Things have never been better for black players in professional hockey. In 2002, Jarome Iginla became the first black scoring champion in the National Hockey League. In May 2003, Anson Carter scored the game-winning goal for Canada in the gold-medal game of the World Hockey Championship. And in November former Edmonton Oilers goaltending great Grant Fuhr became the first black player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
But it’s been a gruelling 45-year battle since Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s first black player, debuted with the Boston Bruins in 1958, 11 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s colour barrier. These many ice-bound skirmishes, triumphs, humiliations, and epiphanies between the overt racism of “back then” and the ostensibly progressive present are the subject of Breaking the Ice, an excellent new book by New York-based sports reporter Cecil Harris.