Writer Perry King sees Toronto through community sports

Rebound 

Sports, Community, and the inclusive city

By Perry King 

If you want to get a feel for a community, pay close attention to the sports it embraces.

Perry King got his first inkling this was so, eight years ago, while watching an impassioned audience cram into a basketball game at Oakwood Collegiate, in Toronto's St. Clair and Vaughan Road area.

The writer has long paid attention to grassroots sports, but on that day, he started seeing big picture connections between clusters of people, sports facilities, and urban politics.

Populations hungry for greater belonging in society, public space management, ideals of diversity and inclusion … King sees all these 'liveable city' themes at work on rinks, pitches, gyms and playgrounds, far and wide.

Rebound is a loving portrait of Toronto, drawn from close observation of its Tibetan basketball tournaments, West Indian Cricket leagues, Sikh ball hockey festivals, nine-man volleyball games in Chinatown … King's ideas flow from events which few major media outlets cover.

He is particularly strong on the tides of immigration, and the sports infrastructure that ebbs and flows with them. After WW2, for example, an influx of Italians left a legacy of Bocce courts all over the GTA. The sport has faded in popularity, but the facilities remain. Which sports, pleasing which constituents, will the city move into Bocce's old footprints?

The GTHL enjoys top notch arenas and publicly funded spaces all over town. At present, there are precisely zero regulation-sized indoor public basketball courts in the city. Outdoor courts are often in disrepair, off-limits after dark, and subject to noise complaints. As hockey wanes in popularity and basketball ascends, are rinks becoming basketball