Indian Immigrants Are Saving Canadian Hockey

How the Punjabi diaspora rescued Canada’s national sport

- Shikha Dalmia

Love sometimes shows up in the strangest places. For Canadian hockey, that place is the Punjabi Indian diaspora, which hails from my own ancestral province of Punjab in Northern India. Thanks to Harnarayan Singh, the turbaned and-bearded Sikh host of the weekly TV show Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition, the community has overcome a fear of rejection and embraced its adopted country’s national sport with a hot passion.

The standard English version of Hockey Night in Canada has been a must-watch for fans of the sport since its TV debut in 1953. But lately, it has been languishing. Singh’s spicy new Punjabi version, on the other hand, has been catching on—and not only among South Asians. (Punjabi is the language spoken in the northern Indian province of Punjab, where Sikhism was born.)

President Donald Trump and his fellow immigration restrictionists warn that “mass immigration” from “shitholes”—and Punjab would certainly qualify—poses a threat to Western culture. On a trip to England in 2018, Trump said it was a “shame” that excessively loose immigration policies were changing the “fabric” of Europe’s culture. In fact, the E.U. admits about as many immigrants per capita as the United States does—fewer than five per 1,000 people in the host country.

Canada admits eight per 1,000. The foreign-born makeup over 20 percent of that country’s population, compared to less than 14 percent of America’s. And Canadians with South Asian ancestry are projected to hit 9 percent of Canada’s population by 2036. If Trump were right, ice hockey would be on its way out, and cricket, a far more popular sport in India, would be ascendant in the Great White North. In fact, the opposite is the case. Instead of threatening this quintessential Canadian institution, immigrants are strengthening it at a time when it needs the help.