Blades By Bauer
May 7, 2011, by Homme de Sept-Îles
Blades by Bauer
Shoulders by Cooper
Elbows by Easton
Figures by Reebok
Sticks by Sherwood
Nike’s goddess was co-opted
Almost none of the following text is mine. Maybe one phrase here or there. A comma, an apostrophe, perhaps. Ok, maybe a bit more. Credits dot and follow.
Blades by Bauer
From Middle High German “bure” or “bur” meaning farmer or peasant.
Canstar Sports Inc., Bauer Hockey’s parent company, acquired the famed Cooper’s hockey division in 1990, and was itself acquired by even more famed Nike five years later.
In 2008, Nike sold Bauer to a partnership comprising Graeme Roustan of Montréal and the private-equity firm Kohlberg & Company (started by a couple of the principals of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts). Presumably, the Cooper brand was included in this deal.
I exercise the Anglo frailty of making the accent optional. I feel some shame.
Unrelatedly, Father Bauer is one of the great names in hockey history. As per the Hockey Hall of Fame, “Father David Bauer has been described as an inspirational coach, a caring educator, a master motivator and a dreamer. He was devoted to the concept that education and hockey could mix. He viewed hockey as a means to develop a better person. He believed that building men came before building hockey players.” Bauer was an instrumental figure for Canada’s national hockey program and was considered an innovator and visionary.
“We try to give our players a well-rounded education, not merely ice skills but mental and moral conditioning as well,” he told reporters in 1961. “We can’t help but be better off in the long run.”
Shoulders by Cooper
Wikipedia says: “Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper’s work include but are not limited to casks, barrels, buckets, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins and breakers.
The word is derived from Middle Dutch kūpe, “basket, wood, tub” and may ultimately stem from cupa, the Latin word for vat. Everything a cooper produces is referred to collectively as cooperage. “Cask” is a generic term used to describe any piece of cooperage containing a bouge, bilge, or bulge in the middle of the container. A barrel is technically a measure of the size of a cask, so the term “barrel-maker” cannot be used synonymously with “cooper.” The facility in which casks are made is also referred to as a cooperage.
Cooper Canada Ltd. was a sporting goods and fine leather goods manufacturer based in Toronto, Canada. In its heyday, the 1960s through to the 1980s, the company was Canada’s leading producer of leather baseball gloves and protective ice hockey equipment. The company pioneered team-colored hockey equipment and the use of nylon, foam, and modern plastics in equipment manufacturing.”
Cooper also invented the futuristic but ultimately denigrated cooperall hockey pants.
Elbows by Easton
The Easton Assassin is Larry Holmes, former world heavyweight boxing champion, often underrated, sometimes embittered and always engaging. A statue was recently erected in his honour. In his hometown of Easton, Pennsylvania.
Easton also makes walking shoes along with skates and other hockey equipment. Larry Holmes has almost nothing to do with hockey. But his craft sometimes has application. Unfortunately.
Figures by Reebok
Reebok is a relative newcomer in the hockey business. They claim to have cleaned up their actions and may or may not be a reputable figure in the ethical consumer world.
From Wikipedia: “In the past, Reebok had an association with outsourcing through sweatshops, but today it claims it is committed to human rights. In April 2004, Reebok’s footwear division became the first company to be accredited by the Fair Labor Association. In 2004, Reebok also became a founding member of the Fair Factories Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving worker conditions across the apparel industry.”
Women silenced by hockey? Don’t say that. And figure-skating is an art. A demanding, athletic art. But an art.
Reebok makes women’s figure skates along other hockey equipment. There have been some gaffes along the way.
Sticks by Sherwood
Sherwood Forest, north of the city of Nottingham, England; the place where the legendary Robin Hood is said to have lived. Sherwood is also an American rock band.
Sherwood is one of the last remaining Canadian companies in the stick business. The hockey stick business. Unfortunately, they have recently moved much of their production to China.
NIKE
Britannica: In Greek religion, the goddess of victory, daughter of the giant Pallas and of the infernal River Styx. Nike probably did not originally have a separate cult at Athens. As an attribute of both Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and the chief god, Zeus, Nike was represented in art as a small figure carried in the hand by those divinities. Athena Nike was always wingless; Nike alone was winged. She also appears carrying a palm branch, wreath, or Hermes staff as the messenger of victory. Nike is also portrayed erecting a trophy, or, frequently, hovering with outspread wings over the victor in a competition; for her functions referred to success not only in war but in all other undertakings. Indeed, Nike gradually came to be recognized as a sort of mediator of success between gods and men.
Aside from co-opting Goddesses’ monikers, running sweatshops and spending lots of money on clever advertising, NIKE also makes hockey equipment.
Activists have long targeted NIKE for the company’s questionable employment and shoe production practices. Some target the bigs in the hope that their movement might have a trickle-down effect on the rest of said industry. Regardless of whether this practice has long-term merit and effect, the options for those who purchase ethically have multiplied.
An optimist might conjecture that it’s a matter of time before one of the major leagues follows suit. Will your National Hockey League lead the way? The answer is yes, if enough time has passed and if enough dinosaurs have whithered in the setting sun of consumer opulence. Just you wait.
In the meantime, I’m buying these shoes. And you can, too. They’re Canadian.
Related Links
Nike in the News – A recent advertising faux pas by the big shoe company
Labour Behind the Label – A site that seeks to show who makes what … how
Ethical Supply Chain Guidelines – An overview of exploitative issues in commerce
Coke and Pepsi Agree to Stop Advertising to Children – Just browsin’
Online Sources
And many thanks to Lloyd Davis of the Society of International Hockey Research (SIHR) for his ongoing assistance, insight and dazzling information puck-handling.
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