Founded in 1968, Hockey Canada is the national governing body for hockey in Canada. It's mission statement -- to "lead, develop and promote positive hockey experiences" -- was called into question recently over the organization's history of covering up sexual assault allegations against its teenage male players.
More recently, news has focused on Hockey Canada's private sponsors, a number of which are pulling their support after the organization's leaders have refused calls for their resignation. One of these sponsors goes by the uncomfortable name of Predator Ridge, a golf resort community between Vernon and Kelowna.
When I was commuting between Vernon and Kelowna to attend classes at UBCO I would drive past the resort, which lay along a ridge high above the highway to the west. The Predator Ridge sign was there, but not the resort. Nothing but a vast, sloping ripple of yellowing grasses, like the body of a sleeping animal -- if I were a mouse and it was a lion.
"Who lives up there?" I asked a hitch-hiking local I'd picked up outside Vernon Jubilee Hospital one morning.
"Oh, mostly white people, hockey players, their ex-wives," he said, looking past me at the lake.
