‘Just Like Rocks’ - Box Lacrosse’s Removal from the Canada Summer Games
Throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s box lacrosse received little documentation in Games reports. St. Catharines and the Niagara Region attempted to host the 1973 Canada Summer Games providing a detailed breakdown of plans and infrastructure. While other sports like tennis and track and field received detailed explanations of facilities, the only entry for lacrosse was two images of the Jack Gatecliff and Rex Stimers arenas and the quote “The First World Field Lacrosse Championship was held in 1967 (no period).”20 While not malicious, clearly attention appeared to be directed elsewhere.
The depreciating popularity of box lacrosse meant the 1985 Summer Games would be its last installment of the 20th century. Without being played in major competitions like the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics, both field and box lacrosse in Canada suffered and struggled to find any ground with the Canada Games. While Mike Lachapelle of the Canadian Lacrosse Association argued in 1988 the sport’s necessity because of its deep historical ties to Canadian nationhood and early identity, the matter remained that not enough people showed interest in lacrosse. André Gallant, a Sport Canada consultant at the time, remarked: “Certainly lacrosse has been here the longest, but so have some rocks. Just because they’re here doesn’t mean they’ve become that significant.”21 By no means was the statement aimed at the sport of lacrosse. Rather, the Games Committee needed to include sports that would bring the most recognition and remain available across the province. By the late 1980s, only 24 senior men’s lacrosse teams existed across the country.
Although box lacrosse was removed from the Canada Games, field lacrosse flourished across the British Commonwealth and even more so in the United States. As Lachapelle said, “The United States have taken full ownership of the field game.” For Indigenous players, success could still be found at post-secondary institutions, mostly in the United States, and throughout the 1970s in the all-Indigenous North American Lacrosse Association. The passing of Bill C-212 in 1994 cemented lacrosse as Canada’s official summer game, a role overshadowed by its winter partner, hockey.22 It would not be until the Indigenization efforts of the 2000s onward that lacrosse would make a resurgence.