Back in 1994, on the eve of the Toronto Raptors’ birth, basketball coverage in the Canadian sports media was something less than copious and not exactly vigorous. In the denouement of Toronto’s 2016 N.B.A. All-Star Weekend coronation, we can definitely say, “What a difference a couple of decades make.” Arguably, back in 1994, there were obvious deficits in basketball reportage ...

When the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) released Paying the Price: The Human Cost of Racial Profiling, it angered some high-ranking police officials. Even though the report was about the impact of racial profiling on the subject and not a statistical study with findings about the systemic practices of any police force in Ontario, Chief Ean Algar, head of the ...

It is clear that many sports pundits and armchair analysts do not understand the psychological tightrope that many non-whites, blacks for example, must walk daily. Once confronted with the fact that, in North American society, race does matter, blacks often fight a constant struggle between being hypersensitive to the commonplace slings and arrows that all Canadians must face, and allowing ...

Comments on the CFL’s greatest quarterback debate Among many CFL observers there is a growing belief that Toronto Argonaut Doug Flutie is the best quarterback the league has ever seen. As early as the last season talking heads, such as The Sports Network’s Gordon Miller, suggested that beyond being the greatest quarterback, Flutie also had to be considered its greatest ...

When Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran published Black Coaches in National Footbal League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities (“Report”), a report indicating that African-American coaches received inequitable treatment as NFL head coaching candidates and incumbents, the primary reaction in generic sports media was swift, negative and . . . expected. Read more

When I was young, it was pretty easy to be Black and Canadian. With a naive inchoate sense of racial consciousness and national pride. It seemed quite reasonable that a person could have a comprehensive identity: fully content as a Black person and eager to stake a claim in Canada as a Canadian. Read more