"In a Spirit of Brotherhood" -- Multiculturalism and the Beautiful Game

It was an odd sight for this lifelong native of Toronto: patrolling police officers, body searches, and warnings about ejections for racist banners featuring extreme right-wing symbols. All for a crowd of four hundred Croatian and Serbian spectators for a low-level amateur football match on Parkdale's idyllic waterfront.

Toronto is not known for its intra-ethnic violence, and the mutual tolerance exhibited by once fierce enemies, now next-door neighbours, has been a hallmark of the city for some time. Yet soccer tends to bring once-faded nationalistic tendencies to the foreground, and in the early days of Toronto's immigration influx in the 1950s, passions seemed to flare on a regular basis.

The problem was so common in the National Soccer League that in 1957, six years after Toronto Ukrainians picked up their first title, a local Magistrate recommended the NSL drop the 'ethnic' team titles and team sheets to force integration. "For the benefit of the game," Magistrate Taylor expounded after fining two Ukraine players for beating up a linesman, "they should all play together as Canadians in a spirit of brotherhood."

Complex social theories about polycultural identity were not in vogue in 1957, so it's doubtful the Magistrate knew anything about diasporic-identity issues when making his plea for integration. However, football in Canada can stretch the hyphen in dual identities to the breaking-point. While the violence in the 1950s calmed down significantly as recently-arrived Canadians warmed to their new home, soccer allegiance in Canada is still a tricky subject.

Many Portuguese and Italian-Canadians have intense debates about who they would support in a World Cup clash featuring the country of their roots or the country they call home. Some see the patent disregard many Canadians have for their adopted country's national soccer team -- like the tens of thousands of Chilean-Canadians who heartily supported Chile over Canada the 2007 Under-19 World Cup -- as a sign of weak national identity. Yann Martel famously remarked that Canada "is the world's greatest hotel," and there was a wave of right-wing indignation at the Lebanese-Canadians who 'used' their Canadian passports to flee the recent war with Israel, only to return to Lebanon when the conflict ceased.

Violence in Toronto after Italy's 1990
Semi-Final Defeat

The truth is, as usual, more complex. Our identity as Canadians sits on a razor's edge between will and providence, as a pretentious letter-writer to the Globe once argued. While Canada is no mere hotel, neither does it belong to the liberal democracies insistent on integration before acceptance. This is why the same groups in Toronto can clash after one world cup and then graciously hug their opponents at another. At the end of the day, while we fiercely maintain pride in our ethnic roots, we're all Canadians...we know the same contours of the city streets, the same sting of Canadian winters, and, oddly, the same love for a struggling mid-table MLS club it seems...

And Hugs and Handshakes between Portuguese and Italians in 1994...