"Cutting Edge" — Daniel Gawthrop's Book on Queer Culture, Masculinity, and Hockey in Canada
An exploration of ice hockey through the lens of queer culture, masculinity, and lived experience.
On September 8, 2026, Canadian publisher Arsenal Pulp Press published the nonfiction study and memoir Cutting Edge: Hockey as Queer Culture. The book was written by Canadian author, essayist, and journalist Daniel Gawthrop.
Daniel Gawthrop lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, and has combined literary writing with queer sports activism for more than three decades. He is the author of five previous nonfiction books, including The Rice Queen Diaries and The Trial of Pope Benedict, as well as the novel Double Karma. Gawthrop first laced on skates as a twelve-year-old in a local minor hockey league in 1975, but he stepped away from the game after confronting pervasive locker-room homophobia and toxic masculinity. In the early 1990s, after competing at the international Gay Games, he joined journalist Kevin Griffin to co-found the Cutting Edges in Vancouver—one of Canada’s pioneering LGBTQ+ hockey teams. Competing directly in an established recreational league against straight opponents, the team challenged entrenched prejudices regarding gay men’s place in contact sports.
The book weaves together personal memoir, sports history, and sharp cultural critique. Gawthrop traces how ice hockey came to be constructed as a bastion of white, heterosexual, aggressive masculinity, where violence and emotional stoicism were long celebrated as national virtues. He revisits a notable media controversy from his own career: in the early 1990s, he published satirical essays examining the sex appeal of Vancouver Canucks superstar Pavel Bure, poking fun at the club’s attempts to market the “Russian Rocket” exclusively to suburban nuclear families. The articles drew national attention, provoking commentary from television personality Don Cherry and The Village Voice, while Bure endured dressing-room ribbing before erupting into a violent on-ice altercation during Game Three of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals.
A substantial portion of Gawthrop’s analysis confronts institutional shortcomings in contemporary hockey. He examines the deep-seated conservatism of the National Hockey League (NHL), where no active player has ever publicly come out in the league’s 109-year history, and critiques administrative backtracking such as recent attempts to restrict the use of rainbow Pride tape on sticks. Gawthrop links this resistance to broader scandals over hazing and sexual misconduct within Hockey Canada, demonstrating how traditional gatekeeping protects systemic impunity at the expense of player safety.
In the book’s final chapters, Gawthrop outlines the possibilities for a more inclusive future. He highlights professional women’s hockey, where out queer athletes have led and transformed the culture for decades, alongside the rapid growth of gender-inclusive recreational leagues. Examining the cultural resonance of the hit television series Heated Rivalry, Gawthrop shows how popular media and grassroots community organizing are welcoming a new generation of fans, opening the rink to communities historically excluded from Canada’s national pastime.
