It was only when I enrolled at McGill University and moved to Montreal at age 18, that I began to recognize some basic attributes of being a New Yorker, or at least a New Yorker abroad (after all, it was all just “normal” before).  I was ok with some common perceptions and special privileges — New York as shorthand for cool and sophisticated, no matter the reality. And I was even ok with qualities that Canadians construed as odd quirks —  like giving someone a high-five when I  ran into them or met up; I can still see my friend Sameer’s expression when I did that the first time as we passed each other near the Shatner Building — he was puzzled and amused, and then slowly met my hand with an awkward, “Ok I guess we’re doing this.”

However, I soon learned that more essential traits were also outliers, including the understanding that sports are integral to the story of the world. One of my very first memories of arriving in America at age 8, in 1986, was watching Game 6 of the World Series – I don’t think I spoke more than 10 words of English yet, but I didn’t need any to understand the emotional impact of what was unfolding. Like many newcomers, I began to internalize the US through these men and the rules that held them together on the field. And through them, I gained the gift of sports as a lingua franca, and the ability to spring roots that felt organic, wherever I went. Maybe this is because New York is so tribal, and clings closely to its immigrant/ethnic/neighborhood/block parameters (at least in Brooklyn and Queens at the time, the more white and protestant parts of uptown Manhattan were a completely foreign country, as were artists in Soho). Canada considers itself a “cultural mosaic” in comparison with the American “melting pot,” but the tribal patchwork quilt of this city was pretty firmly pressed into many of us — with sports as both a bridge and an entrenchment of identity.

However, at McGill, I soon learned about a separation between being a serious, high-minded person, who cared about important things, and the low-culture, or non-culture, distraction of sports. It was baffling. Because sports felt as fundamental as my place of birth, they ran seamlessly through any new experience I assimilated – music, art, history, landscape, people. They were intrinsic to being cool and sophisticated, not a departure from it. Of course, there were sports on campus, and hockey was king. But it was not quite the same. It was the province of mostly men, and mostly apart from their more serious endeavors.  When you walked into a room, at any party or lecture hall, the playoffs were not necessarily the imperceptible buzz– I often felt like Diogenes walking endlessly with his lamp trying to find an honest man.

Yet I don’t think it really occurred to me what the disregard for sports meant, until I wanted to write a “sports” story for the McGill Daily.  An aspiring journalist, I ended up finding a home there, ultimately working my way up to culture editor. The Daily was one of the two main papers on campus. I chose it because my friends were there, it was more literary and independent, and Leonard Cohen was once on staff. The other paper, the McGill Tribune, was considered the more mainstream option. The Trib had a sports section and the Daily did not. But I thought that just meant they would report about (Canadian!) college sports, which really, who cares.

One spring, on the eve of the ‘98 or ’99 baseball season, I had the perfect story. With the Expos threatening to leave (they would eventually go south in 2004, 4 years after I graduated and went south too), I wanted to write about a seminal moment not only in Montreal baseball history, but also of American racial history and Canada’s role in it: Before Jackie Robinson made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers, heralding the integration of baseball, he did it in Montreal first.

When Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Jackie Robinson in 1945, both men understood the obstacles ahead: the racist fans, the travel and spring training in the South and Florida that would require near-superhuman resilience, and the glare of a spotlight that might burn right through a man meant to carry it all without breaking a sweat.

Rather than throw him head-first into the cauldron of American racism and outsized expectations, Rickey decided on a more gradual path: A year in Canada with the Dodgers’ farm team, the Montreal Royals. The Royals played against American teams, but at least half the games would be at home. As Robinson’s widow, Rachel once told Smithsonian Magazine, “When we got to Montreal it was like coming out of a nightmare. The atmosphere in Montreal was so positive, we felt it was a good omen for Jack to play well.”

Of course, Canada, and Quebec especially, had its own special stew of sectarian tension, but America’s seething dangerous racism and inequity was mostly foreign. As Jack Jedwab, the author of Jackie Robinson’s Unforgettable Season of Baseball in Montreal, described it:

The issue of race was not as fundamental a marker of identity in Canada as it was in the U.S. It wasn’t an existential issue here, our conflicts centered around the ongoing conflicts between the French and English, Catholics and Protestants, they were more religiously based. Some experts argue there was slavery in parts of the British Empire in Canada, but it had nowhere the legacy of the American narrative.

One can imagine the deep salutary breath this year in Canada must have been for the Robinsons. But perhaps also a rueful year, a speculative one – why could not one breathe like this at home, a place so close you could touch it, but like the other side of a less benevolent moon.

Robinson and his family committed their life to the long cold war ahead when he agreed to sign with the Dodgers (not always cold of course). Was so much suffering and so much hard work worth the symbolic progress? And how could one measure actual progress? Did all this hard-won resilience (which built on already-imprinted generational trauma) yield enough? The qualities that one man had to possess to take this leap of faith seem superhuman.  And we are all deeply indebted to him and so many others, including those toiling less conspicuously to upend all that came before. And those that did not choose to be heroes or martyrs at all.

Sports are fun, they are often a tonic and distraction from the real world, or the drudgery of day to day life, and I’ve missed them terribly during quarantine. But they also give shape to so much more — they are both canvas and artist, as much as any ostensibly more seriously crafted culture.

When I pitched the Jackie Robinson story, my co-editor at the Daily, Gabe (his real name), argued that we just didn’t write about sports. I was dumbfounded, I still am. Our Editor in Chief eventually sided with me. I’m not especially stubborn, and my confidence about a story or my writing always stems from believing in the story itself. This one was a no-brainer, and I think most Canadians and other non-New Yorkers would agree.

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