Black hockey players in Alberta call for more inclusion in the sport

Like many Canadian kids growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Brandon Erlinger-Ford loved hockey.

"It was really fun because there wasn't really a lot to do back then in Fort McMurray before the [oil and gas] boom," he said. "It gave me something to do and I made a lot of friends."

In his first season playing hockey, his team took a trip to Edmonton to watch the Oilers.

Erlinger-Ford, who is of Guyanese and St. Lucian descent, saw Black players like Anson Carter, Georges Laraque and Mike Grier, who made him feel like he belonged.

But that welcoming feeling wasn't always there. At hockey tournaments, parents yelled race-based insults at him and opposition players called him slurs.

His earliest memory of that kind of harassment was when he was seven, and was called the N-word by an opposing player after scoring a goal.

"I remember telling my coach, 'What does it mean? This kid called me this word.' And I just saw the disgust on his face. He told the ref but the ref didn't really do anything about it." 

But he never considered quitting.

"If I quit, that's just letting them win, letting their words affect me."

A Black parent — whose identity CBC Calgary chose to keep confidential due to concerns about retaliation — believes racism in hockey is systemic and more subtle than slurs.

"There are very racist people who don't tell you that they're racist but they show you through their actions," he said.

The man, whose child plays hockey in one of Alberta's medium-sized centres, says his family has made good friends through the sport but are still treated like hockey is not for them.

"I just force myself to exist where I'm made to feel like I don't belong," he said.

"[Parents and coaches] ignore the conversations you're