This carefully curated collection of essays explores the meaning of sports found in Canadian sports literature.

How do sports differ from recreational activities that require skill? Do sports demand that someone win? At what point do sports become art? Not Hockey skillfully investigates how literature presents sports as a metaphor, a language, and a bodily expression.

Rather than focus on Canada’s most famous pastime, contributors examine sports in Canadian literature that are decidedly not hockey. From skateboarding and parkour to fly fishing and curling, these essays engage with histories and broader societal understandings through sports on the margin. Interspersed with original reflections by iconic Canadian literary figures, Not Hockey offers fresh, intriguing new ways of reading the body.