media, and our Cortona operations lead, Tommaso Rossi. After this, the Fortezza Atelier course was planned and piloted in June 2025.

The aims were simple: show up, contribute, be creative and collaborate with your peers.

In three weeks, there was near-perfect attendance. Students gained skills and knowledge, culminating in the creation of a textile exhibition.

Creativity and craft

In the 2021 article, “Build to think, build to learn: What can fabrication and creativity bring to rethink (higher) education?”, authors Jean-Henry Morin and Laurent Moccozet combine their respective expertise in information systems and the representation of and visualization of knowledge to examine the inherent benefits of hands-on education.
They consider how this enriches and deepens theoretical understanding.

It is this common tacit knowledge that can’t be taught in the metaverse because it requires a shared embodied experience.

The course introduced students to making textiles, weaving, crochet, knitting and draping with a common raw material to start with, which was a roll of unbleached cotton calico or muslin. It was a purposely humble material that relied on the students’ creativity and resourcefulness.

The frayed yarns and rudimentary studio environment simplified the output, but this limitation became a benefit; they began to pick their exhibition spaces and discuss concepts, narratives and fabrication.

The Fortezza Atelier gave students the chance to unplug, disconnect and use their hands to create a textile project inspired by the Tuscan setting and their personal impressions of international travel and learning.

The classroom: the Fortezza del Girifalco

The journey to the Fortezza was a large part of the experience, set on top of the Tuscan hills.

Its steep incline provided a panoramic view of the surrounding Basilica of Santa Margherita, towns and valley.

It was accessed by a challenging but hikeable path or a small shuttle van that took the students up to the site in groups of eight. Some students would hike and some would ride.

For me, this daily commute was a near-spiritual set-up for the day, providing separation, concentration and a peaceful attitude toward work in the Fortezza — a pathway for other but related embodied creative practices.

Work began and ended with the journey up the mountain, which took presence and commitment every session.

Our Italian team member, Rossi, who manages the Fortezza, brought his two- year-old dachshund named Rustyn.

Rustyn became an honoured part of the Fortezza Atelier course, playing with the students, providing a mascot/emotional support animal role and even serving as a special guest at their final exhibition.

Communal practice

Not even a full day into the process, and without being asked, students were assisting each other, sharing knowledge and skills, forming teams organically and celebrating each other’s accomplishments. I helped and contributed to the communal learning environment.

After setting the expectations and aims on the first day, we, as a class of 32 plus one dog, worked productively, set our schedule and fulfilled our commitment to the course and each other.

Through interviews, informal conversation and a final reflective assignment, students shared their insights on the course: that with hard work, investment, care and collaboration, you can envision and create something with lasting impact.

For most, these projects seemed unattainable, even unimaginable, before time in Cortona.

The educational and social benefits of this opportunity for faculty, students and higher learning institutions also point to significant potential for other iterations of site-specific studio practice experiential learning programs tailored to specific locations and contexts.

Tanya White works for/consults for Toronto Metropolitan University, teaches in the Creative School Department.

– ref. How hands-on textile work inspires creativity and growth – https://theconversation.com/how-hands-on-textile-work-inspires-creativity-and-growth-270914

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Frank Boers, Professor of Applied Linguistics, Western University

Being a linguist — and someone who has tried to learn several languages (including English) in addition to my mother tongue (Flemish Dutch) — I have an annoying habit: instead of paying attention to what people are saying, I often get distracted by how they are saying it. The other day, this happened again in a meeting with colleagues.

I started writing down some of the expressions my colleagues were using to communicate their ideas that may be puzzling for users of English as a second or additional language.

In a span of about five minutes, I heard “it’s a no-brainer,” “to second something,” “being on the same page,” “to bring people up to speed,” “how you see fit,” “to table something” and “to have it out with someone.”

These are all expressions whose meanings do not follow straightforwardly from their lexical makeup — they’re called idioms by lexicologists.

Idioms are part of daily communication. But this anecdote also suggests that we take it for granted that such expressions are readily understood by members of the same community. However, when it comes to people who are new to said community, nothing could be further from the truth.

Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
Slanguage, The Conversation Canada’s new series, dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

Idioms and the limits of language proficiency

Research conducted at the University of Birmingham several years ago revealed that international students for whom English is an additional language often misunderstand lecture content because they misinterpret their lecturers’ metaphorical phrases, including figurative idioms.

More recent research confirms that English idioms can remain elusive to second-language learners even if the expressions are intentionally embedded in transparent contexts.

One of my own recent studies, conducted with international students at Western University in Canada, also found that students incorrectly interpreted idioms and struggled to recall the actual meanings later on after being corrected.

This shows just how persistently confusing these expressions can be.

It’s worth mentioning that we’re talking about students who obtained high enough scores on standardized English proficiency tests to be admitted to English-medium universities. Knowledge of idioms appears to lag behind other facets of language.

When literal meanings get in the way

The challenge posed by idioms is not unique to English. All languages have large stocks of idioms, many of which second-language learners will find puzzling if the expressions do not have obvious counterparts in their mother tongue.

There are various obstacles to comprehending idioms, and recognizing these obstacles can help us empathize with those who are new to a community. For one thing, an idiom will inevitably be hard to understand if it includes a word that the learner does not know at all.

However, even if all the constituent words of an expression look familiar, the first meaning that comes to a learner’s mind can be misleading. For example, as a younger learner of English, I was convinced that the expression “to jump the gun” referred to an act of bravery because, to me, the phrase evoked an image of someone being held at gunpoint and who makes a sudden move to disarm an adversary.

I only realized that this idiom means “to act too soon” when I was told that the gun in this phrase does not allude to a firearm but to the pistol used to signal the start of a race.

I also used to think that to “follow suit” meant taking orders from someone in a position of authority because I thought “suit” alluded to business attire. Its actual meaning — “to do the same thing as someone else” — became clear only when I learned the other meaning of suit in card games such as bridge.

The idea that idioms prompt a literal interpretation may seem counter-intuitive to readers who have not learned a second language because we normally bypass such literal interpretations when we hear idioms in our first language. However, research suggests that second-language learners do tend to use literal meanings as they try to make sense of idioms.

Unfortunately, when language learners use a literal reading of an idiom to guess its figurative meaning, they are very often misled by ambiguous words. For example, they will almost inevitably misunderstand “limb” in the idiom “to go out on a limb” — meaning “to take a serious risk” — as a body part rather than a branch of a tree.

Recognizing the origin of an idiomatic expression can also be difficult because the domains of life from which certain idioms stem are not necessarily shared across cultures. For example, learners may struggle to understand English idioms derived from horse racing (“to win hands down”), golf (“par for the course”), rowing (“pull your weight”) and baseball (“cover your bases”), if these sports are uncommon in the communities in which they grew up.

A language’s stock of idioms provides a window into a community’s culture and history.

Same language, same idioms? Not exactly

Idiom repertoires vary across communities — whether defined regionally, demographically or otherwise — even when those communities share the same general language.

For example, if an Aussie were to criticize an anglophone Canadian for making a fuss by saying “you’re carrying on like a pork chop,” they may be lost in translation, even if there isn’t much of one. At least, linguistically that is.

Although people may have learned a handful of idioms in an English-language course taken in their home country, those particular idioms may not be the ones they will encounter later as international students or immigrants.

The moral is simple: be aware that expressions you consider perfectly transparent because you grew up with them may be puzzling to others. We need to have more empathy for people who are not yet familiar with the many hundreds of potentially confusing phrases that we use so spontaneously.

Frank Boers receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Slanguage: The trouble with idioms is that they can leave even fluent English speakers behind – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-the-trouble-with-idioms-is-that-they-can-leave-even-fluent-english-speakers-behind-271681

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sally Sharif, Lecturer in Political Science, University of British Columbia

Since American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, plunging the country into uncertainty, there have been hopes for a transition to democracy, the stabilization of its economy, a reduction in drug trafficking and conditions that might allow millions of Venezuelans abroad to return home.

But one factor will impede efforts at stabilizing the country: Venezuela’s hard-to-control border with Colombia, a shadow security zone that serves as a sanctuary and trafficking corridor for armed and dangerous organizations.

There are two main armed groups along the border:

1. Leftist guerrillas in Colombia who have used Venezuelan territory to regroup, move supplies and evade counterinsurgency attacks.
2. Leftist pro-government militias in Venezuela that have squashed dissent and exerted violence against civilians every time protests have erupted against Hugo Chávez and, later, Maduro.

Over time, these groups have often collaborated, turning a porous frontier into a shared operating space that any new Venezuelan government will have to dismantle.

The question, then, is whether any government — democratic or otherwise — can consolidate power in the presence of entities on both sides of an ungoverned international border with the most to lose from a change in the status quo.

Read more:
5 scenarios for a post-Maduro Venezuela — and what they could signal to the wider region

Venezuela: Shielding Colombian leftist rebels

I have been studying armed groups in Colombia for a decade. My research explains why about one-third of disarmed fighters of the guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have picked up arms again since a historic peace agreement in 2016.

The breakup in the organizational structure of FARC is one of these reasons. The other reason is Venezuela’s support.

When a handful of disarmed FARC commanders released a video in August 2019 announcing their return to taking up arms, they were able to do so because Maduro’s government had an ideological and strategic stake in keeping them afloat: a shared leftist, anti-imperialist world view that treated Colombia’s Marxist guerrillas as political allies.

In fact, when I interview disarmed FARC combatants in Colombian provinces on the border for my research, they consistently describe Venezuela as a place where they could recuperate, treat injured fighters and regroup after Colombian military pressure, which was equipped and funded in part by the U.S. government.

In the border province of Norte de Santander, the FARC and another leftist guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), collaborate to ship coca paste from the expansive coca fields of northeastern Colombia through alluvial paths and dirt roads to Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. From there, speed boats take the cocaine to the U.S.

In one interview, I asked a former FARC commander to draw the trafficking route on a map. To my surprise, it zig-zagged across the international border between Colombia and Venezuela.

Any attempt to change the status quo in Venezuela will therefore be met with fierce resistance by Colombian armed groups who have for decades benefited from a porous border and a helping hand across it.

Armed militias mobilized by Chavez

Colombia has done its share of influencing Venezuela’s politics, in particular during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe from 2002 to 2010, when
Colombia was closely tied to the U.S. and was perceived by former president Chávez as a threat to his revolution.

After the failed April 2002 coup attempt against Chávez — when some members of the military and opposition briefly removed him from office before he returned within two days — the president responded by backing armed pro-government militias, known as colectivos, so they could help defend his rule.

For years, Maduro consistently armed and provided impunity to militias that run street-level checkpoints and show up fast across the country when the regime feels threatened.

In the days after Maduro’s recent capture, those groups were visibly deployed across the capital of Caracas, patrolling on motorbikes with rifles, stopping cars and demanding access to people’s phones — signalling that Chávez’s ideology still has muscle on the street, even if its top leader is now in an American jail cell.

Militias are one of the most destructive forces for a society. Once mobilized, they allow governments to avoid accountability for violence and repression. They are also difficult to get rid of. My research also shows that almost half of armed groups return to fighting after going through disarmament.

With armed violence in Colombia surging again and leftist armed groups entrenched along the frontier, any crackdown on Venezuelan colectivos risks pushing them across the border into Colombia, where allied guerrillas can shelter them until the pressure eases.

Sore spots for state-building

International borders are sore spots for countries attempting to consolidate power and transition to peace. The civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been raging for decades because of neighbouring Rwanda’s support for the rebels.

The World Bank ran into this reality in the Great Lakes region of Africa: it helped launch the Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program because efforts to demobilize fighters in one country didn’t work when armed groups and combatants were moving and operating across borders.

Similarly, the Colombia-Venezuela border has long fuelled cycles of violence in Colombia. It will now be the main sticking point in any Venezuelan efforts to reduce drug trafficking, consolidate power and transition to democracy and the rule of law.

Sally Sharif does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Colombian border is one of the biggest obstacles to building a new Venezuela – https://theconversation.com/the-colombian-border-is-one-of-the-biggest-obstacles-to-building-a-new-venezuela-272975

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nicole Rosen, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Language Interactions, University of Manitoba

The expression “6-7” spread like wildfire last year, making its way outside the realm of usual adolescent slang and into the collective discourse, popping up at public sports events, in Halloween costumes and even in teachers’ lesson plans.

A couple of things are clear about the 6-7 phenomenon: kids love saying it and adults love hating it. But what does it actually mean? The answer — “It doesn’t mean anything” — appears to be the main complaint. But meaning nothing is kind of the whole point.

While it may not signify anything in the conventional sense of meaning, 6-7 expresses solidarity and belonging.

Users of the expression show that they’re part of the in-group as opposed to those who “just don’t get it.” They’re deploying something sociolinguists call “social meaning.”

Social meaning can be thought of as value-added information about the speaker and their attitude, their stance and how they want to portray themselves in the world. It’s an integral part to how we understand language, and the fact that this is being spread by young adolescents is no accident.

Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
Slanguage, The Conversation Canada’s new series, dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

Not all meaning is about dictionary definitions

When people think about meaning, it’s normally semantic meaning. Six, for example, is a numerical concept that we understand to mean one more than five and one less than seven. It’s another way of saying half a dozen. It’s the age that most children enter Grade 1. Maybe it’s suppertime.

6-7, on the other hand, is void of any semantic meaning. It doesn’t even refer to quantity. Consider the difference between, “I’d like 6-7 crackers” versus simply yelling “6-7” and doing the viral hand gesture. The 6-7 in the first sentence means an amount of crackers, the 6-7 in the latter does not actually refer to an amount at all. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.

While 6-7 has no semantic meaning, it has a very definite social meaning. Social meaning involves how hearers interpret language not only on the basis of the meaning of the words, but on the basis of what kind of person is speaking and how they align themselves socially.

And the truth is that we rely on social meaning like this all the time, even if we don’t notice it.

Social meaning speaks volumes

Consider a person’s clothing and hairstyle, for example.

Wearing a Winnipeg Jets jersey and a mullet hairstyle signals to people in Canada things about you without you even opening your mouth: you’re a hockey enthusiast, invested in a team, and probably play or watch the game regularly. Then, to add to these visual cues, you can use a phrase such as “Fire that biscuit top shelf!” that lets people know not only that you want your player to “shoot the puck up high in the corner of the net,” (semantic meaning) but also that you’re positioning yourself as a hockey person who is knowledgeable on the matter (social meaning).

True synonyms are rare in languages. Even when there are two words that mean the same thing, they usually have different connotations, are used in different contexts or have different social meanings. Calling a “puck” a “biscuit” might be referring to the same object, but it certainly does not have the same overall meaning in discourse.

Usually, words have at least semantic meaning and sometimes also social meaning. 6-7 is interesting precisely because it has no semantic meaning, only social meaning, which is much more uncommon.

Slang, social development and growing up

The fact that an expression with only social meaning has been adopted primarily by adolescents is to be expected. Adolescence is a period of intense social development.

This age group is leaving childhood behind, and the teenage years have consistently been found to be a time of deep linguistic change when social meaning becomes paramount as they strive to stake their own place in the world. Adolescents are demarcating themselves both from younger children and from their parents.

This era results in what is often called the adolescent peak of 15 to 17, when the use of new slang and innovative items is most pronounced. That said, 6-7 is generally used by a younger group, more in the 11 to 14 age range — and even younger now, as it moves rapidly through the population.

It’s possible that we’re seeing the effects of children being online at a younger age, and that this intense social development is happening earlier.

In the end, the fact that 6-7 doesn’t mean anything is perfectly fine. It’s not simply “brain rot,” but rather the developmentally appropriate creation of a saying with social meaning for adolescents at a time when social dynamics are the most important aspect of their lives.

And if you really hate it, don’t worry, you don’t have to use it, and yes, it will pass. By now it’s so widespread that only the uncool (adults and younger kids) are using it anyway. It has already lost its cachet.

A new perplexing, yet socially meaningful, phrase or expression will soon take its place. In fact, it appears that 41 may be the new 6-7.

Nicole Rosen has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chair program.

– ref. Slanguage: How ‘6-7’ makes sense even though it means nothing – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-how-6-7-makes-sense-even-though-it-means-nothing-270006