The Summit Series was the start and end of an era

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At the beginning of Summit on Ice, the superb 1992 documentary on the '72 Canada-USSR hockey series, narrator Kenneth Welsh describes the canvas on which the ensuing nationalistic drama would unfold: "We struggled as the '70s began. The FLQ crisis. Soldiers in Montreal. Separation was the issue. We faced a '72 fall election, preoccupied with unity, questioning, even back then, our identity." The last words before the end credits belong to Canadian defenceman Serge Savard, speaking in 1992, when Quebec sovereignty was (still) a hot-button issue and Canada was just coming out of a two-year recession. "This [series] really… unified our country. We probably need that right now — another Team '72."

Fast forward to today — 30 years from the film's release and 50 years from the Summit Series itself — and separatism has faded as a pressing concern. But plenty of other challenges (some new, some sadly familiar) tear at the fabric of our country and the world. The pandemic exposed troubling rifts in our society that can no longer be ignored. Inflation and general economic uncertainty weighs on people across the country as Canada stands on the brink of another recession. Meanwhile, Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine has reignited some of those old Cold War tensions from the last century.

So, what struck me most in re-watching the 1992 documentary and diving into the new Summit 72, a four-part series premiering tonight on CBC, is that many of the basic ingredients for a dramatic Canada-Russia hockey showdown — the tension, the anxiety, the raw fear about challenges both foreign and