Secret negotiations, endless crisis management: How the '72 Summit Series became reality

Ice War Diplomat: Hockey Meets Cold War Politics at the 1972 Summit Series

Gary J. Smith

Ice War Diplomat arrives at a depressingly timely moment. After 30+ years of the Cold War shrinking in history's rear view, Russia's invasion of Ukraine gives renewed urgency to Gary J. Smith's story. Last year, this book might have been seen as a runway for another hockey summit series. No one now, athlete or ambassador, has any appetite for another Canada-Russia hockey tournament.

If history demands the right person, in the right place, at the right time, Gary J. Smith was it. In 1971, he was a young diplomat, fluent in Russian, newly posted in Moscow. At the same time, he was also a passionate player and student of hockey. When Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Kosygin and Pierre-Elliot Trudeau started using hockey to build bridges between Russia and Canada, Smith rose to the occasion.

He was not the most senior member of the diplomatic team, but he was the one who worked hardest to bring about the '72 Summit Series. Those in the know would probably agree that without Smith, Canada's greatest sporting moment might never have occurred. His work – the seemingly endless crisis management and secretive negotiating – is what Ice War Diplomat is all about.

As a prelude to the eight games that thrilled two nations, Smith explains how Canadian hockey was introduced to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Then, he contextualizes Russia as our Foreign Affairs department has traditionally seen it.

The history includes " …purges, pogroms, starvation policies associated with agricultural collectivization, a mass of wealth and privilege at the top and little to nothing at the bottom. Political repression of one kind or another, aided by various secret police agencies, has been passed down through the ages from the tsars to the communists and beyond."

Millennials might think boomers exaggerate when they say hockey used to be 'war by other means.' In March 1969, international hockey was certainly a proxy battleground between Czechoslovakia and the Soviets. When the Czechoslovaks beat Russia on ice, twice that month, 500,000 people hit the streets of Prague to celebrate. The party morphed into protests against the Soviet military stationed in their country. A local Aeroflot office was torched. Moscow used the "Czechoslovak Hockey Riots" as a pretext to remove reformer Alexander Dubček from office and crush the progress of the Prague Spring.

Smith says the Department of External Affairs believed "the decline of our hockey capability had serious international consequences, as it had led to a deterioration of Canada's image abroad, especially in Europe. Hockey and Canada's standing in the world were inextricably linked."

While this story plays out, 10,000 Canadian soldiers were still in Europe, supporting NATO, squaring off against Warsaw Pact adversaries.

His first year on office, Pierre Trudeau oversaw the creation of Hockey Canada, whose purpose was to boost Canadian results in International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) tournaments. In 1971, when Smith arrived in Moscow, part of his job was to pave the way for Trudeau's controversial tour of the USSR.

When Russian Premier Alexei Kosygin returned the visit in Canada, anti-Soviet protestors dogged him. But when Kosygin went to a Vancouver-Montreal NHL game, the applause from hockey fans was the warmest welcome he had ever received outside Russia:

"The light went on for Alexei Kosygin that October night in Vancouver. If the Soviet Union wished to improve its relationship with Canada and enhance co-operation, the way to do it was through hockey."

Boris Fedesov – a sports writer for Isvestia, published a 1971 piece arguing that Russian hockey teams should play Canadian pros, which had never happened. Reading the article, Smith realized that Fedosov must have gotten approval from government censors. He ran down the Embassy halls and urged his higher-ups to start talking with Russian counterparts.