HOCKEY KNIGHT IN CANADA

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

In his recently-published book, One Game At A Time, Harnarayan Singh shares the story of how a little boy growing up in small-town Alberta who dreamed about a life within the sanctum of the game he idolized got there. 

He recalls going up to his mother on January 26 with a request. Would she make parshaadh (religious offering) for Wayne Gretzky’s birthday like she did on the birthdays of family members? “She didn’t even hesitate. She just laughed and said sure.”

And Harnarayan went off to say a prayer for 99 in the family prayer room.

His father supported his passion, buying him subscriptions to Hockey News. “He was probably thinking that at least I was reading!” laughs Singh during a phone interview from his home in Calgary .

In grade six, under What I Want To Be When I Grow Up, he wrote, I want to be a hockey commentator.

But he was a kid in a turban.

Their family doctor, Dr Patel, told him to be realistic. “We were there for a check-up, but in a blunt and stern conversation, he said, ‘You’re smart, you get good grades, but no one looks like you in broadcasting’.”

Singh was in middle school at the time and this was the first time there had been an actual discussion about his future. His father told his son not to worry about it, to give it a shot. “You’re young enough to get back to something else if it doesn’t work out.”

Harnarayan became the first Sikh to broadcast an NHL game in English. He stood in downtown Pittsburgh in the middle of a Stanley Cup parade as 400,000 ecstatic hockey fans yelled his BoninoBoninoBonino call back to him. He got to hang out with hockey legends like Gretzky and Crosby, and yes, Bonino. A lady thanked him for making it possible for her to enjoy the game with her grandchildren. A newcomer began participating in “water cooler conversation” after discovering the show.

“We hoped that people would find it entertaining.” he says. “But that it would bring families together, that it would grow the game – no, didn’t see that coming.”

The show he is talking about, of course, is Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi for which he has called over 700 games.

To get there, he worked his way up from calling imaginary games with his plastic toy microphone as a child to funding his own flights from Calgary to Toronto every weekend and sleeping in the airport lounge.

He says he was just so invested in making it happen that he didn’t have the time to stop and reflect on how unique all of this was.

“All that travel, the lack of sleep... it was crazy! But I wasn’t married then, I didn’t have kids,  at another stage in life I might not have been able to do that. But it was a special period, and shows how badly I wanted this.”

His mother told him to think of it as seva for the community, that one day it would pay off. His father, a math teacher, said, “You’re never going to take the derivative of a hockey score, so just leave it.”

“My parents are both teachers, they have a scholarly way of expressing themselves and dad has his one-liners! It took me a few seconds to realize he really was saying I should do this.”

Singh and his team developed a fusion of Punjabi and English terminology his viewers were familiar with. 

It began with drawing up long lists of the words they’d use in English and then finding the appropriate way of saying it in Punjabi. “First, it was a very literal exercise,” he says. “Then our personalities collectively coloured the language as we gained confidence. Viewers loved it and that really got our creative juices flowing. We were having so much fun with it, it came naturally.”

But the show had its detractors. Why couldn’t everyone just learn English?

Singh’s response to that is that Canada is a unique country with people from all over the world who speak different languages, come from different cultures. We need to find avenues to bring people together and this is one such avenue. That if hockey fans want the sport to thrive, they need to do things to grow the game, find ways to get more people excited abut it. So many more young people are now playing in minor hockey leagues and attribute it to the show.

Representation was also a big thing, he says. Youngsters who felt they didn’t have a place in media now saw they had a chance. Amrit Gill, the first woman to work on-air for Hockey Night Punjabi, grew up watching the show with her grandmother.

“When you communicate this, when you show that we’re not taking anything away, we’re contributing to the sport, it helps change their perspective,” says Singh quietly.

Singh’s identity as a Canadian goes back more than 100 years – his great grandfather Chanda Singh was one of the first 100 Sikhs to enter Canada. Yet, he’s been told to go back where he came from, been bullied, has had his turban ripped off... and that was before 9/11, when things got  really ugly.

“Learning my family history totally changed how I saw myself as a Canadian. I have something in my back pocket that I can say in response – because as it turns out, my family was probably here before theirs was. When someone is being ignorant or racist, they don’t understand the immigrant story.”

When he was in grade 10, a door-to-door salesman said, “Oh, and I just wanted to say, welcome to Canada!” before he walked away.

That really hurt. That guy thought I was a newcomer because of how I looked.

“I was in my own bubble,” says Singh. “Going to school, hanging out with friends. I never questioned that I belonged.”

He wrote a letter to the editor. It was a small town, and his letter resonated with people. A stranger came up to him at the grocery and said she was so sorry this happened to him.

He has always adopted this educational approach towards prejudice he has faced himself or observed. This comes from his parents who taught their children not to be confrontational, to use their words. Which is what he did when Don Cherry made his infamous comments about immigrants not wearing poppies.

“That was a very difficult situation,” Singh acknowledges. “We were colleagues under the same umbrella of the corporation we were working for. But I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe they are bad at their core, they need an opportunity to see things from another perspective.”

Singh was behind a major change of perspective with a news story he broke while working at CBC. He recalled his father saying Sikhs used to go by the last name Singh or Kaur, but now there was a different last name added on. He made a call to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and learned that an official rule didn’t allow people to immigrate if their last name was Singh or Kaur.

As he writes in his book: If you wanted to apply, you were required to list a different last name.

CBC broke the story, other media outlets picked it up and before the end of the week, the government admitted it was happening followed by an announcement that they would repeal the rule.

“If it was a policy that applied to all common last names like say, Smith or Chung, well, I’d have understood that,” says Singh. “The fact that the rule focused on just the one community was the issue for me.”

Seeing the narrative develop, from his great-grandfather’s time to now, does he see the Canada he wants his daughter Apaarjeet, 4, and son Mohun Singh, 2, to grow up in?

“It’s something I struggle with every day,” he says candidly. “I’d have hoped we’d have more progress. There have been some very significant changes over the years. Now when my kids watch television, they see way more diversity, they see women, hockey in Punjabi is normal! I celebrated Gurpurab with prime minister Trudeau. We had a one-on-one chat and my kids were like, ‘He said fateh!’ referring to the Sikh greeting. But still, the last four years in the US were very divisive. Racism has become more blunt. When leadership does not stand up against racism, the world becomes a scary place and as a parent, I worry.

“Then I remind myself of something I have written about in my book: Whenever I experienced moments of bullying, or feeling like an outcast because of what I looked like, it was always followed by another moment of warmth from someone else.”

He and his wife had bonded over hockey as young adults – they had a hockey-themed engagement and their wedding cake was shaped like the Stanley Cup! But now Sukhjeet finds her time taken with the kids and their school projects, etc.

“If it’s the play-offs, she’s there. But otherwise, hockey is on so often and for so long at our home that she says she’d like to watch a movie now and then,” he chuckles. “Hey, we’ve been married for over 10 years, I get it!”

Singh serves on the Board of Directors for HEROS Hockey, a charity helping at-risk youth through mentorship, is an ambassador for the NHL’s Hockey is For Everyone program and Chevrolet Canada’s Good Deeds Cup. He gets to vote for the coach of the year at the NHL Awards.

Other members of the media have the vote, too, he says, but for him, it’s a validation that he’s an important member of the hockey world that he so loves.

“After years and years of challenges, being given the opportunity to be a part of such programs is so special. It means my contribution is valued. It is also a privilege to be able to grow the game. I feel very lucky to part of Good Deeds. That goes right along with the concept of seva. With Hockey Is For Everyone, the conversations with kids are so meaningful. These games can help change a kid’s perspective from negative to positive, give them a sense of community, help build their confidence.”

To young people looking to fit in, he has this to say: “I was that kid, too. But remember, what is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular.”

He tells them to stay true to their selves. “Be comfortable in your own skin. Be proud of your heritage. You don’t have to change to fit in. If you approach everything honestly and respectfully, you will succeed. My story proves that.”

Harnarayan Singh received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada for his contributions to Canadian society. He is now part of Sportsnet’s and Hockey Night’s English programming.

See book review here.

 • Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).